User:Briellebudroe/history sandbox

Some fifty years ago, President Lyndon Johnson called for a “War on Crime.” Consequently, Johnson presented to Congress the Law Enforcement Assistance Act, which allowed for the first time in America, a “direct role for the Federal Government in local police operations, court systems, and state prisons.” Republican and Democratic policymakers worked together in fighting this War on Crime, which would later become a “War on Drugs.” Together, the War on Crime and War on Drugs would produce contemporary mass incarceration in America,“distinguished by rate of imprisonment far above all other industrialized nations and involving the systematic confinement of entire groups of citizens.”

In the early 1980s, the Nixon administration introduced the political term “War on Drugs,” condemning all unapproved drug use. This “War on Drugs” refers to federal, state, and local government policies that have been created to eliminate drug use within specific communities. Before announcement of the War on Drugs, the Federal Government had created the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA), which became the fastest-growing federal agency in the 1970s; its purpose was to supervise and control low-income urban communities. The War on Crime and the War on Drugs has led to the increase in prosecution of drug cases, which has been the central contributor to both the expansion of prisons and the “philosophical shift” to that of a more punitive system. This effort was further enforced by the Reagan administration who pressed the sales of illegal drugs as a critical political issue. With use of the strategies, institutions, and bureaucracy already developed at the state and local levels during the War on Crime, Reagan made national programs far more punitive by the end of the 1980s. At the same time, the social service centers that had been founded during the War on Poverty in the 1960s were “nowhere to be found in some of the most vulnerable and isolated neighborhoods in American cities.” As a result, residents were forced to call the police and law enforcement authorities when their children, friends, and family engaged in criminal activity. The War on Drugs has placed law enforcement agencies, criminal justice institutions, and jails as the “primary public programs in many low-income communities” across the U.S. Reagan fought the War on Drugs by using policing activities and federal policies that promoted the task of searching for and apprehending as many suspects as possible. The War on Drugs was fought with an increase in raids, stings, and tactical police units. President Reagan’s Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 focused on the activities of inner-city youth and small-time drug dealers. Severe sentencing laws, especially mandatory minimum sentences, which were a part of Reagan’s crime bill and the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 engendered a mass increase in imprisonment. For example, between 1980 and 1998 the U.S. incarceration rate rose almost 300 percent. The passage of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines compelled judges to give lengthy sentences even when they believed the defendant was not a threat to society. The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 eradicated the existing parole system and replaced it with a “determinate method” of sentencing that based all federally imposed sentences on mandatory guidelines. The guidelines were fixed, providing a “detailed list of point allocations for every illegal drug and specific sentence for the amount possessed or sold.” In the same year, Congress enacted statutes imposing mandatory minimum sentences for drug and weapons offenses, as well as adopted definitions of “drug related activities” and harsh sentences for those with any connection to drugs. This was intended to keep individuals with any sort of connection to drugs “‘off the streets’ and behind bars” for extensive periods of time. hese strict guidelines sent men and women away for decades. The War on Drugs has targeted individuals beyond those using or addicted to drugs by also victimizing those who are “unwittingly, unknowingly, or peripherally” involved in drug-related activity. This has specific consequences for women, especially women in relationships with partners or relatives who use or sell drugs, as well as women who have no other choice but to become involved in the drug trade in order to support their families in the “absence of living wage jobs and in the face of cuts to public assistance." The War on Drugs has a specific and devastating impact on women. The number of women in prison and the time they spent inside grew significantly throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Between 1986 and 1999, the number of women incarcerated in state prisons for drug-related offenses increased by 888 percent. More so, it has also expanded the criminalization of people by race and gender. For example, there has been a distinct increase in the number of incarcerated African American and Latina women in the U.S., who make up a disproportionate amount of women arrested, charged, convicted, and incarcerated for drug-related offenses. The incarceration rate for African American women for all crimes, driven by drug-related offenses, increased by 800 percent between 1986 and 2005, compared to a 400 percent increase for women of all races.