Civics & justice study course
The Badge and The Blind Spot
Policing, profit and the character problem behind the law
A four-part study of how a system can pass every reform on paper and still produce the same outcome on the street. You read the argument, run the numbers on the monitor, then measure your own habits against what a fair system is supposed to do.
Alander Pulliam · 4 modules · 102 minutes · Adults, college and upper-secondary classrooms, community groups, civic trainers.
- Separate what a law can prohibit from what only character can produce
- Read enforcement data for revenue motive, not just crime rate
- Trace one ticket through the full poverty-trap cycle
- Audit your own community's fines, fees and school discipline numbers
This course teaches civic literacy and critical reading. It is not legal advice and does not tell you how to respond to any specific encounter.
Introduction & Chapter 1
2 assigned readingsThe Presumption of Suspicion
The book opens with the night the author became a suspect. The chapter argues that for some citizens the default posture of the system is not innocence, it is suspicion — and that posture is applied before a single fact is known.
- Define presumption of innocence as a legal rule and as a lived experience
- Identify the moment a stop shifts from inquiry to accusation
- Distinguish an anecdote from a pattern
Before the deck
- Introduction and Chapter 1 · Behind the Badge manuscript
The framing argument in the author's own words.
- Your city's published stop or discipline data · Municipal open-data portal
Bring real numbers to the exercise instead of impressions.
Open
The night I became a suspect
- The book begins with a personal encounter, not a statistic.
- Nothing about the citizen changed — only who was looking at him.
- Personal testimony sets the question; data has to answer it.
Craft note: the author leads with story so the reader has a body in the scene before the numbers arrive.