Ah, America.

[pyat]

Currently occupying two foreign nations, dealing with ongoing violence in both, with a worrisome economy, a major port city still crippled by natural disaster, more than 1 in 100 adults currently in prison, tax rolls supporting a defense budget larger than that all the other nations of the world combined, spending more per capita of state money on healthcare than any other nation yet no socialized healthcare and a declining life expectancy, serious questions about the conduct of the military and CIA, the perpetrator of 9/11 basically forgotten, and there's an election in a few months.

And of course, the most important topics in that election are gay marriage and abortion.

Comments

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

There's a bit of both going on here. The big impetus for all the tough on crime legislation and policy since 1980 was Crack. That really did tear a hole in many US cities. Combine that with a rightward shift at the same time and we got a very punitive response. Also, there were some high profile and heinous crimes that really got people's attention. That led to Three Strikes laws in places like California. That means quite a few felons get sentenced to life on their third conviction. That ultimately means that people keep going into prisons but fewer come out. This has really placed a burden on the tax base of a lot of states and has led to the defunding of programs that ultimately prevent crime.

[paka.livejournal.com]

Not to mention, at the risk of sounding like I'm quoting conspiracy theory...

Felony convictions take the right to vote. So do three strikes you're out things. This hits people in poor areas who might be guilty more than once, or guys who have three convictions for possessing marijuana or whatever. This hits Black people really badly.

So while the prison economy is booming, you notice that a lot of people who might vote against the status quo can't vote anymore.

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

I would strongly downplay that aspect. I remember when both the "three strikes" and the "prosecute minors as adults" laws were first getting debated. There was a real and genuine fear throughout all of California of crime. In fact some of the more vocal supporters of the former law in my area were themselves minorities. Remember, the people who experience the crime first and foremost are minority and lower class. So when you get upper class xenophobia combined with a fact based fear down the class ladder, you get exactly this kind of reactionary and ultimately short sighted law. The big driving force for the debate was the gang violence in the 1980s. I'm guessing that the climate following the King Riots in 1992 is what finally propelled the law ahead in 1994. Also, you have to recall that California scaled the law back for drug possession and came fairly close to repealing it entirely in 2004. Dunno about other states,though. All I know is that going into the 1990s, most Californians were scared of rising violent crime, especially gang related crime. The fact that there have been referendums aimed at correcting a bad law indicates that Californians at least are ambivalent and that takes a fair amount of upper class buy in for the perception of the laws as being a problem.

The minors as adults debate, now that always felt race based to me. The "super predators" were all black minors and hispanics were invisible like always. But, the incidents that captured the imaginations of the media were some really nasty, as in very exceptional, unusual, incidents in Chicago housing projects. And that gang rape in Central Park. The media presented these incidents as the rule instead of the news worthy(meaning that they don't happen very often) outlying incidents that they in fact were