Smoking Guns: Political Straight Talk and the Prison Boom

• In Event: Poster Session

Abstract

This study uses political operatives’ quotes between 1960 and 2000 to nuance existing hypotheses on the role of politics in the rise of mass incarceration in the United States. Specifically, these quotes are analyzed to determine the degree to which they align with three previously proposed hypotheses: democracy-at-work, penal populism, and elite manipulation. Democracy-at-work holds that politicians responded sincerely to the demands of their constituents. Penal populism suggests that politicians harnessed pre-existing punitive public opinion to win votes and created policies with little regard for their impact. Elite manipulation contends that politicians’ crime and punishment rhetoric preceded and ignited public concern and insecurity. Our findings show that politicians’ effect on the prison boom is more complex than these hypotheses suggest. Using these findings, we consider an additional integrated hypothesis, the strong thematic role of race in our study, and possibilities for further research.

Authors

• Rosa Greenbaum, University of California, Irvine

• Levi LaChappelle, University of California, Irvine