![]() University of Pennsylvania professor of political science Marie Gottschalk, made a similar case in her 2015 book Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics. Time has shown, however, that reducing judicial discretion only resulted in more racial disparities, as African-Americans ended up spending more time in prison as a result. The liberals’ goal was to avoid racially disparate punishment - judges, they argued, generally used their discretion in ways that hurt racial minorities. Murakawa points to federal legislation written by liberals to reduce discretion in sentencing and parole. ![]() Naomi Murakawa, political scientist and associate professor of African American studies at Princeton, made this argument in her recent book The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America. This may be a surprising claim, but it is not a unique one: there are a growing number of academics today who are blaming liberals for creating mass incarceration and for the sizable racial disparities that exist in the justice system. Reagan’s policies, she says, were merely “the fulfillment of federal crime control priorities that stemmed initially from one of the most idealistic enterprises in American history during the era of civil rights.” Hinton argues that President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society policies- which aimed at improving conditions for the most impoverished Americans - laid the foundation for mass incarceration and its attendant racial injustices. Most criminal justice experts cite President Ronald Reagan’s War on Crime as the driver for today’s current levels of incarceration. The racial disparities are striking: according to the Sentencing Project, one in every 10 African-American men in his thirties is in prison or jail on any given day.Įlizabeth Hinton, professor of history and African American studies at Harvard University, examines how mass incarceration happened in America in her new book, appropriately titled From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America. If you do the math, it’s about one in 36 adults. An estimated 6,851,000 people are under some sort of correctional supervision, such as probation or electronic monitoring. But corrections today encompasses more than just metal bars. To put this into perspective, the United States is home to the largest prison system on the planet. This very second, more than 2.2 million people sit behind bars in America. This review first appeared in The National Book Review. ![]() Advance Constitutional Change Show / hide.National Task Force on Democracy Reform & the Rule of Law.Government Targeting of Minority Communities Show / hide.Campaign Finance in the Courts Show / hide.Gerrymandering & Fair Representation Show / hide.Ensure Every American Can Vote Show / hide.
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