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12. Findings Relevant to Disparate Impacts  of Crime  and  Crime-Control
In his  volume  entitled Rlack Baltimore:   A  New Theory  of Community; Dr.  Harold A.  McDougall pointed out that until  1817, blacks convicted of petty crimes could be sold as  slaves outside the state, "sold South" as it were.    He also pointed out that the criminal justice system and the penitentiary  system continued as a means  of repressing blacks,  free or otherwise.     In fact, following the  1831  Nat Turner rebellion in Virginia,  free blacks were perceived by many Maryland plantation owners  as  an  especial  threat and  as  abuses against  them  mounted,  "white  only"  testimony  laws  prevented  many of these Marylanders  from  seeking redress  against their abusers  in court.    As from the  1840s until the Civil War, slave traders, encouraged  by  these  developments   sold  many  blacks   "South" (including  free blacks  who  had been  imprisoned or simply abducted),  it  can  hardly  be  doubted  that African  American  distrust of the  so-called  "criminal justice"   system  increased.
Significantly, many of these African American waiting to be sold "South" were incarcerated in slave jails of which Baltimore had a number.    In The Sun of June 20,  1999, Scott Shane wrote as follows: