Common Sense Assumptions: Deconstructing Mass Incarceration and "Illegal Immigration" Sociology 3AC: Principles of Sociology - Laleh Behbehanian, Ph.D.
Common Sense Assumptions: Mass Incarceration
1. There is an intrinsic relationship between incarceration and crime; an increase in incarceration is responding to an increase in crime
The rate of incarceration in the United States is the highest in the world and is unprecedented.
In 30 years, the United States prison population grew from 300,000 to over 2 million incarcerated and over 7 million under the authority of the criminal justice system. (Alexander, 59)
The U.S. has never had significantly more crime than other countries in the world and yet it has the highest rate of incarceration in the world.
- A 2021 report of the highest incarceration rates reveals that the United States still ranks number 1 for rate of incarceration.
- And yet, according to a 2021 report of the highest crime rates, the United States ranks 50th for crime rate.
Law & Order:
- The "Law & Order" rhetoric was first introduced in the late 1950s by conservative politicians in the South opposed to the Civil Rights Movement. The Civil Rights Movement was often portrayed as criminal and a threat to law and order. This rhetoric proved to be very popular, especially with working class white southerners. (Alexander, 40)
- In 1968 Richard Nixon won the presidential election by running on a "Law & Order" campaign during a time of unrest in the country experiencing frequent protests and uprisings. "The racial imagery associated with the riots gave fuel to the argument that civil rights for blacks led to rampant crime." (Alexander, 41)
- Throughout Ronald Reagan's campaign in 1980 and then his presidency, he expertly used implicitly racialized rhetoric like "Law & Order" and "Tough on Crime." Which eventually led to the "War on Drugs."
- By the 1990s, this Law & Order movement was so effective that both political parties adopted it, and democrat Bill Clinton included tough on crime in his campaign for president.
h.r. haldeman, one of nixon's key advisers, recalls that nixon himself deliberately pursued a southern racial strategy: 'he [president nixon] emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. the key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to." (Alexander, 43-44).
[under the reagan administration] Drug offenders faced lifetime consequences for minor infractions, yet the focus on tough sentences for crack and not powder cocaine meant the people going to prison were largely black and brown. The media seemed to play along, hyping up threats with racist coverage that largely ignored rampant cocaine use amongst whites and sensationalized the crack problem in inner-city black neighborhoods." (Timeline, 6/26/2017)
WAR ON DRUGS: The rise in incarceration correlates with the rise in drug enforcement
- 1980 - 2000: 30 million+ drug arrests
drug offenses alone account for two-thirds of the rise in the federal inmate population and more than half of the rise in state prisoners between 1985 and 2000." (Alexander, 59)
Common Assumptions about the War on Drugs:
1. The War on Drugs targets high level dealers.
Data shows this is NOT accurate - the majority of drug arrests are for low level possession.
2. The War on Drugs targets dangerous drugs such as crack and cocaine.
Data shows this is NOT accurate - 80% of all drug arrests in the 1990s were for marijuana. (Alexander, 59).
3. The War on Drugs was launched in response to a drug epidemic.
IN FACT, THE WAR ON DRUGS BEGAN AT A TIME WHEN ILLEGAL DRUG USE WAS ON THE DECLINE." (ALEXANDER, 6)
The War on Drugs was NOT a reaction to higher drug crime rates - President Ronald Reagan declared the "War on Drugs" in 1882 before any drug epidemic existed; crack cocaine was not introduced to U.S. cities until 1985.
4. Since anyone of any race can be arrested for drugs, the War on Drugs is not racially targeted.
Statistics show that the War on Drugs IS racially targeted:
THESE STARK RACIAL DISPARITIES CANNOT BE EXPLAINED BY RATES OF DRUG CRIME. STUDIES SHOW THAT PEOPLE OF ALL COLORS USE AND SELL DRUGS AT REMARKABLY SIMILAR RATES." (ALEXANDER, 7)
Data shows that the criminal justice system, fueled by the War on Drugs, targets black and brown folks despite being “color-blind”
Statistics reveal that a disproportionate amount of black men are incarcerated: Up to 80% of black men have criminal records
THE UNITED STATES INPRISONS A LARGER PERCENTAGE OF ITS BLACK POPULATION THAN SOUTH AFRICA DID AT THE HEIGHT OF APARTHEID." (ALEXANDER, 6)
Police resisted the War on Drugs campaign: When first introduced, prioritizing drug offenses (especially over violent crimes) was met by strong opposition from the Police Departments. Until President Reagan offered Financial Incentives for the War on Drugs:
- Massive Federal Funding: more arrests = more funding
- Extensive Military Equipment & Training: resulting in the militarization of policing
- Forfeiture: Government seizure of assets in the context of drug enforcement
Massive Federal Funding:
Between 1980 and 1984, FBI antidrug funding increased from $8 million to $95 million." (Alexander, 49).
Extensive Military Equipment & Training:
- In 1878 the use of military for civilian policing was prohibited by the Posse Comitatus Act and for about 100 years the military was only authorized to fight foreign enemies outside of the United States under the context of war. But in 1981, the Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Act was passed, which authorized the military to work with police for the purpose of drug enforcement.
- Under the 1033 Program, surplus military equipment was distributed to local law enforcement.
- SWAT teams were formed and primarily used for drug arrests. Often through "No Knock Raids" that result in property damage, injury, and sometimes death.
- Through these federally funded programs, police adopted military strategies, tactics, and equipment. And began to use military force against civilians.
BREONNA TAYLOR WAS KILLED DURING A NO KNOCK RAID.
Forfeiture:
- Laws passed in the 1970’s authorized government seizure of drugs or manufacturing equipment in the context of drug enforcement. But eventually it expanded to include all assets and property (i.e. cash, car, home, etc).
- In the 1980’s the law was amended to authorize police departments to keep what they seize. Police keep up to 80% and Feds keep 100%.
- Assets can be seized just based on suspicion of illegal drug activity; there does not need to be a charge. Even if the defendant were to be charged and found innocent, the assets would not be returned.
- Cars and homes are auctioned off and the proceeds go to the police department.
Federal and state profits from forfeitures are in the BILLIONS:
In civil forfeiture, a criminal charge or conviction is not needed:
The Policing System
The 4th Amendment prohibits unreasonable search and seizure unless there is “probable cause” of criminal activity. Over time the War on Drugs has undermined the 4th Amendment and used the following tactics to facilitate mass arrests for minor drug offenses:
- Pre-text stops: The police use any minor traffic violation as an excuse for pulling someone over and doing a drug search.
- “Consent” Searches: If an order from a police officer is stated as a question, then compliance with that order is considered voluntary. And studies show that the majority of people will comply with a police officer.
The Post-Arrest System
Designed to trap people in the criminal justice system.
1. Denial of legal representation
- 80% of defendants are below the poverty line, but in many states the income requirement to be able to qualify for a public defender is so low that many are not eligible.
- For example, in Wisconsin defendants must have an annual income of less than $3,000 to qualify for a public defender.
- Public defenders are also so overworked with high caseloads that they cannot provide proper representation.
- The New York Times reported a 2019 study that revealed that on average public defenders have 194 felony cases at one time, and they spend on average 1-5 minutes speaking to their client. (Oppel Jr., 1/31/2019)
2. Pressure to Take Plea Deal
- Plea deal: the defendant agrees to waive right to a trial and plead guilty in exchange for a lesser sentencing deal offered by the prosecutor.
- Defendants often do not have the chance to speak with a public defender before being pressured into taking a plea deal.
- 97% of all convictions are the result of a plea deal (only 3% go to trial).
- Severe sentencing due to mandatory minimums and the 3 Strikes Law results in a lot of pressure to accept a plea deal for a greatly reduced sentence.
3. Severe Sentencing
- Mandatory Minimums: 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act passed under Reagan that established mandatory prison time minimums for certain drugs, especially crack cocaine. Judges do not have any authority to use their discretion for drug sentencing. (Alexander,86)
- First offense may have a 5-10 year minimum prison sentence.
- Prior to 1986 the longest sentence possible for possession of any drug was one year.
- 3 Strikes Law: 1994 Crime Bill under President Clinton mandated a life sentence for a third felony offense.
Rise in mass incarceration is not the result of increase in crime, but the result of the very design of the system.
- The War on Drugs was implemented through massive federal bribes to create enormous incentives for prioritizing drug enforcement over everything else, even violent crimes.
- The system operates around the 4th amendment protections to enable mass arrests for minor drug offenses (primarily possession).
- Then convictions are ensured through denial of legal representation, plea deals, and severe sentencing.
