This year’s Republican National Convention featured Presidential Candidate Donald Trump, passionately emphasizing his crime policy platform in a short, concise phrase: 'Law and order.' Referencing this phrase five times in his speech, Trump drifted towards the tough on crime narrative President Nixon used in not only his bid for election, but also in crafting some of the most influential crime policies of that time. This influence on crime policy in the decades following led to overpopulated prisons and non-violent offenders serving long sentences. More recently, there have been efforts from both conservatives and liberals to reform the criminal justice system. Trump’s latest proclamation as the 'Law and order' candidate, raises the question of where the Republican Party will take their criminal justice reform efforts as it pertains to mass incarceration and sentencing reform.
Recent conversations surrounding the issue of mass incarceration peg liberal policy decisions as the catalyst for the large number of people in American prisons and conservatives as a potential solution to ever-growing incarceration. Conservative prison-reform groups like Right on Crime advocate for the reform of the American prison system in ways that curb the spending of taxpayer dollars, protect victims, and limit the role of the government--unlike liberals who, they claim, stick to “tough on crime” policies. In Prison Break: Why Conservatives Turned Against Mass Incarceration, David Dagan and Steven Teles contextualize this argument through historical trends in the handling of criminal justice and broader conservativism starting with Nixon and extending to Reagan and others. Conservatives began embracing new approaches which take a step away from state intervention in personal, social, and economic affairs; these ideas supposedly provide an opening for reversing mass incarceration. Other recent literature complicates this claim and offers insight into the roles of both conservatives and liberals in the anti-crime build up.
The Liberal Model of Law and Order
In The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America, Naomi Murakawa cites Presidents Harry Truman and Lyndon B. Johnson as the proponents of a liberal model of policing known as “Law and Order.” While this differs from the rhetoric of tough-on-crime pundits like Trump, this liberal model still has influenced the criminal justice policies on the table for reform in today’s policymaking. The ‘carceral state’ is Murakawa’s term that refers to the funding, oversight, sentencing, and policing that disproportionately punishes people of color. A liberal combination of policies like Johnson’s ‘War on Poverty’ initiative followed by his ‘War on Crime’ policies resulted, in her telling, led to urban disorder that further pitted people of color as the adversaries of suburban white communities. This can still be seen today as racial tensions are prominent in the emergence of militarized police and racial social movements like “Black Lives Matter.”
As in other policy areas, liberals tend to be more prolific criminal justice policymakers than conservatives. Murakawa points to numerous policies created by Democrats and explores the involvement of both liberals and conservatives in getting these bills passed. She highlights Sen. Joe Biden for his politicking in the Omnibus Crime Bill of 1994, saying that there was “something for everyone” in the package. Republican goals like mandatory minimum sentences and death penalties can be seen in the bill in addition to the Violence Against Women Act, which was pushed by Democrats. The assertion of “Right on Crime” advocates that they alone are working to reform the system in order to lessen the reins of government in American lives is only partially supported by this history.
Prison Reform and the Middle Class Black Community
Murakawa further explores this “Law and Order” policy model within the Black community. The support it garnered from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is representative of a complex relationship marginalized communities have to criminal justice in relation to their class standing. It is important to acknowledge Black agency in efforts to curb crime in predominantly black neighborhoods. This intragroup conflict can also be seen within Michael J. Fortner’s Black Silent Majority: The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment, a political analysis of the conditions that allowed for former New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller to pass the though drug laws that changed the New York State Penal Code in 1978. A liberal Republican, Rockefeller’s laws were made politically feasible by a perfect storm of middle-class Black people from Harlem pushing for tougher drug laws, Rockefeller’s political and electoral motivations, and a shift in paradigm from rehabilitation based policies to control and punishment policies.
While Fortner acknowledges that Rockefeller is a part of the push for more draconian drug laws, his claims are similar to those made by Murakawa. The conflict between low-income and middle-income Black people is aligned with the claim that Murakawa makes about classist motivations to enact stricter drug laws. He illustrates this intragroup conflict as a genuflection to power rather than an interest in disproportionately incarcerating people of color. While Black Americans disproportionately identify with the Democratic Party, they do not necessarily share liberal attitudes on crime policy. Increased policing and tough on crime laws that seemingly decrease crimes rates in urban areas proved popular among middle-class people across racial lines.
Conservative’s Right-On-Crime Platform
While scholars advocate that the prison-state was built by liberals, they also understand that under conservative power, incarceration rates have quadrupled since the 1970s. Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness explores the argument that racism is predominant in the Republican Party, and therefore a factor in the policing and incarceration of people of color. She asserts that mass incarceration was created by a series of policies meant to achieve these particular ends. In her telling, racism and classism coexist to the benefit of privileged communities and the ensuing exploitation of marginalized communities. Conservative policymaking began a shift rightward in regards to policing and drug laws with the implementation of the Rockefeller Drug Laws. Rockefeller’s ambitions and model of the New York Penal System has provided a model for not only other state penal codes, but provided a backdrop for President Reagan’s aggressive and inequitable approach to criminal justice. Rockefeller essentially eliminated the rehabilitation based model and adopted regulations that punished without reformation of an incarcerated individual.
Current prison reform efforts by conservative advocacy groups and policymakers are surface-level at best, she argues. Conservative initiatives for prison-reform are crafted in ways to reflect Republican ideology, without reference or regard for underlying causes and effects of mass incarceration. ‘Right on Crime’ advocates for victim rights rather than the liberties of the accused. Mandatory minimums and harsher death penalty sentencing both disproportionately impact people of color. Advocates also desire lessening the burden of mass incarceration on the taxpayer, and turn to the privatization of prisons to address this concern. Studies have shown that people of color tend to be pushed into private prisons at higher rates than their white counterparts, which should raise broader legal concerns and questions about the equal protection of inmates given differences between public and private correctional standards and protocol. Finally, ‘Right on Crime’ advocates want to ensure that government has a limited amount of agency to reform the system. The outlined approach they advocate serves toward privatization rather than correcting the issues of racism, classism, and inequity that has disproportionately filled prisons with people of color.
The Future of Criminal Justice Policy
Placing the blame for mass incarceration onto either conservatives or liberals takes away from the critical analysis of deeper institutional flaws. As Elizabeth Hinton offers, conservatives and liberals are part of a bipartisan enterprise. A bipartisan effort to create a system that, whether intentionally or unintentionally, sees white youth as troubled and black youth as criminal.
In light of Trump’s speech last night at the RNC, it is evident that a Trump presidency could force the hand of conservative prison reform to resort back to “tough on crime” policies that were implemented during the Nixon administration as opposed to the new-aged “right on crime” movement. The silent majority rhetoric that is present at this year's convention is channeling the language used in the 1968 presidential race. Both Nixon and Trump play into a white voter base fearful of immigrant and minority movements. In today’s social and political climate, the conservative platform under Trump would, presumably, abandon their criminal justice reform efforts in the interest of tough-on-crime initiatives. Conservative reform of the criminal justice system could be put on the backburner with a “Law and Order” candidate like Donald Trump.
