Reddit mentions of Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis

This is not something with me and my friends- I doubt I will know more than 10 people there. We are not protesting the NYPD, we are protesting how police are used in this country.

My first introduction was through this book http://www.amazon.com/Lockdown-America-Police-Prisons-Crisis/dp/1844672492
I figure it's still a good start and talks about the police here in NC too. For a better understanding of social movements and strategy I would check out http://www.amazon.com/Ive-Got-Light-Freedom-Mississippi/dp/0520251768/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1417723926&sr=1-1&keywords=I%27ve+got+the+light+of+freedom.

It seems like you don't care if protest is effective, you just don't want to have to deal with it?

FYI, our prison system is still mostly public. Google it, but last statistic I saw was about 6% private prisons. But there are myriad other financial incentives involved, from prison guard unions to phone companies pocketing extra profits. This is detailed brilliantly in Christian Parentis book Lockdown America. https://www.amazon.com/Lockdown-America-Police-Prisons-Crisis/dp/1844672492

I am not really sure what you're trying to say here. I completed my thesis on this topic and I encourage some of these readings:

Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis

Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

In his 1968 run for President, Richard Nixon and fellow conservatives seized the tumultuous events at the time as an opportunity to gain political points--you are spot on.


Nixon dedicated seventeen speeches solely to the topic of law and order. The liberal Democratic establishment was characterized as out-of- touch and weak on crime. In one of his television ads Nixon called upon American voters to reject the lawlessness of civil rights activists and embrace “order.” At the end of the ad, a caption reads: “This time . . . vote like your whole world depended on it . . . NIXON.”

After viewing the campaign ad, Nixon remarked that the ad “hits right on the nose. It’s all about those damn Negro-Puerto Rican groups out there.”

Before Nixon’s inauguration—Krogh and Ehrlichman held strategy sessions with ranking members of the House Judiciary Committee. Their meetings were an attempt to test nationwide federalist crime policy in Washington DC, increasing preventative detention and no-knock raid provisions left out of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act passed six months earlier. The new administration held two strategy sessions on crime, just before Nixon took office, and another shortly after his inauguration. Nixon surrounded himself with some of the most notable conservative crime experts at the time. In addition to Krogh and Ehrlichman, were GOP chief House counsel John Dean, and future Democratic senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then a domestic policy adviser.

Fast forward to the Texas Tower shooter and you have the creation of SWAT. Though SWAT’s original motives were to handle
extreme emergencies, their first official mission is indicative of what the State constitutes
as an emergency. In 1969, in its first mission, SWAT raided an alleged headquarters of
the Black Panther Party.

I could go on and on, but I'll leave you with one final article that I think you should take a look at: How White Users Made Heroin a Public-Health Problem and the 1985 Philidelphia MOVE Bombing. where police literally bombed--as in C4 explosive from a helicopter--a neighborhood because it was rumored to be home of black activists.

...Talking points? I'm a sociologist who works on economics, politics & crime and has worked in several police & prison orgs.

I'd be glad to cite every claim I made--though I can't imagine how explaining the is/ought distinction is a 'talking point.'

Crack is not more addictive than free based or injected cocaine, this is a physiological fact. It is only more addictive than snorted cocaine. And, it is not 18-100X more addictive than snorted cocaine, so that isn't even a justification.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elements_of_the_Philosophy_of_Right

http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/~hlevine/Secret_of_World_Wide_Drug_Prohibition__HG_Levine

https://gspp.berkeley.edu/assets/uploads/research/pdf/ssrn-id1118460.pdf

http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~ec970ajf/Class_19/economics_drug_war%20copy.pdf

https://www.amazon.com/Pursuit-Oblivion-Global-History-Narcotics/dp/0393325458

https://www.amazon.com/Creating-American-Junkie-Addiction-Research/dp/0801867983

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/harvard-economist-jeffrey-miron-on-why-drugs-should-be-legalized-a-886289.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/23/cops-took-more-stuff-from-people-than-burglars-did-last-year/?utm_term=.765f9157fdf3

http://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-theft-protect/

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/news_detail.asp?newsID=35

http://www.countthecosts.org/sites/default/files/Crime-briefing.pdf

http://www.nber.org/papers/w6950

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2015/08/racial_disparities_in_the_criminal_justice_system_eight_charts_illustrating.html

https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/141027_iachr_racial_disparities_aclu_submission_0.pdf

https://www.amazon.com/Color-Justice-Ethnicity-Wadsworth-Contemporary/dp/1111346925

http://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/The-Color-of-Justice-Racial-and-Ethnic-Disparity-in-State-Prisons.pdf

https://www.amazon.com/New-Jim-Crow-Incarceration-Colorblindness/dp/1595586431

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/20452518.pdf?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/who-are-biggest-killers-america-numbers-will-shock-you

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=16702

http://hlrecord.org/2015/03/20-things-you-should-know-about-corporate-crime/

https://www.attn.com/stories/2643/crack-vs-cocaine

https://openborders.info/double-world-gdp/

https://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/family/item/21784-prescription-drugs-kill-more-than-illegal-drugs-teens-at-high-risk

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/jun/29/george-will/claims-smoking-kills-more-people-annually-other-da/


edit:

more sources

http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2015.303032

http://news.stanford.edu/2016/06/28/stanford-researchers-develop-new-statistical-test-shows-racial-profiling-police-traffic-stops/

http://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/how-much-crime-fighting-do-%E2%80%98crime-fighters%E2%80%99-really-do

http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic1458086.files/Western.pdf

http://64.6.252.14/class/540/2013/science-cullen.pdf

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/e199912.htm

https://www.amazon.com/Rich-Get-Richer-Poor-Prison/dp/0205137725

http://www.infoshop.org/pdfs/Our-Enemies-in-Blue.pdf

https://www.amazon.com/Lockdown-America-Police-Prisons-Crisis/dp/1844672492