HIST 12A Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Visiting Hours, Eyewitness Identification, Jed S. Rakoff
Document Summary
Mass incarceration was part of a backlash against the gains of the civil rights movement. President nixon and president reagan used crime in a symbolic way to argue for a racist agenda. A common understanding developed that criminal was synonymous young black men. Rather than rehabilitation, after 1980, proponents of mass incarceration begin to call for punishment and incapacitation. Change in attitude from the 1970s, when many scholars and intellectuals focused on social and economic problems that lead to crime. In the 1980s there becomes a greater focus on individual responsibility. Angela y. davis: the penal system as a whole does not produce wealth. The civil rights movement posed questions about the law. Martin luther king: there are 2 types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying laws. One has not a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws .
