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† Criminal InJustice is a weekly series devoted to taking action against inequities in the U.S. criminal justice system. Nancy A. Heitzeg, Professor of Sociology and Race/Ethnicity, and author of The School-to- Prison Pipeline: Education, Discipline and Racialized Double Standards, is the Editor of CI. Kay Whitlock, co-author of Queer (In)Justice and Considering Hate, is co-founder of CI. Criminal Injustice is published every Wednesday at 6 pm CST.

Know the Terrain….
by nancy a heitzeg

In light of Election 2016, the role of  the 1994 Crime Bill and “super-predator” rhetoric in impelling the incarceration explosion is revisited. Yes it mattered. A lot. No this bill was not the beginning but a later “bipartisan”acceleration of the largely GOP-manufactured War on Drugs. Yes, this legislation did contribute to the “re-inscription of racial caste”, but it was also  – as always — heavily intertwined with class and place. And no, the pattern is not new, but just the current neoliberal manifestation of a political economy  rooted in race, class, and profitable captivity.

And in the 2016 climate of click-click-click bait hot-takes, there is no short cut to understanding this, no mechanism for “reforming” without further reification and endless “smoke and mirrors” pathways to more profit. There is no realistic talk of abolition either that indicts only the state and not the economic drivers, nor fails to grapple with the entrenchment of punishment as our key employment sector, and in fact, our economic base.

Know the terrain……………

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