Domestic violence is an equal opportunity issue, facing families of all races and incomes. But you'd never know it when it comes to the criminal justice response to these crimes. The way the courts treat these crimes impacts black America disproportionately, and often in ways that pit black men and black women against each other.

"We've got to get rid of this mentality that the police officer is your friend," says one criminal defense attorney. Just visit the felony domestic violence court in Brooklyn, one of the first such courts in the United States, started in June 1996. According to data collected by the Urban Institute, of the defendants here (96% of whom are male), 21% are Hispanic, 67% are black and 12% are white. Just under 20% reside in a New York City Housing Authority project. The average age of a defendant is 34. The ones who are employed (nearly half are not) earn an average income of just $12,655 a year.

New York State Supreme Court Justice John Leventhal, one of two judges in this court, said it's no accident the court sees no wealthy white defendants. When wealthy white men are accused of violence toward their wives, they work out their domestic problems "differently," usually as part of divorce settlements, which are often confidential. Those lacking wealth and influence have to face the procedures and stringent sanctions of the criminal justice system, which carefully chooses whom it prosecutes.

But isn't aggressive prosecution of men who commit domestic violence necessary to protect the women — in this court, again, mostly poor and mostly black?

Wanda Lucibello, chief of the special victims division in the Brooklyn district attorney's office, said that's the goal, and one that evolved from a very different situation that existed even 20 years ago. "We try not to have the onus on the victim," she said, explaining that it is now the job of the district attorney's office to push domestic-violence cases with or without the victim's help or consent. (Some 40% of Brooklyn victims of domestic violence crimes, most of which are assaults, express a desire to have the criminal charges dropped after the felony indictment.)

"The DA's office is really not concerned about the needs of the complainant in these cases," argues Lisa Schreibersdorf, executive director of Brooklyn Defender Services. "They really don't take into account the deep-seated needs of the complainant in these cases. The prosecution is not looking out for their best interests," she said. "It's a very patronizing, condescending attitude toward the victims, and most of these are minorities."

Schreibersdorf said that while domestic violence is a legitimate issue, it isn't always cut and dried. She said there are instances in which maybe the defendant has a drug or alcohol problem and gets violent as a result. "But the woman doesn't want him charged. She doesn't want him locked up. She doesn't want him to lose his job, because how are they going to pay the bills? Maybe what he needs is drug treatment. But the district attorney's office — they don't care what she thinks and that's what's so patronizing about it. They know better than she does. I think it's kind of disgusting that they are as reactionary as they are."

Schreibersdorf said "maybe 20%" of the defendants she sees really are bad news. "But even in this group, are we just going to write them off as human beings? If they were kids, we'd be concerned, but now that they're adults, we just turn away from them," she said, explaining that many times it is the case that these men grew up witnessing much domestic violence in their own homes.

Schreibersdorf said domestic violence crimes are a racial issue because a majority of the defendants charged in these crimes are black. "And why is that? Because the police are only going into the black neighborhoods to enforce the law," she said, adding that, while domestic violence affects all socioeconomic groups, white middle-class people generally do not involve the police in their domestic disputes, and most police officers in general scrutinize whites far less than blacks anyway. "There's a huge amount of racism in the police force," she said. "It's part of the culture of the police."

Beyond the police, Schreibersdorf and others say the courts themselves perpetuate a culture that hurts black men, often in the guise of protecting black women.

"Specialized courts [such as domestic violence courts] are a real problem," says long-time criminal attorney Michael Kuzma, of Buffalo, New York. "It sounds good until you really take a look at it." As far as domestic violence arrests are concerned, police discriminate, he said. "Whites are less likely to be arrested than an African American or Hispanic couple."

Kuzma adds that it's no accident prosecutors are so "hell-bent" on securing convictions: "There's an apparatus in place. It's a big scam. The prisons have the beds — they've got the space — there's room at the inn. Prosecutors love it because then they can justify their existence."

"It's all about money," Schreibersdorf said of the court model, which has a heavy reliance on social-service agencies. "Domestic violence is an industry now. Just look at all the employees that are in that court. The DA's office has about 50,000 social workers, plus the entire police department. The only people who can't get any money for anything are the defendants. They can't even get money for batterer intervention programs. It's disgusting."

Schreibersdorf is also bothered by another peculiarity: "The presumption of innocence does not exist in DV court," she said. "Every defendant has to go to a batterer's program as a condition of bail.

"Generally speaking, the defense bar has always been resistant to the specializing of courts because by specializing, with a DA's office and a judge, there becomes an overfocus on these cases and an overzealousness," said Stephen Dean, another attorney with Brooklyn Defender Services. He said most of his clients are "impoverished, with educational deficiencies" and that their problems are multi-faceted, but that economics are a huge factor.

"My population are blacks and Hispanics who can't afford private attorneys," Dean said. When someone calls the police, "they are reaching out for some intervention," Dean said, and think that a call will end the situation, but often don't realize that, from a criminal-justice standpoint, "once the police get involved, that's just the beginning."

"We've got to get rid of this mentality that the police officer is your friend," said Kuzma, the Buffalo criminal attorney. "The police officer is not your friend and there are a lot of people getting rich off the misery of others."

The end result of this tough law-and-order stance is that more black men end up in prison.

Even Lucibello, the Brooklyn prosecutor, sees lots of mixed feelings and confusion in domestic violence cases. "There is just so much understandable ambivalence," Lucibello said. "You almost get this trapped sense listening to these cases. We capitulate these cases into a criminal justice system that is not perfect but is trying to do as much as it can under the circumstances."

Judge Leventhal monitors defendants through batterer intervention programs and probation. On any given day, observers in his courtroom might find him questioning former defendants — all black men, from what this writer saw — who have returned as part of that monitoring process. Though Leventhal expressed concern for the welfare of these men, particularly with whether they are employed, he is always upfront about his real purpose. As he said to one, "We really want you to do well. We want you to succeed. But I also want you to know that I'm still in your life."

Oddly, however, the show of concern for victims can disappear when it interferes with prosecution. In a recent case this writer witnessed, the DA's office aggressively prosecuted a black female with no criminal record indicted in the fatal stabbing of her boyfriend. It managed to secure a jury conviction despite the defendant's legitimate claim of self-defense as well as a documented history of her boyfriend physically assaulting her. This was due to the prosecutor's distorted portrayal of the defendant as angry, aggressive, and out of control — a common stereotype of black women.

So what are the factors here? They are many and complex: mandatory arrest polices; prosecutors who want to prosecute, concern for victims that seems to dry up after it's served its prosecutorial purpose (and which evaporates entirely when domestic violence victims turn around and kill their tormentors), and the insidious demands of the great monolith known as the prison-industrial complex, which is constantly seeking to replenish itself with fresh batches of new inmates in order to generate profits.

Eric Schlosser, in a 1998 article in The Atlantic Monthly, writes: "The prison-industrial complex is not a conspiracy, guiding the nation's criminal-justice policy behind closed doors. It is a confluence of special interests that has given prison construction in the United States a seemingly unstoppable momentum. It is composed of politicians, both liberal and conservative, who have used the fear of crime to gain votes; impoverished rural areas where prisons have become a cornerstone of economic development; private companies that regard the roughly $35 billion spent each year on corrections not as a burden on American taxpayers but as a lucrative market; and government officials whose fiefdoms have expanded along with the inmate population. Since 1991 the rate of violent crime in the United States has fallen by about 20 percent, while the number of people in prison or jail has risen by 50 percent."