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Throwing Away the Key: The Unintended Consequences of “Tough-on-Crime” Laws

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2021

Frank R. Baumgartner Open the ORCID record for Frank R. Baumgartner [Opens in a new window] ,
Tamira Daniely ,
Kalley Huang ,
Sydney Johnson ,
Alexander Love ,
Lyle May ,
Patrice Mcgloin ,
Allison Swagert ,
Niharika Vattikonda  and
Kamryn Washington
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Abstract

During the 1980s and 1990s, U.S. policymakers adopted draconian criminal justice polices including widespread use of extremely long sentences, including life without parole. The country is now coming to face the consequences of these policies: a new class of geriatric prisoners posing little threat to public safety as they age into their seventies and beyond. Using a perspective drawn from bounded rationality, framing, and agenda-setting, we recount how policymakers adopted these policies, with key blind spots relating to obvious consequences of these harsh laws. We show how political leaders can over-respond to a perceived public policy crisis, particularly when powerful frames of race, fear, and dehumanization come to dominate the public discourse. We show how these trends are radically changing the demographics and needs of prison populations through a chronological review, mathematical simulation of the prison population, review of statistics about prison population, and personal stories illustrating these themes drawn from inside prison.

Type
Reflection
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 19 , Issue 4: Special Issue: Race and Politics in America , December 2021 , pp. 1233 - 1246
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

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Footnotes

A list of permanent links to Supplemental Materials provided by the authors precedes the References section.

Data replication sets are available in Harvard Dataverse at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/0UHBUM

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