From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime

I loved this book about the War on Crime for its deep research and historical sweep.

Hinton amasses a great deal of material about federal laws and agency priorities to go with changes in policing strategy on the ground (e.g., stop and frisk, militarization of policing equipment) to tell a disturbing story about how mass incarceration was developed as a national priority and carried out. Haunting.

This book has been important to me in the work I do, which has straddled the carceral space and the world outside of prison.

Hinton does an amazing job of making it clear how the two are linked; how the world outside feeds the world inside; and how mass incarceration was the result of a bipartisan effort, not simply a response to a seemingly “disordered” world that conservatives feared after the Civil Rights movement.

It was the product of distinct efforts to control and contain populations in novel ways; and along lines of race. Hinton’s research is second to none,… show more.