Crime & Politics

Crime & Politics
Author: Ted Gest
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2003-08-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0190290137

Why has America experienced an explosion in crime rates since 1960? Why has the crime rate dropped in recent years? Though politicians are always ready both to take the credit for crime reduction and to exploit grisly headlines for short-term political gain, these questions remain among the most important-and most difficult to answer-in America today. In Crime & Politics, award-winning journalist Ted Gest gives readers the inside story of how crime policy is formulated inside the Washington beltway and state capitols, why we've had cycle after cycle of ineffective federal legislation, and where promising reforms might lead us in the future. Gest examines how politicians first made crime a national rather than a local issue, beginning with Lyndon Johnson's crime commission and the landmark anti-crime law of 1968 and continuing right up to such present-day measures as "three strikes" laws, mandatory sentencing, and community policing. Gest exposes a lack of consistent leadership, backroom partisan politics, and the rush to embrace simplistic solutions as the main causes for why Federal and state crime programs have failed to make our streets safe. But he also explores how the media aid and abet this trend by featuring lurid crimes that simultaneously frighten the public and encourage candidates to offer another round of quick-fix solutions. Drawing on extensive research and including interviews with Edwin Meese, Janet Reno, Joseph Biden, Ted Kennedy, and William Webster, Crime & Politics uncovers the real reasons why America continues to struggle with the crime problem and shows how we do a better job in the future.

Law and Order

Law and Order
Author: Michael W. Flamm
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2005
Genre: History
ISBN: 023111513X

Law and Order offers a valuable new study of the political and social history of the 1960s. It presents a sophisticated account of how the issues of street crime and civil unrest enhanced the popularity of conservatives, eroded the credibility of liberals, and transformed the landscape of American politics. Ultimately, the legacy of law and order was a political world in which the grand ambitions of the Great Society gave way to grim expectations. In the mid-1960s, amid a pervasive sense that American society was coming apart at the seams, a new issue known as law and order emerged at the forefront of national politics. First introduced by Barry Goldwater in his ill-fated run for president in 1964, it eventually punished Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats and propelled Richard Nixon and the Republicans to the White House in 1968. In this thought-provoking study, Michael Flamm examines how conservatives successfully blamed liberals for the rapid rise in street crime and then skillfully used law and order to link the understandable fears of white voters to growing unease about changing moral values, the civil rights movement, urban disorder, and antiwar protests. Flamm documents how conservatives constructed a persuasive message that argued that the civil rights movement had contributed to racial unrest and the Great Society had rewarded rather than punished the perpetrators of violence. The president should, conservatives also contended, promote respect for law and order and contempt for those who violated it, regardless of cause. Liberals, Flamm argues, were by contrast unable to craft a compelling message for anxious voters. Instead, liberals either ignored the crime crisis, claimed that law and order was a racist ruse, or maintained that social programs would solve the "root causes" of civil disorder, which by 1968 seemed increasingly unlikely and contributed to a loss of faith in the ability of the government to do what it was above all sworn to do-protect personal security and private property.

The Partisan Politics of Law and Order

The Partisan Politics of Law and Order
Author: Georg Wenzelburger
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2020
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0190920483

"Why have some Western democracies experienced a substantial turn toward tougher law and order policies whereas others have not changed their policies to a similar extent? This book shows that an important part of the explanation has to do with political parties and how they compete. It provides empirical evidence on three channels through which partisan politics matter: First, political parties in general, and issue owners in particular, move their programmatic stance toward the more repressive pole if they are challenged by right-wing populist parties or if they are pressured by a major competitor in a two-party system. In contrast, when strong liberal parties exist in a party system and are needed to form coalitions, such a dynamic is much more improbable. Second, a tougher programmatic stance of a party does translate into tougher policies, but only if the institutional context allows for it. Strong constitutional courts are particularly successful in pushing back tougher policies. Finally, the contribution also shows that positive policy feedback occurs: An initial step toward tougher policies may generate a pressure to continue down this road - independent from changes in public opinion. Hence, partisan effects seem to have consequences in the medium term and for future governments. The book bases its arguments on large-N-quantitative analyses of 20 Western industrialized countries as well as a new hand-coded dataset on law and order legislation in Britain, France, Germany and Sweden. Besides, four in-depth case studies on these countries provide qualitative evidence on the politics of law and order"--

