About the Law and the Politics of Criminal Justice: Why Progressive Reforms Fail

Why do some progressive policies sustain over time while others don’t? What happens when policies and programs initiated and enacted under one administration come under the control of a new administration with different priorities? Is it possible to identify legal reforms and policies more likely than others to have unanticipated effects that run counter to intentions of those who proposed and promoted them?

Currently, one in thirty adults in the U.S. are under some form of correctional supervision, and one in eleven African American men. How did mass incarceration in the U.S. happen?  In the 1970s the emphasis in much of corrections was tailoring sentences to the rehabilitative needs of those convicted of crimes. What shifts in the policies and the politics of the 1980s ignited the expansion of the American penal system and the four decade-long surge in incarceration?

This seminar examines the challenge of sustaining major policy initiatives over time. and with major shifts in the executive and legislative branches of government.  Our class will study the case of the federal Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 (SRA) formulated in the Carter administration as a progressive reform of criminal sentencing. But as part of President Reagan’s War on Crime, the reforms became instruments of crime control that catalyzed the mass incarceration of racial and ethnic minorities.