What has changed since the collapse of Jim Crow has less to do with the basic structure of our society than with the language we use to justify it. In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So we don’t. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color “criminals” and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind. Today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once you’re labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination— employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service—are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." (Alexander, 2)
THE WAR ON DRUGS IS NOT OVER:
In 2018, there were 1,654,282 arrests for drug offenses. And 86% of all drug arrests are for possession. (Stellin, 11/5/2019)
2. Common Sense Assumption Two: The function of mass incarceration is crime control
The Actual Function is Social Control by Creating and Maintaining a Racial Caste System
Racial Caste System: Stigmatized racial group locked in an inferior position by law and custom
Mass Incarceration is Another Carnation of Mechanisms to Create and Maintain a Racial Undercaste:
Slavery → Jim Crow → Mass Incarceration
Slavery as we understand it began as a racial bribe, which gave poor whites a stake a stake in race-based slavery, creating racial divisions and hierarchy.
Jim Crow & Black Codes created mass criminalization of unemployed and unhoused (free slaves), and system of exploitation of unpaid labor by those convicted of crimes.
Mass incarceration is larger that imprisonment
"System of laws, rules, policies, customs, and institutions to control groups of people (largely by race) inside outside of prisons to create and maintain a subordinate group"
"The label of “felon” results in legalized exclusion"
So if not crime control, what is the purpose of Mass Incarceration: Mass Incarceration establishes and sustains a racial caste system, extracting and exploiting black (and brown) labor in the post-industrial economy, socially ostracizing a “felon/criminal,” and limiting power post-arrest and post-incarceration to challenge the prison industrial system.
Challenging the Carceral System
Slavery, Jim Crow, and Mass Incarceration were efforts, either novel approaches or counter-insurgency techniques, to challenge the resistance to caste systems.
Civil unrest from the Civil Rights Movement to the Watts Rebellion in LA to the Black Lives Matter Movement, are tactical innovations to challenge the status quo
Today’s resistance inherited the carceral state, but also the foundation of history of resistance.
Common Sense Assumptions: "Illegal Immigration"
1. Borders Are Out Of Control
What if I told you that at no time in US history has the southern border been more highly controlled and militarized?
The graph below demonstrates an unprecedented rise in deportations in the recent decades.
What has caused this increase? A series of laws that drastically expanded border enforcement budgets and the scope of who could and should be deported.
- 1986 Immigration Reform Act
- 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA)
- 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA)
This trend toward militarizing the borders spiked after September 11, 2001 when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was created. In 2009 alone, DHS detained 380,000 people at 350 facilities at a cost of over $1.7 billion. (Golash-Boza, 209)
What have been the results of these policies? The highest number of forced removals, or deportations, in US history as well as a much more dangerous journey for migrants, who have been pushed to remote desert regions and are made more vulnerable, and likely to be exploited.
The unprecedented rise in deportations has occurred at the same time as a decrease in undocumented border crossings.
After the 2008 financial crisis, evidence suggests more undocumented people left the US for Mexico than vice versa.
“Just as the Great Depression had prompted massive roundups in the 1930s, the ‘Great Recession’ – the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression – prompted arrests for violations of immigration law in the interior. In 2012, the Department of Homeland Security broke another record: It removed nearly 420,000 noncitizens. By the spring of 2014, there had been two million removals under the Obama administration – more in just over five years than any previous administration and more than the sum total of all documented removals prior to 1997.” (Golash-Boza, viii)
In truth, the issue is not undocumented entry into the United States. It is the 11 million people who reside without documentation in the US, 2/3 of whom have been in the US for 10 years or more.
Why is the southern border so militarized? How did the southern border come to be?
As a settler colony, the United States government encouraged free flows of migrants to settle the land and provide labor until early 20th century. Large flows of migrant agricultural labor developed back and forth from Mexico and the southwestern United States. In addition, a large population of Chinese laborers were recruited to build infrastructure throughout the West, such as railroads.
On the top left is a map of the United States in 1840 and on the right is a map of the United States in 1850, after large parts of Mexican territories were ceded to the United States at the end of the Mexican American War of 1848. Below this is a map that illustrates the percentage of population of Mexican-origin in the United States, the large majority of whom reside in territory that was once Mexico.
“Mexicans would become racialized aliens in the US in large part by their illegal presence in the region that was once Mexico.” (Ngai, 55)
Ancestral migrations of agricultural labor that once circled back and forth between what is now understood as the US Southwest and the country of Mexico have since been interrupted by increasingly closed off and controlled borders.
2. The Immigration System is Broken
What is truly broken? Families.
First, we must acknowledge that millions of families are broken apart by the US immigration system. 5 million of the 11 million undocumented people in the US are parents of US citizens. Parents who are deported cannot return to US to see their children. Undocumented people in the US are unable to return to home countries to visit their family members. And these are the numbers before taking into account the egregious zero-tolerance family separation policy.
