From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime

2016-05-02
From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime
Author: Elizabeth Hinton
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 460
Release: 2016-05-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674737237
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Co-Winner of the Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize A New York Times Notable Book of the Year A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice A Wall Street Journal Favorite Book of the Year A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year A Publishers Weekly Favorite Book of the Year In the United States today, one in every thirty-one adults is under some form of penal control, including one in eleven African American men. How did the “land of the free” become the home of the world’s largest prison system? Challenging the belief that America’s prison problem originated with the Reagan administration’s War on Drugs, Elizabeth Hinton traces the rise of mass incarceration to an ironic source: the social welfare programs of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society at the height of the civil rights era. “An extraordinary and important new book.” —Jill Lepore, New Yorker “Hinton’s book is more than an argument; it is a revelation...There are moments that will make your skin crawl...This is history, but the implications for today are striking. Readers will learn how the militarization of the police that we’ve witnessed in Ferguson and elsewhere had roots in the 1960s.” —Imani Perry, New York Times Book Review

The Feminist War on Crime

2020-05-26
The Feminist War on Crime
Author: Aya Gruber
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2020-05-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0520973143
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Many feminists grapple with the problem of hyper-incarceration in the United States, and yet commentators on gender crime continue to assert that criminal law is not tough enough. This punitive impulse, prominent legal scholar Aya Gruber argues, is dangerous and counterproductive. In their quest to secure women’s protection from domestic violence and rape, American feminists have become soldiers in the war on crime by emphasizing white female victimhood, expanding the power of police and prosecutors, touting the problem-solving power of incarceration, and diverting resources toward law enforcement and away from marginalized communities. Deploying vivid cases and unflinching analysis, The Feminist War on Crime documents the failure of the state to combat sexual and domestic violence through law and punishment. Zero-tolerance anti-violence law and policy tend to make women less safe and more fragile. Mandatory arrests, no-drop prosecutions, forced separation, and incarceration embroil poor women of color in a criminal justice system that is historically hostile to them. This carceral approach exacerbates social inequalities by diverting more power and resources toward a fundamentally flawed criminal justice system, further harming victims, perpetrators, and communities alike. In order to reverse this troubling course, Gruber contends that we must abandon the conventional feminist wisdom, fight violence against women without reinforcing the American prison state, and use criminalization as a technique of last—not first—resort.

The Punitive Turn in American Life

2020-10-29
The Punitive Turn in American Life
Author: Michael S. Sherry
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2020-10-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 1469660717
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In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson insisted that "the policeman is the frontline soldier in our war against crime," and police forces, arms makers, policy makers, and crime experts heeded this call to arms, bringing weapons and practices from the arena of war back home. The Punitive Turn in American Life offers a political and cultural history of the ways in which punishment and surveillance have moved to the center of American life and become imbued with militarized language and policies. Michael S. Sherry argues that, by the 1990s, the "war on crime" had been successfully broadcast to millions of Americans at an enormous cost--to those arrested, imprisoned, or killed and to the social fabric of the nation--and that the currents of vengeance that ran through the punitive turn, underwriting torture at home and abroad, found a new voice with the election of Donald J. Trump. By 2020, the connections between war-fighting and crime-fighting remained powerful, evident in campaigns against undocumented immigrants and the militarized police response to the nationwide uprisings after George Floyd's murder. Stoked by "forever war," the punitive turn endured even as it met fiercer resistance. From the racist system of mass incarceration and the militarization of criminal justice to gated communities, public schools patrolled by police, and armies of private security, Sherry chronicles the United States' slide into becoming a meaner, punishment-obsessed nation.

War on Crime

1998
War on Crime
Author: Claire Bond Potter
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 1998
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780813524870
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The first book to look at the structural, legal, and cultural aspects of J. Edgar Hoover's war on crime in the 1930s, a New Deal campaign which forged new links between citizenship, federal policing, and the ideal of centralized government. WAR ON CRIME reminds us of how and why our worship of violent celebrity hero G-men and gangsters came about and how we now are reaping the results. 10 photos.

The War on Cops

2016-06-21
The War on Cops
Author: Heather Mac Donald
Publisher: Encounter Books
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2016-06-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1594038767
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Violent crime has been rising sharply in many American cities after two decades of decline. Homicides jumped nearly 17 percent in 2015 in the largest 50 cities, the biggest one-year increase since 1993. The reason is what Heather Mac Donald first identified nationally as the “Ferguson effect”: Since the 2014 police shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, officers have been backing off of proactive policing, and criminals are becoming emboldened. This book expands on Mac Donald’s groundbreaking and controversial reporting on the Ferguson effect and the criminal-justice system. It deconstructs the central narrative of the Black Lives Matter movement: that racist cops are the greatest threat to young black males. On the contrary, it is criminals and gangbangers who are responsible for the high black homicide death rate. The War on Cops exposes the truth about officer use of force and explodes the conceit of “mass incarceration.” A rigorous analysis of data shows that crime, not race, drives police actions and prison rates. The growth of proactive policing in the 1990s, along with lengthened sentences for violent crime, saved thousands of minority lives. In fact, Mac Donald argues, no government agency is more dedicated to the proposition that “black lives matter” than today’s data-driven, accountable police department. Mac Donald gives voice to the many residents of high-crime neighborhoods who want proactive policing. She warns that race-based attacks on the criminal-justice system, from the White House on down, are eroding the authority of law and putting lives at risk. This book is a call for a more honest and informed debate about policing, crime, and race.

After the War on Crime

2008-07-01
After the War on Crime
Author: Mary Louise Frampton
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2008-07-01
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0814727824
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Since the 1970s, Americans have witnessed a pyrrhic war on crime, with sobering numbers at once chilling and cautionary. Our imprisoned population has increased five-fold, with a commensurate spike in fiscal costs that many now see as unsupportable into the future. As American society confronts a multitude of new challenges ranging from terrorism to the disappearance of middle-class jobs to global warming, the war on crime may be up for reconsideration for the first time in a generation or more. Relatively low crime rates indicate that the public mood may be swinging toward declaring victory and moving on. However, to declare that the war is over is dangerous and inaccurate, and After the War on Crime reveals that the impact of this war reaches far beyond statistics; simply moving on is impossible. The war has been most devastating to those affected by increased rates and longer terms of incarceration, but its reach has also reshaped a sweeping range of social institutions, including law enforcement, politics, schooling, healthcare, and social welfare. The war has also profoundly altered conceptions of race and community. It is time to consider the tasks reconstruction must tackle. To do so requires first a critical assessment of how this war has remade our society, and then creative thinking about how government, foundations, communities, and activists should respond. After the War on Crime accelerates this reassessment with original essays by a diverse, interdisciplinary group of scholars as well as policy professionals and community activists. The volume's immediate goal is to spark a fresh conversation about the war on crime and its consequences; its long-term aspiration is to develop a clear understanding of how we got here and of where we should go.

Governing Through Crime

2007-02-03
Governing Through Crime
Author: Jonathan Simon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2007-02-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0198040024
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Across America today gated communities sprawl out from urban centers, employers enforce mandatory drug testing, and schools screen students with metal detectors. Social problems ranging from welfare dependency to educational inequality have been reconceptualized as crimes, with an attendant focus on assigning fault and imposing consequences. Even before the recent terrorist attacks, non-citizen residents had become subject to an increasingly harsh regime of detention and deportation, and prospective employees subjected to background checks. How and when did our everyday world become dominated by fear, every citizen treated as a potential criminal? In this startlingly original work, Jonathan Simon traces this pattern back to the collapse of the New Deal approach to governing during the 1960s when declining confidence in expert-guided government policies sent political leaders searching for new models of governance. The War on Crime offered a ready solution to their problem: politicians set agendas by drawing analogies to crime and redefined the ideal citizen as a crime victim, one whose vulnerabilities opened the door to overweening government intervention. By the 1980s, this transformation of the core powers of government had spilled over into the institutions that govern daily life. Soon our schools, our families, our workplaces, and our residential communities were being governed through crime. This powerful work concludes with a call for passive citizens to become engaged partners in the management of risk and the treatment of social ills. Only by coming together to produce security, can we free ourselves from a logic of domination by others, and from the fear that currently rules our everyday life.

Law, War and Crime

2007-10-08
Law, War and Crime
Author: Gerry J. Simpson
Publisher: Polity
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2007-10-08
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0745630227
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From events at Nuremberg and Tokyo after World War II, to the trials of Slobodan Molosevic and Saddam Hussein, war crimes trials are an increasingly pervasive feature of the aftermath of conflict. This book examines the meaning of such trials and their cultural and political effects.

Bringing the State Back In

1985-09-13
Bringing the State Back In
Author: Social Science Research Council (U.S.). Committee on States and Social Structures
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 406
Release: 1985-09-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780521313131
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Papers from a conference held at Mount Kisco, N.Y., Feb. 1982, sponsored by the Committee on States and Social Structures, the Joint Committee on Latin American Studies, and the Joint Committee on Western European Studies of the Social Science Research Council. Includes bibliographies and index.