Political scientist highlights how Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden helped produce modern mass incarcertation
Are liberals as responsible for the prison boom as conservatives?
That’s the thesis of a new book, The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America. It has begun to attract reviews and debate from across the political spectrum. Princeton political scientist Naomi Murakawa seeks to upend assumptions about the politics of crime and punishment. She argues that conservatives, playing the politics of racial animus, helped quadruple the incarceration rate, but they were not alone. Rather, she points to “liberal law and order” ideas first expressed by Harry Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson, and even the NAACP. These liberals believed that federalizing crime policy would “professionalize” the justice system and prevent racial bias. But in fact, federal funding and federal oversight of courts, sentencing, and policing helped build what Murakawa calls a “carceral state” that disproportionately punishes people of color.
Murakawa and I talked about her book and its implications for criminal justice reform today, especially the #BlackLivesMatter movement and the Obama administration’s policing reforms….
Q: Your book aims to expose the liberal roots of the prison boom. But Democrats did not create the Willie Horton ad. It was Richard Nixon who expanded the drug war by claiming that drug use was “the common denominator” that explained lawlessness among hippies, inner-city blacks, and antiwar protestors. Is it important to distinguish between the different motives of conservatives and liberals?
A: I think it’s important to stay focused on outcomes in terms of how they affect people’s day-to-day lives. I do discount stated intentions quite a lot. I do this in part because I have a feeling that for those being sentenced under punitive sentencing guidelines it doesn’t make a difference to them that Sen. Ted Kennedy was liberal and overall had a good voting record. It doesn’t make the brutality of living in a cage any less violent.
Kennedy promulgated this idea of sentencing guidelines. It was his baby. He ushered it through the Senate at first as guidelines that were rigid but would have been somewhat anti-carceral. They became guidelines that were rigid and more carceral. And Reagan signed this legislation, in 1984. Kennedy had the rest of his life to say, “The sentencing guidelines have had a terrible impact. This is not what I meant.” Not once did he introduce legislation to reform the guidelines. Not once did he apologize or try to change it. When I look at that kind of history, that’s where I feel like it’s fair to hold liberals responsible.
Q: Joe Biden played an interesting role in what you call Democrats “upping the ante” to outbid conservatives on being tough on crime. Can you talk about Biden’s history?
A: He was really pivotal in leading the Senate in worsening all of the provisions of Clinton’s 1994 Omnibus Crime Act, which expanded the death penalty and created new mandatory minimum sentences. Biden was truly a leader and worked very closely and very happily with conservative senators just to bid up and up and up. There’s a tendency now to talk about Joe Biden as the sort of affable if inappropriate uncle, as loudmouth and silly. But he’s actually done really deeply disturbing, dangerous reforms that have made the criminal justice system more lethal and just bigger.
That 1994 act is overwhelmingly, incredibly punitive. One of the ways Biden brokered it was by making it such a huge bill that it had something for everyone. It provided political coverage for everyone who wanted to vote for it. There were certain liberal members who might have been opposed to mandatory minimums, but they were also getting the Violence Against Women Act. The Congressional Black Caucus opposed the death penalty expansions, but the bill also did include some modest money for rehabilitation programs. Everyone got goodies through the criminal justice system.
Prior related post: