POS 4624 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: American Legislative Exchange Council, Life Imitating Art, Mandatory Sentencing
10 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
13
• 13th Amendment loophole – slavery as a punishment for crime
• Life imitating art with the burning of the cross for the KKK
o Birth of a Nation – movie that depicted black men as rapists
• Then shifted to segregation
• Civil Rights – transformed the prospect of getting arrested
o It became a noble thing
• Dog whistle – “crime” referring to the things that they saw as not okay
o Nixon
• Nixon – “War on Drugs” – drug issues and dependence as a law issue instead of a mental
health issue
o Southern strategy – southern whites into the Republican party
▪ Subtle and non-racial issues (crime and “get tough” and “law and order”)
were thinly veiled reference to Civil Rights issues
• Regan –
o Transformative by turning it into a literal war on drugs
o Damaging to the young people
o 1982 – mobilize the people against drugs
o Mid 1980s – crack cocaine, small doses and relatively inexpensive
o Mandatory sentencing for crack far harsher than cocaine
o Crack tended to be in the inner cities while cocaine was in the suburbs
• Prison population is over 1 million by 1990
• Over 2 million by 2000
• Over 800,000 African Americans in the prison system by 2001
• Democrats can no longer run on a platform that seems “soft on crime”
• 3 strikes policy under Clinton
o in California, 3 felonies and you’re in prison for good deal
• Mandatory minimums take the control from the judge, and goes to the prosecutors
• Truth and sentencing – 85% of sentence
• 1994 – Federal Crime Bill
o Expansion of the prison system
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