The simple truth about why mass incarceration happened.

[Agschmid]

How could US politicians possibly think it was a good idea to incarcerate millions of Americans starting in the 1980s, creating the system of mass incarceration we have today?

It's a question that gets tossed around a lot nowadays, with varied answers — from claims it was an attempt to control the population to arguments that private prisons created a profit motive for locking up millions of Americans.

But there's a much simpler explanation: The public wanted mass incarceration.



It's easy to forget now, but the politics of crime were huge in the 1990s. According to data from Gallup, never before or after the nineties have so many Americans said that crime is the most important problem facing the country today.

Americans had a very good reason for these concerns. From the late 1960s to the early 1990s, crime was unusually high. The country was still coming off what was perceived as a crack cocaine epidemic, in which the drug ran rampant across urban streets and fueled deadly gang violence. So Americans, by and large, demanded their lawmakers do something — and politicians reacted with mass incarceration and other tough-on-crime policies.

Read More.

[HappyPlace]

1. You know how war hawks cultivate fear of threats to justify defense spending?

Well that same dynamic was happening at home, with a trumped up and racist war on drugs, used to justify swat teams and asset forfeiture policy and, in the end, erosion of our constitutional rights.

And now, the war on terror, combined with earlier war on crime and the even earlier red scare make us the most prison happy police state in the developed world.

[Hydra]

3. Yes, and as usual they did it masterfully(read: in a clunky and obvious fashion)

And are now either backing away from it or doubling down.

[KingCharlemagne]

7. 'police state' - I get your point but wish to note we do not have a police state . . . yet. In

such a police state, you could not publish such an opinion without fear of being 'disappeared.'

[Brickbat]

2. "The public wanted mass incarceration." -- Not quite.

The public wanted mass incarceration -- and the powers that be found a way to profit off it.

[msongs]

4. because it's welfare for the police/courts/prison industries to justify their own jobs nt

[mmonk]

5. Yep. Now we have an incarceration industrial complex

driven by "offenders" paying into a huge money making scheme created with mandatory sentencing and a huge incarceration problem.

[Recursion]

9. Who's making money there?

The huge increase has been in the state prisons, which are essentially all public. It's been a huge money loser.

[mmonk]

11. District Courts.

You have to pay lawyers and court costs for a lawyer who can't get you off due to mandatory sentencing. You have to pay probation fees. And yes, you even have to pay fines and for your days in jail. If thery aren't making any money off all that, than they can't manage money.

[mopinko]

6. if it bleeds, it leads. we were propagandized.

[Recursion]

8. The murder rate 20 years ago was twice what it is today

Yes, the public wanted it. There was a reason.

[MrScorpio]

10. The movie, "Kill The Messenger" pretty much showed us what fueled the crack epidemic...

Government created the problem and then punished the victims of the problem it created.

Something that we're still living with today…