Getting Tough - Welfare and Imprisonment in 1970s America

Julilly Kohler-Hausmann

Summary

The politics and policies that led to America's expansion of the penal system and reduction of welfare programsIn 1970s America, politicians began "getting tough" on drugs, crime, and welfare. These campaigns helped expand the nation's penal system, discredit welfare programs, and cast blame for the era's social upheaval on racialized deviants that the state was not accountable to serve or represent. Getting Tough sheds light on how this unprecedented growth of the penal system and the evisceration of the nation's welfare programs developed hand in hand. Julilly Kohler-Hausmann shows that these historical events were animated by struggles over how to interpret and respond to the inequality and disorder that crested during this period.When social movements and the slowing economy destabilized the U.S. welfare state, politicians reacted by repudiating the commitment to individual rehabilitation that had governed penal and social programs for decades. In its place, they championed strategies of punishment, surveillance, and containment. The architects of these tough strategies insisted they were necessary, given the failure of liberal social programs and the supposed pathological culture within poor African American and Latino communities. Kohler-Hausmann rejects this explanation and describes how the spectacle of enacting punitive policies convinced many Americans that social investment was counterproductive and the "underclass" could be managed only through coercion and force.Getting Tough illuminates this narrative through three legislative cases: New York's adoption of the 1973 Rockefeller drug laws, Illinois's and California's attempts to reform welfare through criminalization and work mandates, and California's passing of a 1976 sentencing law that abandoned rehabilitation as an aim of incarceration. Spanning diverse institutions and weaving together the perspectives of opponents, supporters, and targets of punitive policies, Getting Tough offers new interpretations of dramatic transformations in the modern American state.

Available since: 05/02/2017.

Print length: 301 pages.

Other books that might interest you

Matrixial Logic - Forms of...

Paul Chaplin

There is a hidden architecture to how we think, and how we can think. Understanding it grants us power over our thinking. This ground-breaking book challenges 2,500 years of our thinking about thought.
Logic is the science of reality: the ultimate science. Logic dictates how we conduct physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics and computing. To understand reality requires first, that we understand how our understanding works.
As a former barrister and solicitor, and legal innovator, Paul has a successful 25 year career in using the logic of the law. Turning to psychology, Paul became a Certified CBT Practitioner. In 2019, he was awarded by publication a PhD in Philosophy, for applied Psychology, for his innovative book I Want To Love But: Realising The Power Of You.
The revolutionary new solutions to problems in logic, philosophy and science presented in this book can change your world.

Show book

Living Room Revolution - A...

Cecile Andrews

The author of The Circle of Simplicity “joyfully invites us to discover a robust and real personal expansion with each other as we remake our society” (Mark Lakeman, cofounder, The City Repair Project).

Every man for himself! For too long we have lived in a competitive, consumer-oriented culture, destroying the well-being of people and the planet. We believe that money brings happiness, yet all too often, the opposite is true. The pursuit of wealth at any cost corrupts our values and diminishes our lives. The resulting inequality breaks down social cohesion and generates envy, bitterness, and resentment. Greed breeds more greed.

Living Room Revolution refutes the notion that selfishness is at the root of human nature. Research shows that people—given the right circumstances—can be caring, nurturing and collaborative. Presented with the opportunity, they gravitate toward actions and policies embodying empathy, fairness, and trust instead of competition, fear, and greed. The regeneration of social ties and the sense of caring and purpose that comes from creating community drive this essential transformation.

At the heart of this movement is the ancient art of conversation. Living Room Revolution provides a practical toolkit of concrete strategies to facilitate personal and social change by bringing people together in community and conversation.

The heart of happiness is joining with others in good talk and laughter. Each person can make a difference, and it can all start in your own living room!

“Small groups. Study circles. Stop ’n chats. House parties. Movie nights. Online sharing. Bring people together, and you never know what kind of fuse you’ll ignite for change.” —Wanda Urbanska, author of The Heart of Simple Living

Show book

Legacy of Empire - Britain...

Gardner Thompson

It is now more than seventy years since the creation of the state of Israel, yet its origins and the British Empire's historic responsibility for Palestine remain little known. Confusion persists too as to the distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. In Legacy of Empire, Gardner Thompson offers a clear-eyed review of political Zionism and Britain's role in shaping the history of Palestine and Israel. Thompson explores why the British government adopted Zionism in the early twentieth century, issuing the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and then retaining it as the cornerstone of their rule in Palestine after the First World War. Despite evidence and warnings, over the next two decades Britain would facilitate the colonisation of Arab Palestine by Jewish immigrants, ultimately leading to a conflict which it could not contain. Britain's response was to propose the partition of an ungovernable land: a 'two-state solution' which - though endorsed by the United Nations after the Second World War - has so far brought into being neither two states nor a solution. A highly readable and compelling account of Britain's rule in Palestine, Legacy of Empire is essential for those wishing to better understand the roots of this enduring conflict.

Show book

On Being Ill

Virginia Woolf

"Always to have sympathy, always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable."
Virginia Woolf's essay begins by lamenting the surprise neglect of ill-health as a potential literary subject. What then unfolds is a dazzlingly written series of reflections on sickness, fiction, and the chilling indifference of the natural world. Above all a testament to the fundamental solitariness of the human soul, this is an indispensable work by the preeminent stylist of twentieth-century English literature.

Show book

Egoists A Book of Supermen -...

James Huneker

Egoists, A Book Of Supermen is a work by James Huneker. It reflects upon the philosophies of several "egoist" thinkers: Stendhal, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Anatole France, Huysmans, Barrès, Nietzsche, Blake, Ibsen, Stirner and Ernest Hello.

Show book

The Game of Logic

Lewis Carroll

Game of Logic is a book written by Lewis Carroll.
Over 350 ingenious problems involving classical logic: logic is expressed in terms of symbols; syllogisms and the sorites are diagrammed; logic becomes a game played with two diagrams and a set of counters. Two books bound as one.

Show book