The first civil right : how liberals built prison America

Resource Information

The work The first civil right : how liberals built prison America represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Union Presbyterian Seminary Libraries. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

The first civil right : how liberals built prison America

Title remainder

how liberals built prison America

Statement of responsibility

Naomi Murakawa

Title variation

How liberals built prison America

Creator

• Murakawa, Naomi

Author

• Murakawa, Naomi

Subject

• Discrimination in criminal justice administration -- United States
• Imprisonment -- United States -- History -- 20th century
• Prisons -- United States
• Punishment -- United States
• Race discrimination -- United States
• United States -- Race relations
• African American prisoners -- United States
• Criminal justice, Administration of -- United States

Language

eng

Summary

"The explosive rise in the U.S. incarceration rate in the second half of the twentieth century, and the racial transformation of the prison population from mostly white at mid-century to sixty-five percent black and Latino in the present day, is a trend that cannot easily be ignored. Many believe that this shift began with the "tough on crime" policies advocated by Republicans and southern Democrats beginning in the late 1960s, which sought longer prison sentences, more frequent use of the death penalty, and the explicit or implicit targeting of politically marginalized people. In The First Civil Right, Naomi Murakawa inverts the conventional wisdom by arguing that the expansion of the federal carceral state-a system that disproportionately imprisons blacks and Latinos-was, in fact, rooted in the civil-rights liberalism of the 1940s and early 1960s, not in the period after. Murakawa traces the development of the modern American prison system through several presidencies, both Republican and Democrat. Responding to calls to end the lawlessness and violence against blacks at the state and local levels, the Truman administration expanded the scope of what was previously a weak federal system. Later administrations from Johnson to Clinton expanded the federal presence even more. Ironically, these steps laid the groundwork for the creation of the vast penal archipelago that now exists in the United States. What began as a liberal initiative to curb the mob violence and police brutality that had deprived racial minorities of their first civil right - physical safety - eventually evolved into the federal correctional system that now deprives them, in unjustly large numbers, of another important right: freedom. The First Civil Right is a groundbreaking analysis of root of the conflicts that lie at the intersection of race and the legal system in America."--Publisher's description

Member of

• Oxford studies in postwar American political development

Cataloging source

BTCTA

Dewey number

365.973

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

LC call number

HV9950

LC item number

.M86 2014

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography

Series statement

Studies in postwar American political development