| dc.description.abstract | Beginning in the 1960s, concerns about rising crime rates, urban rebellions, and political demonstrations across the United States prompted a shift toward “law and order” for many Americans. Over the following decades, federal and state policymakers alike embraced this spirit by enacting legislation that reformed sentencing procedures, distributed billions of dollars in federal funding, and employed new crime control methods, which disproportionately targeted urban communities of color. Building upon the work of scholars including Elizabeth Hinton and Michael Flamm, who provide compelling research indicating that programs enacted under Democratic leadership in the 1960s established a foundation for mass incarceration, my work aims to take into account the context in which this legislation originated. Drawing in research from Zoe Colley and Dan Berger pertaining to the links that developed between the Civil Rights Movement and imprisonment, I intend to demonstrate how the surge in collective protest and urban rebellions during the late 1960s framed this punitive shift. By analyzing three specific pieces of legislation that illustrated the manner in which policymakers implemented laws that targeted activists, my work seeks to understand the ways in which federal anxieties and attitudes that arose during an era of social change and activism made lasting impacts on the criminal justice system. | |
