Chapter 10 1960 s Less is best Social Context A crisis in the legitimacy of American institutions Out of this social turbulence the decentralization of corrections did not occur in a vacuum and reflected the social economical turmoil Labeling Theory o Emerged first in 1938 o Frank Tannenbaum published Crime and Community and on page 17 of this book he developed a theory called Dramatization of Evil o Asserted a social psychological model of deviance o All young people routinely engage in normal youthful misbehavior o Police tell you that you are evil for hitting the ball through neighbor s window o Process of identifying pointing out dramatizing the evil can have an effect on the young subject This subject can dramatize the evil and say maybe I am evil and see themselves as evil o This theory gained no traction but it is part of the foundation of labeling theory o 1950 Edwin Lemert in Social Pathology differentiates between Primary deviance vs Secondary deviance o Primary deviance is the deviance known to the police and or deviant acts not known to the police People routinely engage in primary types of deviance Some portion leads to arrest Refers to universe of deviance o Secondary deviance after the subject has taken on a deviant identity self concept Could happen after one account with the police with no arrest or could happen after 100 arrests Tolerance with negative labels happens all over the place Self concept is deterrence for deviance Assumption 1 Agencies of social control type categorize focus on race class dress and demeanor and then focus attention on that Assumption 2 Through this process of differential selection these agencies unintentionally create perpetuate or intensify a subsequent commitment to crime Task forces o In 1967 they were integrated in one book called The Challenge of Crime in a Society o Included academics and prauctioneers o Labeling theory was underlying and embraced o Conclusion through task forces reports Not only was American criminal justice forces not effective but the system was doing more harm than good Perpetuating secondary deviance The idea was that the contact with this damaging system must be minimized Decentralization of corrections became the goal How do you decentralize o Omnibus Crime Bill o Safe Streets Act o Both generated 33 million and then jumped to 850 million o Law Enforcement Assistance Administration generated in 1967 with 33 million dollars Set up a series of LEAA regional offices each of which had states under their jurisdiction Each state had a series of local jurisdictions Employed a subsidy approach based on a gentlemen s agreement The idea was that We will give you federal dollars If you Diversion program diverting people away from criminal justice system Some level of inkind service Exploded Chapter 11 Nature of Society Ronald Reagan o Elected president in 1980 on a platform of promoting radical change o He pushed sexual restraint drug abstinence just say no and zero tolerance orientation for deviance unemployed and criminals o His strategy for reversing the course of government from the 70 s of social activism civil rights and welfare related policies o 1 Reduce the size of government o 2 Reduce taxes o 3 Reduce business regulation give business a break let them do business o 4 Support for greater privatization of government options o 5 Reduction or even elimination of welfare and jobs programs o 6 Great acceleration of this country s military might Between 1979 and 1982 the crime rate was unchanged What we try to argue in American penology with the election is that there was a reversing of course Why do we have these shifts in punishment Are they related to the society in general Answer yes In the 1980 s we were just coming out of the Vietnam War and had hostages that were captured Iranian hostage crisis and 3 mile island catastrophe High rates of unemployment and inflation We were in a Major transition and things weren t very good There was little basis for optimization Conflicting conclusions for policy makers o In the 70 s there was an announcement made in a famous article called Nothing Works in the Public interest He asserted that nothing works to change offenders and increase their likelihood to leave normal lives Mertinson o Phillip Palmer published another article that said that Mertinson is premature and that everything works to some degree o Then a third proclamation was given some things work for some people Ross and John Row Privatization exploded and there was little to no accountability during Reagan s years Conservative backlash Get out and get a job Subsiding the undeserving o You know I just don t understand the unemployment issue There are jobs available in the news paper Reagan So what was happening with all this o Financial divide between the rich and poor got bigger and bigger o By 1990 the number of billionaires more than doubled in a period of o The helpless and hopeless population was suffering at a greater level very few years than ever before The war on drugs Punishment for 12 years What emerges out of all of this is law and order punishment that occurred More expensive more extensive institutionalism and more punitive Focused not on the upper class but rather the lower class marijuana and crack cocaine Flat sentencing o Parole was abolished because you do the crime you do the time Period of your sentence o Even Florida today has a mandatory law that you must serve 85 o Certainty of punishment example If all of us drank and got drunk and the laws are merky you will have a lot of people drive If the laws are enforced less people will drive o Some research that Blomberg did historically parole provided mechanisms for controlling prison populations It could be used extensively if the prison was crowded and less if the prison was not crowded o More prisons needed to be built What crime overall costs o 1 and 2 trillion o Every 12 months the country goes into a debt of 1 trillion Intermediate punishment o They were either good enough to serve probation or bad enough to o The feeling in this era was that they need probation with more teeth go to prison in it private companies electronic surveillance o Many of these intermediate punishments were administered by o Regular probation was a large case load intensive intermediate o Piling up of sanctions focused on Orange County meaning that an offender would be ordered for probation and then need to go to anger management and ect When you pile up