Hinton SSB

Hinton SSB

1. citation

Hinton, Elizabeth. From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, The Making of Mass Incarceration in America. Harvard University Press, 2016. 

2.  thesis

“Waged over the past half century, since it emerged from within the War on Poverty and alongside it, this long War on Crime has today positioned law enforcement agencies, criminal justice institutions, and jails as the primary public programs in many low-income communities across the United States”

The War on Poverty which lead to the War on Crime has caused the criminal justice system to be a big ugly beast that is the main thing being ‘done’ to help poor communities in the US. 

3. How she makes her argument:

• Hinton begins by giving us an overview of the historical background to show us how we got to the point where we have super high prison rates now. She talks a lot about the presidents and how it was their systems that made these changes, and I thought that was an interesting way to organize the historical events, but I do think it was a very accurate way to do it. 
• She also has a very interesting thing that she says where she explains that jails and prisons are now the primary public program in many low income communities. This gave me as a reader a new perspective and a new way to view the situation. 

Section 1: making mass incarceration

• Hinton first dives into how the incarceration system is still rapidly growing, and how young black men, if they don’t have a high school diploma are more likely to go to jail than not. Shes using this rhetoric to help us see the severity of the problem
• She also makes the VERY interesting point that there were actually no rising crime rates before the War on Crime, there were just rising crime reportings. The crime was the same, we were just documenting it differently. This proves that the rise in mass incarceration wasn’t because of rising crime rates, its because policies were written based on misleading facts. 
• She also dives in here into how political parties factor into the policy making. I think this is super helpful because lots of her arguments center around the presidents and what decisions they make, and its important to look at their political party, and also who had control over the house and senate as well.
• Hinton also brings us Alexander’s point in this section. She uses a purposeful summary to talk about the War on Drugs tried to arrest and incriminate as many people as possible. She then dives into how Nixon wasn’t actually afraid of drugs, he was afraid of crime. Explaining the fear behind the actions helps us as readers understand the historical context better

Section 2: making the war on crime

• There were problems that were causing crime like unemployment and subpar education, but instead of actually fixing these problems they just attacked people even more. 
• The war on poverty wasn’t going well because there were ‘hardcore’ black urban youth that were not being reached by antipoverty programs, and that was causing crime. They didn’t try to fix the underlying causes though and instead just increased crime surveillance. 

Section 3: making black criminals

• Hinton starts by explaining how there was a racially biased understanding of crime from the get go after emancipation because people were untrustworthy of black people. That same mindset is still with us and is still following us to this day. 
• Unfortunately, there is still structural racism that still exists, and a lot of it is a result of this war on crime
• I like that in this section she talks about people who influenced this time like Oblin, Cloward, Moynihan, and Banfield. Bringing in these lesser known historical figures strengthens her case
• I think its also important that she talks about how Nixon planned a lot of his policies around on future crimes. He was trying to stop crime before it happened, but it didn’t work at all. 
• The war on crime failed to prevent crime and improve public safety. 
• Its also important to note that Hinton says that the war on drugs is not the new jim crow, it was a new historically distinct phenomenon. 

4. What was good:

1. I really enjoyed how she used presidents to kind of frame the historical facts so you can follow easier because you know the historical context around the presidents too. 
2. I also liked how she came from this whole perspective from a very historical perspective and there was no use of emotional appeal tom muddle the argument. It seemed like she was just presenting good facts to us. 
3. I also like how Hinton makes it clear that this is a real, big problem, and its something that needs to be addressed.