Since 1989, Cook County, the seat of Chicago and largest criminal court in the U.S., has produced 215 murder exonerations with roughly 113 of them tied to false confessions. For the Season 2 opener of Exploitation Nation, we sit down with Brown University sociologist Dr. Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, author of Crime Fictions: How Racist Lies Built a System of Mass Wrongful Convictions (Random House, 2026). The book details, through extensive research, the racist narratives police and prosecutors construct around Black children long before a jury ever hears the case. We discuss everything from police secret “street files” to in-custody torture and their role in the production of crime fictions. This book upends the common misconception that wrongful convictions are rare or the result of unintended consequences.
Co-producers: Brittany Friedman and Olivia Aminatta Jobe
Resources:
Crime Fictions by Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve
Crook County by Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve
https://www.nicolevancleve.com/contact
Wrongful Convictions, Equal Justice Initiative
