According to Campbell & Schoenfeld (2013), the increase in periodized mass incarceration between 1970 and 2000 highlights the interplay of American political structures at the local, state, and national levels. The national balance of political powers and the broad transformations in socio-economic structure birthed state-level and national developments that interacted in multidirectional and complex ways. Additionally, federal courts' decisions, political innovation at the state level, and state interest groups compelled lawmakers at the national level to significantly define the crime problem as resulting from lack of punishment. As such, the interaction created decidedly punitive penal order and policy solutions that sent many people to prison for extended periods. The local and state-level developments also fabricated new resources and opportunities for state and national politicians, which led to their crafting of consequential approaches to crime control that resulted in mass incarceration.
The works of Campbell and Schoenfeld resonate with the documentary film theme, “13th,” in several ways. As posited by Campbell & Schoenfeld (2013), the balance in political power among various government levels led to mass incarceration, which emerged due to the “tough-on-crime” lawmakers that developed dominant forms of criminal sanctioning. Subsequently, despite a general increase in the number of people put in prisons for extended periods, the number of African-Americans being sent to prison was higher. Their argument connects with the documentary’s theme in several ways. From the film 13th, the American political structure played a key role in promoting mass incarceration by criminalizing civil rights movements and placing drug issue as a crime and not a health issue. Mass incarceration began in the 1970s with President Nixon’s administration. The dog-whistle politics instituted by president Richard Nixon aimed to use the term “war on drugs” to criminalize drug issues and promote hyper segregation and racial differences. President Ronald Reagan then expanded his political influence on mass incarceration by enforcing the war in 1982 with increased funding for jails and prisons.
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References
Campbell, M., & Schoenfeld, H. (2013). The Transformation of America’s Penal Order: A Historicized Political Sociology of Punishment. American Journal of Sociology , 118 (5). doi: 10.1086/669506
