Proposition 21 Chapter Summary

The politicization of crime control dates back decades, and over the years it has escalated. With the introduction of the “get tough era” and the crackdown on crime followed by Reagan’s official announcement of the “War on Drugs,” we have allowed presidential campaigns and the politics of race, poverty and drug-use to lead us into a crack down on crime epidemic. Combined with the presidential campaigns and political attitudes towards crime, the media assists in exploiting the fears of the American public resulting in overwhelming support, especially from those not involved in the system. Once elected based on this, most politicians and law makers make this their focus for secondary elections. For fear of breaking from the normal central

At the introduction of his book he reiterates the brief history of getting tough on crime and the war on drugs and states that “because Oakland was one of the nation’s hubs for the Black Power movement, it became a target for politicians such as Nixon and government agencies such as the CIA” (Rios, 2011, p. 31). The spearheading district attorney at the time of these policies implemented was Edwin Meese, who eventually went on to implement the tough sentencing, harsh punishment policies and militant crackdowns on protestors. Around the year 2000, in California, Proposition 21 was passed. Proposition 21 was a response by the state of California to the widespread gang problem and was largely based in politics, advertising commercials to instill fear in the general public and trust the “moral theater” (Rios, 2011, p. 35) that is performed by the politicians victimizing the marginalized populations (Rios, 2011, p. 35). Daily, the boys in Rios’s book suffer the consequences of the politicized crime control based largely in minor offenses, and zero tolerance polices in

She raised what I thought was a really important point, that Professor Morton reiterated in class. She notes that most lobbyists would declare the nation as needing to be tough on crime as well, because it means more business for them. They are deployed by political campaigns to promote the idea that “prison privatization is the easy solution” (Mauer, 2012, p. 112). Greene argues that the privatization of prisons as an economic development in the tough on crime era is “corrosive” to policy making when it comes to crime. A story she tells of a Governor, George Allen, using emotionally charged victim statements to pass laws and inform public policy. For the monetary purposes alone, this was considered politically intelligent by the Governor, though he was exploiting the public and leading them astray with his get tough