Essay 3 – Revised

Mass Incarceration and the War on Poverty: the Economic Roots

While scholars agree that mass incarceration is a problem in the US today, they debate its origins. Civil Rights lawyer Michelle Alexander points to the civil rights movement as one possible time. She characterizes tough-on-crime legislation as a reaction to growing civil liberties for African Americans. Alexander writes “the rhetoric of ‘law and order’ was first mobilized as Southern governors and law enforcement officials attempted to generate and mobilize white opposition to the Civil Rights movement” (Alexander 50). She points to the War on Drugs as the primary means that Southern politicians used to carry out their plan of creating a New Jim Crow era. Elizabeth Hinton disputes these origins, citing the earlier “wars” on crime and poverty. She maintains that “This consensus [the idea that race is pathological] distorted the aims of the War on Poverty and also shaped the rationale, legislation, and the programs of the War on Crime” (Hinton 3). She argues race played a large part in both the Wars on Poverty and Crime, which eventually led to mass incarceration. Hinton argues that there are much deeper roots to mass incarceration; it starts way before Alexander’s War on Drugs. While Alexander emphasizes racial discrimination and Hinton highlights flawed policies, neither focus on the economic compromises which reshaped the War on Poverty, sowing the seeds for mass incarceration. In this essay, I will argue that mass incarceration emerged from these economic compromises, specifically when the focus shifted from community and education to economic growth, setting the stage for harmful crime policies and long-term inequality.

To fully understand my argument, we have to look back into the politics of the 1950s and 60s, following the lens of Alice O’Conner in her book Poverty Knowledge. JFK takes on an ambitious goal to tackle poverty through the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA), which begins to play a larger role in economic policy and its implementation (O’Conner 140). Three main goals arise from various scholars of the time: overall economic growth, targeted social services (education, training, etc.), and community action (O’Conner 140-143). The combination of these ideas, the main agenda for the CEA, is dubbed “new economics”.

Throughout the 1960s, we saw a shift in the ideas of the CEA, which led policy away from education and community building. What starts out as a varied set of ideals turns into the simple idea of “economic growth”. The general idea was that we need to fix the macroeconomic indicators (GDP, unemployment, inflation) in order to help the poor (O’Conner 144). This occurs as the CEA needs to “sell” itself to become a policy-making institution. In Alice O’Conner’s view, the CEA “concentrated on drumming up support for a major, unprecedented series of tax cuts as a way to stimulate growth” (O’Conner 145). In this quote, O’Conner describes the general shift in the way the CEA functioned from a community based approach to a one-track mind system based on tax cuts. The shift in the strategy of the CEA occurs when they need to appease conservative economists, which were focusing more on inflation at the time. The compromise leads them to drop goals like furthering access to education in low-income communities (O’Conner 147).

One way that we see new economists trying to appeal to conservatives is through the use of statistics. In the early 60s, economics, a historically theoretical field, turned into an exact science. Alice O’Conner describes the CEA as needing to “establish their credibility as analysts, backing their positions with an impressive array of statistical tables” (O’Conner 145). Economists began using statistics to back up their work during this time frame. The emphasis on statistics pushed economists to abandon education and community-building proposals, as these initiatives lacked immediate impact on crime or poverty metrics. Inflation, GDP, and other big-picture metrics are much easier to track using statistics than the effect that a good education has on communities. For this reason, economists stuck with what they could prove, and switched to the overall-growth model.

The federal government’s shift from social welfare programs to a tough-on-crime agenda undermined the goals of the War on Poverty. Elizabeth Hinton helps us connect the dots between the War on Poverty and the War on Crime. She says “following the passage of the Law Enforcement Assistance Act, the federal government began to retreat from and eventually undercut many of the Great Society programs” (Hinton 2). Here, Hinton discusses the gradual federal shift in focus from social welfare (Great Society policies) to a tough-on-crime stance, also known as the War on Crime. The shift cut out a lot of key programs from the War on Poverty. A need for economic growth through cutting taxes and decreasing inflation stuck around. The CEA continued to push their agenda of lowering taxes instead of addressing root causes of poverty, including lacking education in underprivileged communities. One thing that Hinton fails to consider though, is the reason behind the agenda. She describes the historical background in a much more civil rights based way, leaving out the nuance and economic movement that helped with the switch. She says the policy was “highly flawed in their intellectual foundations and designs” (Hinton 31). I say that many of the bills created during this time period were not as intellectually flawed as she argues here. While there were a great number of simply racist theories during this time frame, the core of most of the economic plans during the JFK and LBJ administrations was rooted in the compromise between liberal and conservative factions. The parts which were “chopped off” were the parts that were not based in a discriminatory way of thinking, leading to the tough-on-crime agenda.

The lost economic policies could have significantly impacted the later mass incarceration crisis. One example is the Area Redevelopment Act of 1961, which was significantly changed as economists switched to the “economic growth” plan. As described by O’Connell, the original bill “proposed extensive labor market restructuring to increase demand for low-skilled labor” (O’Connell 149). Instead of directly benefiting low-income areas, lawmakers passed a “watered-down” version with loan guarantees (O’Connell 149). This pattern of diluting impactful policies repeated throughout the 1960s and set the stage for the War on Crime. What Hinton’s argument overlooks are these missed opportunities, bills like the Area Redevelopment Act, which could have immediately benefited lower-income communities but were undermined by shifts in economic priorities.

As the federal government moved away from community-building initiatives in favor of overall growth, low-income communities were left vulnerable. This new agenda, later worsened by poor crime policies, marked the start of mass incarceration. In his essay, James Forman cites a study which “found that college graduates comprised 2.4% of state prisoners throughout the country” which is a disproportionately low number (Forman 55). Studies like this one show that people who finish college make up a smaller percentage of the prison population, indicating to me that better social services could have made a difference in today’s society. When the new economic movement and the CEA turned away from education as a strategy to combat poverty, they did not give communities the resources they needed to combat crime, thus leading to the federal War on Crime. The War on Crime (and later the War on Drugs) undoubtedly introduced the system which leads to more people being put into jail for longer. In the words of Hinton, “during the two decades between the passage of the Law Enforcement Assistance Act and the launch of Reagan’s War on Drugs, the country added 251,107 citizens to the prison system. The American carceral state has continued its rapid growth ever since” (Hinton 5). The statistics used here underscore the relevance of the War on Crime in the mass incarceration issue. The transition from the War on Poverty to the War on Crime led to more people being jailed.

Alexander argues that the War on Drugs was the primary driver for imprisoning millions of people. Upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that the concessions made decades prior to Reagan actually fueled mass incarceration. Others, like Hinton, overlook the significant impact that compromises in economic policy had on our prison population, such as the Area Redevelopment Act of 1961. As a result, I argue that the emergence of the War on Poverty and new economics directly contributed to the mass incarceration issue. Specifically, the shift from community-based programs, that would have taken direct action to support low-income people, to a focus on “economic growth” caused economists to overlook important initiatives that might have helped us avoid the imprisonment of thousands of people. Ultimately, programs focused on community and education, if implemented, might have fundamentally altered the nation’s trajectory. Understanding these historical roots allows us to better understand the system that we live under today.

Works Cited
Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: mass incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Tenth Anniversary edition., The New Press, 2020.
Forman, James Jr. “Racial Critiques of mass incarceration: Beyond the New Jim Crow.” New York University Law Review, vol. 87, no. 1, 2012, pp. 21–69.
Hinton, Elizabeth Kai. From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of mass incarceration in America. Harvard University Press, 2016. davidson.primo.exlibrisgroup.com, https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674969223.
O’Connor, Alice. “In the Midst of Plenty: The Political Economy of Poverty in the Affluent Society.” Poverty Knowledge, Princeton University Press, 2001, pp. 139–65. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7s5p3.10.

I acknowledge the use of AI, ChatGPT, as a tool in this paper using the following prompts:

Use transitions to make this concluding paragraph clearer. bold any changes that you make within the new paragraph.
If authors and lawyers like Alexander stopped to think about it, many of them might simply assume that the War on Drugs was the big agenda that set us up to imprison millions of people. Upon closer inspection, it is clear that the concessions made decades prior to Reagan set us on a collision course to mass incarceration. They do not factor in the great impact compromised policy had on our prison population. It is for this reason that leads me to believe that the emergence of the War on Poverty and new economics was greatly influenced by both party politics and the emergence of statistics, which caused economists to lose sight of important programs which might have helped us avoid the imprisonment of thousands of people. Community and education programs, if implemented, might have fundamentally altered the nation’s trajectory.
a. Here’s a revised version of your paragraph with transitions added and changes bolded: If authors and lawyers like Alexander stopped to think about it, many of them might simply assume that the War on Drugs was the primary agenda responsible for imprisoning millions of people. However, upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that the concessions made decades prior to Reagan actually set us on a collision course with mass incarceration. These assumptions often fail to account for the significant impact that compromised policy had on our prison population. For this reason, I believe that the emergence of the War on Poverty and new economics was greatly influenced by both party politics and the rise of statistical analysis. This shift in focus ultimately caused economists to overlook important programs that might have helped us avoid the imprisonment of thousands of people. In particular, community and education programs, had they been implemented, might have fundamentally altered the nation’s trajectory.
Rephrase this sentence, making it more simple:

The policy left over from the War on Poverty as it shifted to the War on Crime directly led to more people being put in jail.
a. The shift from the War on Poverty to the War on Crime led to more people being jailed.

Honor Code TH

Comments:
Melz –
Tate,

Thank you for sharing your essay on the economics of incarceration and its roots in the War on Poverty. Your work demonstrates a thoughtful analysis of this complex issue and a unique perspective of the matter. Your essay is very well structured and clear for the reader to follow through out. I would suggest to address potential counterarguments more explicitly to strengthen your overall argument through out your entire essay. I think it would greatly emphasize your thesis. But honestly your essay draft is great.

Nikita –
Tate,
Excellent draft! Your essay’s coherent flow, purposeful summaries, and, most evident, fantastic quotation sandwiches reveal the efforts that led to such an exquisite work of yours. The only issue you can work on is to improve the flow of the 7th paragraph. The problem lies in that you introduce Alexander so abruptly as I don’t understand why you used her argument there.
Overall, it is an excellent work!