Mass incarceration, mass deportation: Twin legacies of governing through crime
One afflicts mostly American citizens, disproportionately those of African American and Latino backgrounds from areas of concentrated poverty, but also many white and middle class citizens who fall into the hands of police and prosecutors. The other afflicts exclusively non-citizens living in the U.S. without federal authorization or in violation of the terms of their permission.
One results in people being kept in prisons for years and decades at a time. The other often starts with detention that looks and feels a lot like imprisonment, and then culminates in the person's forcible removal from the U.S. to a country in which they hold formal nationality but may have few or no connections and often face grave dangers.
One is driven largely by state and local officials, with considerable encouragement and support from the federal government. The other is driven by the federal government, with considerable encouragement and support from state and local governments (although now also increasingly some opposition).
One is considered punishment for crimes. The other is consider a civil action to protect the national integrity of the U.S. But despite these differences mass incarceration and mass deportation are off-spring of a common source, the U.S. political system's broad turn toward race-tinged fear, violence and coercion to govern American society since the 1970s (or what I call "governing through crime"). What follows are some common features.
As we end a year in which President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have given important signals that they are aware of the moral and human destruction of both mass incarceration and mass deportation we must endeavor to produce the kind of grass roots social movement that will demand a full dismantling of both these legacies of the era of governing through crime.
As The New York Times reports in a story today on immigration (read it here) there is an increasingly visible protest movement against mass deportation. We need an equivalent movement against mass incarceration.
Cross-posted from Jonathan Simon’s blog Governing Through Crime.