From the war on poverty to the war on crime : the making of mass incarceration in America /
How did the land of the free become the home of the world's largest prison system? Elizabeth Hinton traces the rise of mass incarceration to an ironic source: not the War on Drugs of the Reagan administration but the War on Crime that began during Johnson's Great Society at the height of t...
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| Corporate Authors: | , , , |
| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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CAMBRIDGE :
HARVARD UNIV PRESS,
2016
Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2017] Cambridge, Massachusetts : 2016 Cambridge, Massachusetts ; London, England : 2016 |
| Series: | ACLS Humanities E-Book
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| Summary: | How did the land of the free become the home of the world's largest prison system? Elizabeth Hinton traces the rise of mass incarceration to an ironic source: not the War on Drugs of the Reagan administration but the War on Crime that began during Johnson's Great Society at the height of the civil rights era "In the United States today, one in every 31 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. Johnson's War on Poverty policies sought to foster equality and economic opportunity. But these initiatives were also rooted in widely shared assumptions about African Americans' role in urban disorder, which prompted Johnson to call for a simultaneous War on Crime. The 1965 Law Enforcement Assistance Act empowered the national government to take a direct role in militarizing local police. Federal anticrime funding soon incentivized social service providers to ally with police departments, courts, and prisons. Under Richard Nixon and his successors, welfare programs fell by the wayside while investment in policing and punishment expanded. Anticipating future crime, policy makers urged states to build new prisons and introduced law enforcement measures into urban schools and public housing, turning neighborhoods into targets of police surveillance. By the 1980s, crime control and incarceration dominated national responses to poverty and inequality. The initiatives of that decade were less a sharp departure than the full realization of the punitive transformation of urban policy implemented by Republicans and Democrats alike since the 1960s."--Provided by publisher "In the United States today, one in every 31 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. Johnson's War on Poverty policies sought to foster equality and economic opportunity. But these initiatives were also rooted in widely shared assumptions about African Americans' role in urban disorder, which prompted Johnson to call for a simultaneous War on Crime. The 1965 Law Enforcement Assistance Act empowered the national government to take a direct role in militarizing local police. Federal anticrime funding soon incentivized social service providers to ally with police departments, courts, and prisons. Under Richard Nixon and his successors, welfare programs fell by the wayside while investment in policing and punishment expanded. Anticipating future crime, policy makers urged states to build new prisons and introduced law enforcement measures into urban schools and public housing, turning neighborhoods into targets of police surveillance. By the 1980s, crime control and incarceration dominated national responses to poverty and inequality. The initiatives of that decade were less a sharp departure than the full realization of the punitive transformation of urban policy implemented by Republicans and Democrats alike since the 1960s"--Provided by publisher |
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| Item Description: | Description based on print version record Includes index |
| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (438 p.) : 11 halftones 1 online resource (449 pages) : illustrations 1 online resource (449 pages) 1 online resource (449 pages.) : 1 online resource (449 pages.) 1 online resource (460 pages) 1 online resource (ix, 449 pages) : illustrations 1 online resource 449 pages ; 25 cm |
| Format: | Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002 Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 343-432) and index Includes bibliographical references and index |
| ISBN: | 0674737237 0674969227 (electronic bk.) 0674969227 0674979826 9780674737235 9780674969223 (e-book) 9780674969223 (electronic bk.) 9780674969223 9780674979826 |
| Access: | Access restricted by licensing agreement EBL Non-Linear Lending License restrictions may limit access Restricted for use by site license Restricted for use by site license. Access to portions of this material may be restricted |