Out of the 5,500 children known to have been separated from their parents under the former administration's zero-tolerance policy, more than 1,000 remain apart. (New York Times, 5/3/21)
"The immigration system is broken" assumes that the immigration system’s purpose is to stop unauthorized entry in the US.
Unauthorized entry has decreased in recent years. So why do we continue to hear politicians across the political spectrum talking about the immigration system as being broken?
The real function of the immigration system is, and always has been, to create an easily controllable and exploitable labor force by restructuring migration as illegal.
- In 1924, the US Border Patrol was formed under the Department of Labor, largely to enforce Mexican migrant labor.
- In 1942, a wartime measure called the Bracero Program was instituted by the US Department of State, Labor and Agriculture aimed to institutionalize a supply of Mexican/migrant agricultural (and to some extend railroad) labor to the US, which was suffering from a labor shortage during WWII.
“Inspection at Mexican border involved a degrading procedure of bathing, delousing, medical-line inspection, and interrogation…requiring them to be inspected while naked, have their hair shorn, and have their clothing and baggage fumigated.” (Ngai, 68)
“This legalized importation of Mexican labor meant that migrant workers, once contracted, essentially became a captive workforce under the jurisdiction of the US federal government, and thus a guarantee to the US employers of unlimited “cheap” labor.” (DeGenova, 44)
In fact, the Bracero program ended up facilitating greater flows of undocumented migrant labor, as 4 to 1 migrant workers at the time were undocumented compared to braceros. Why? Employers encouraged migrant laborers to overstay their contracts, and the US government created dehumanizing conditions like migration checkpoints.
This led to a revolving door between deportation and recruitment of migrant laborers. Why deport large numbers of laborers if your economy depends on them?
“Illegality is lived through a palpable sense of deportability” (DeGenova, 42)
By living under constant threat of deportation, migrant laborers are extremely vulnerable and thus exploitable.
One of the most recent and blatant examples of this has been the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on undocumented workers, who are disproportionately essential workers that continued to work in risky conditions throughout the duration of the pandemic. This led to disproportionate numbers of cases and deaths of COVID-19 among undocumented workers. All at a time when these same workers did not qualify for federal relief in the form of stimulus checks.
In April 2021, after massive organizing and a 23-day hunger strike, undocumented and excluded workers won a campaign to receive $2.1 billion fund for undocumented and excluded workers in New York.
3. The Problem of "Criminal Aliens"
The myth that undocumented immigrants are criminals, or that they are deported because of criminal violations, is political rhetoric used to render immigrants economically exploitable and is a strategy of labor discipline.
In fact, the label of criminal alien is a new term that didn’t exist before the 19th century. This label that supports the myth that immigrants are different than others and helps politicians convince the public that they exist or function outside of "normal" American society.
...Migrant “illegality” is a spatialized social condition that is inseparable from the particular ways that Mexican migrants are likewise racialized as “illegal aliens”—invasive violators of the law, incorrigible “foreigners,” subverting the integ-rity of “the nation” and its sovereignty from within the space of the US nation-state. Thus, as a simultaneously spatialized and racialized social condition, migrant “illegality” is also a central feature of the ways that “Mexican”-ness is thereby reconfigured in racialized relation to the hegemonic “national” identity of “American”-ness (De Genova, 2005).
Why would politicians, lawmakers, etc. be motivated to perpetuate this myth?
As stated in the previous section, as the Great Depression prompted massive roundups in the 1930’s, the “Great Recession”- the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression-prompted arrests for the violations of immigration law in the interior. Economic interest, not actual crime, is the cause of these arrests, and of the criminalization of immigration and the term "illegal alien".
In fact, in the face of the labor shortages that the U.S. experienced during World War II, in a dramatic reversal of the mass deportations of the 1930s, it initiated the mass importation that came to be known as the Bracero Program. The program was an administrative measure to institutionalize and regiment the supply of Mexican/migrant labor for US capitalism principally for agriculture, but also for the railroads.
Before 1965, there weren't any quantitative restrictions on “legal” migration from Mexico imposed at the level of statute, and none had ever existed. There had never before been any numerical quota legislated to limit migration from Mexico.