The Politics of Law and Order

The Politics of Law and Order
Author: Stuart A. Scheingold
Publisher: Quid Pro Books
Total Pages: 451
Release: 2011-01-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 161027038X

Foundational and renowned study of how politicians and others use crime rates -- and most of all the public perception of street crime, whether or not it is accurate -- for their own purposes. Dr. Scheingold also provides a theoretical and historical basis for his views. The follow-up to the landmark book The Politics of Rights, this text is both supported in research and accessible and interesting to readers everywhere. Features new 2010 Foreword by Berkeley law professor Malcolm Feeley. A work that is both "timely and timeless," writes Feeley, it "is important for what it says -- and how it says it -- about American crime and crime policy, as well as American political culture. It speaks truth to power today as much as it did when it was first published." As recently noted by Amherst College's Austin Sarat, Scheingold "was quite simply one of the world's leading commentators on law and politics."

God’s Law and Order

God’s Law and Order
Author: Aaron Griffith
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2020-11-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674238788

An incisive look at how evangelical Christians shaped—and were shaped by—the American criminal justice system. America incarcerates on a massive scale. Despite recent reforms, the United States locks up large numbers of people—disproportionately poor and nonwhite—for long periods and offers little opportunity for restoration. Aaron Griffith reveals a key component in the origins of American mass incarceration: evangelical Christianity. Evangelicals in the postwar era made crime concern a major religious issue and found new platforms for shaping public life through punitive politics. Religious leaders like Billy Graham and David Wilkerson mobilized fears of lawbreaking and concern for offenders to sharpen appeals for Christian conversion, setting the stage for evangelicals who began advocating tough-on-crime politics in the 1960s. Building on religious campaigns for public safety earlier in the twentieth century, some preachers and politicians pushed for “law and order,” urging support for harsh sentences and expanded policing. Other evangelicals saw crime as a missionary opportunity, launching innovative ministries that reshaped the practice of religion in prisons. From the 1980s on, evangelicals were instrumental in popularizing criminal justice reform, making it a central cause in the compassionate conservative movement. At every stage in their work, evangelicals framed their efforts as colorblind, which only masked racial inequality in incarceration and delayed real change. Today evangelicals play an ambiguous role in reform, pressing for reduced imprisonment while backing law-and-order politicians. God’s Law and Order shows that we cannot understand the criminal justice system without accounting for evangelicalism’s impact on its historical development.

The Partisan Politics of Law and Order

The Partisan Politics of Law and Order
Author: Georg Wenzelburger
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2020
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0190920483

"Why have some Western democracies experienced a substantial turn toward tougher law and order policies whereas others have not changed their policies to a similar extent? This book shows that an important part of the explanation has to do with political parties and how they compete. It provides empirical evidence on three channels through which partisan politics matter: First, political parties in general, and issue owners in particular, move their programmatic stance toward the more repressive pole if they are challenged by right-wing populist parties or if they are pressured by a major competitor in a two-party system. In contrast, when strong liberal parties exist in a party system and are needed to form coalitions, such a dynamic is much more improbable. Second, a tougher programmatic stance of a party does translate into tougher policies, but only if the institutional context allows for it. Strong constitutional courts are particularly successful in pushing back tougher policies. Finally, the contribution also shows that positive policy feedback occurs: An initial step toward tougher policies may generate a pressure to continue down this road - independent from changes in public opinion. Hence, partisan effects seem to have consequences in the medium term and for future governments. The book bases its arguments on large-N-quantitative analyses of 20 Western industrialized countries as well as a new hand-coded dataset on law and order legislation in Britain, France, Germany and Sweden. Besides, four in-depth case studies on these countries provide qualitative evidence on the politics of law and order"--

Law and order

Law and order
Author: New Zealand Progressive Party
Publisher:
Total Pages: 10
Release: 1996
Genre:
ISBN:

First to the Party

First to the Party
Author: Christopher Baylor
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2018
Genre: History
ISBN: 0812249631

What determines the interests, ideologies, and alliances that make up political parties? In its entire history, the United States has had only a handful of party transformations. First to the Party concludes that groups like unions and churches, not voters or politicians, are the most consistent influences on party transformation.

Law and Order

Law and Order
Author: Conservative and Unionist Party. Research Department
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1992
Genre:
ISBN: