Portside

Johannesburg’s inner city has seen dramatic change in the past 20 years. As apartheid began to collapse, laws that kept the black majority out of cities were first disregarded and then repealed. As black people moved in, whites fled to suburbs. The inner city dramatically degraded, with neglected buildings, fewer services and crime. Now this image of downtown Johannesburg is beginning to shift, with the arrival of property developers who are creating affluent enclaves.

One of the challenges we face is that people talk about the death penalty as if it’s a choice between the death penalty and no punishment. In a 21st-century society we have so many ways to incapacitate people who are a legitimate threat to public safety and impose punishments that are serious and substantial, that express community outrage without executing people.

Blacks make up 67 percent of the population in Ferguson. But they make up 85 percent of people subject to vehicle stops and 93 percent of those arrested. Blacks are twice as likely to be searched as whites, but less likely to have drugs or weapons. The report found that 88 percent of times in which Ferguson police used force it was against blacks and all 14 cases of police dog bites involved blacks.