Roundtable: Are We Back to 80s Criminology and Criminal Justice?

Session Submission Type: Roundtable Session

Abstract

Wars on Drugs and Crime implemented Truth-in–Sentencing Laws, Neutered Rehabilitation, Promoted Determinate Sentencing, Mandatory Minimums, Three Strikes laws, Sentencing Guidelines, Enhancement Statutes, Criminalization of the Juvenile Court, Asset Forfeiture, Zero Tolerance Policing, Hyperincarceration mostly among minorities, the poor, and women, and the Right Wing Criminology of Van De Haag, Von Hirsch, Walker, and Bennett. Are we already back in the 80s??? Will today's resurgence of Biosocial Criminology and Jeff Sessions’ policy initiatives pave the road to greater increased DMC?
Attorney General Sessions has reversed Obama Administration policy of phasing out federal private prisons, has asked to review US Dept. of Justice consent decrees with police departments, has called for aggressive enforcement of immigration laws, stricter enforcement of drug offenses, etc. Are we going back to the era of Chief Daryl Gates' policing and Tent City in Arizona and William Bennett’s Super Predators rather than remember the advice of the three presidential commissions half a century ago? And what is the responsibility of the American Society of Criminology? This roundtable of criminologists and sociologists with conference attendees will address this year’s conference theme: Crime. Legitimacy and Reform: Fifty Years After the President’s Commission.

Sub Unit

• Area XIII: Roundtable Sessions

Chair

• Michael Fischer, Norfolk State University

Discussants

• Robert K Perkins, Norfolk State University

• Bernadette J Holmes, Norfolk State University

• James A Curiel, Norfolk State University

• Regina Brisgone, Norfolk State University

• Austin Ashe, Norfolk State University