When They See Us, the Netflix limited series directed and co-written by Ava DuVernay, is about the Central Park Five, the five kids, African American and Latino, who in 1989 were accused of assault and rape and sentenced to maximum terms based on nothing more than coerced false confessions, when they hadn’t been anywhere near the scene of crime. The series is about racism and about a legal system designed not to find the guilty but to fabricate them. It is about how a deeply broken system failed the five accused. In telling a story about the late ’80s and early ’90s, it is also very much about present-day America and about how the system is still just as corrupt in many ways. The law may be many things, but if you’re black, don’t expect it to be just.

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