MCC’s You Got Booked seminar illustrates how the criminal justice system is stacked against people of color
Photo by Juan Moya, Anabaptist World.
MCC’s “You Got Booked” seminar on Thursday afternoon led 39 participants through a life-sized board game based on mass incarceration in the United States. Seven teams took turns rolling a giant blow-up die and moving around a Monopoly-style board, but instead of property spaces, railroads or chance cards, the spaces were labeled private prisons, pipeline, court, redlining, police encounter, processing, go to prison and traffic stop.
Each team was assigned a character with different identities and resources. As players had run-ins with the justice system, their outcomes changed depending on their skin color, citizenship status, incarceration history and financial restraints. To win, you had to make it all the way around the board, but in the 90-minute seminar on Thursday, nobody was able to cross the finish line. If a character was incarcerated three times, they were eliminated from the game. This rule is based on the real three-strikes law, which increases the severity of the sentence for repeat violent offenders and generally results in a life sentence after the third offense.
While the game pulls from reality, it isn’t supposed to be an exact reflection of the justice system in the United States.
“You Got Booked is not a perfect tool,” said Daniela Lázaro-Manalo, MCC’S racial equity education coordinator. “We have combined several stories to give participants an understanding of a system that discriminates against persons of color, and in doing so are collapsing many stories that need to be told another time. This tool is used to highlight a system, not individual acts.”
Anyone who has played Monopoly knows how it can feel frustratingly random; If you’re lucky, you’ll land on both Boardwalk and Park Place, where you can charge any unlucky player who lands on your property up to $2000 in rent. And most people who have played Monopoly know that despite being a game, it’s not exactly fun. More often than not, you’ll hear a disgruntled Monopoly player exclaim “This isn’t fair!” after landing on Income Tax for the fifth time in a row, having to surrender the $200 they just got for passing Go.
You Got Booked is like Monopoly, except some people get a head start while others start the game with the odds stacked against them. Not only are players’ lives determined by the roll of a die, but they also have different outcomes for the same situation, reflecting the reality that people of color are incarcerated at much higher rates than white people in the United States – especially Black men. One statistic read aloud during the game was that despite only making up around 13% of the U.S. population, Black Americans represent 38% of the incarcerated population.
“There’s just such clear bias and assumptions made against people who are not white,” said Mara Carlson, a youth participant from Akron, Pennsylvania.
After the game was over, there was a brief time for reflection. Participants shared about family members or friends who were incarcerated, and the unfair treatment to which they’ve been subjected.
Mae Beidler, a youth from Akron, Pennsylvania, said she was struggling to understand why we have such a punitive system, especially when so many people who are incarcerated are struggling with mental illness or are unhoused.
“Why aren’t there systems to get people out of this?” she asked. “[Money] could be going to help people. Why do we automatically go to jail time?”
“That is the question that this entire activity is asking,” Lázaro-Manalo said, “Why is that the system that is in place?”
Written by Greta Lapp Klassen for MC USA.