Furthermore, the end of the Bracero Program had been principally accomplished through the restrictionist efforts of organized labor, especially on the part of the predominantly Chicano and Filipino farmworkers movement. Thus, the specific historical conjuncture from which the 1965 amendments emerged was deeply characterized by political crises that manifested themselves as both domestic and international insurgencies of racialized and colonized working peoples. So began a new production of an altogether new kind of “ille-gality” for migrations within the Western Hemisphere, with inordinately severe conse-quences for transnationalized Mexican labor migrants in particular—a kind of transnational fix for political crises of labor subordination (cf. De Genova, 2005).
Looking back, it's clear that economic interest has consistently been the primary driving factor that has influenced the government's perspective on immigration, which has fluctuated greatly throughout history.
It is revealing that the US Border Patrol, from 1924—when it was first created—until 1940, operated under the auspices of the Department of Labor. By the late 1920s, the Border Patrol had very quickly assumed its distinctive role as a special police force for the repres-sion of Mexican workers in the US (Ngai, 2004). Selective enforcement of the law—coordi-nated with seasonal labor demand by US employers—instituted a “revolving door” policy, whereby mass deportations would be concurrent with an overall, large-scale importation of Mexican migrant labor. (Cockcroft, 1986)
The label "criminal alien" or "illegal alien" serves to perpetuate the myth that immigrants are dangerous, harmful, and unwanted, and puts immigrants in a vulnerable position of exploitability.
"In addition to simply designating a juridical status in relation to the US nation-state and its laws of immigration, naturalization, and citizenship, migrant “illegality” signals a specifi-cally spatialized sociopolitical condition. “Illegality” is lived through a palpable sense of deportability—the possibility of deportation, which is to say, the possibility of being re-moved from the space of the US nation-state. The legal production of “illegality” provides an apparatus for sustaining Mexican migrants’ vulnerability and tractability—as workers—whose labor-power, inasmuch as it is deportable, becomes an eminently disposable com-modity." (De Genova, 42)
Furthermore, most undocumented immigrants are detained not as a result of criminal violations, but rather minor offenses such as traffic violations. Undocumented immigrants deported for: Undocumented immigration: 24%; Traffic violations: 23%; Drugs: 21%; Other: 14%
The majority of undocumented immigrants that are arrested and deported are men, while women, who comprise the majority of domestic labor, are less likely to be deported.
The notion of "criminal aliens" is a rhetorical tool that both serves to shape people's perceptions of immigrants and to render them economically exploitable.
4. Immigrants are a Strain on American Resources
The idea that undocumented immigrants are taking social services away from documented citizens is another myth perpetuated by those who want to further the threat of "deportability" to exploit them.
With the advent of the Great Depression of the 1930s, however, the more plainly racist character of Mexican illegalization and deportability became abundantly manifest. Mexi-can migrants and US-born Mexican citizens alike were systematically excluded from em-ployment and economic relief, which were declared the exclusive preserve of “Americans,” who were presumed to be more “deserving.” These abuses culminated in the forcible mass-deportation of at least 415,000 Mexican migrants, as well as many of their US-citizen chil-dren, and the “voluntary” repatriation of 85,000 more (Hoffman, 1974). (De Genova, p. 44)
Deportability and perpetuating the myth of the "criminal alien" serve to render undocumented immigrants more vulnerable. Those undocumented immigrants that are here live under the constant threat of arrest and deportation, and separation from their families in the U.S. For these immigrants, even attempting to access social services is a huge risk. For them, even emergency medical services are often out of reach.
Ironically, many undocumented workers pay into the Social Security system without being able to claim any of the benefits.
The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 was, quite simply, the most punitive legislation to date concerning undocumented migration in par-ticular (cf. Fragomen, 1997, 438; see also Stumpf, this volume; Chacón, this volume). It in-cluded extensive provisions for criminalizing, apprehending, detaining, fining, deporting, and also imprisoning migrants for a wide array of “infractions” and significantly broadened and elaborated the qualitative scope of the law’s production of “illegality” for undocu-mented migrants and others associated with them. It also barred undocumented migrants from receiving a variety of social security benefits and federal student financial aid. In fact, this so-called immigration reform (signed September 30, 1996) was heralded by extensive anti-immigrant stipulations in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act—AEDPA (signed into law on April 24, 1996), as well as in the so-called Welfare Reform Act, passed as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (signed August 22, 1996). The AEDPA entailed an “unprecedented restriction of the constitutional rights and judicial resources traditionally afforded to legal resident aliens” (Solbakken, 1997, 1382). De Genova, p. 52
Undocumented workers, while providing essential services that benefit our nation, are deprived of basic constitutional human rights and protection. By contrast, the employers of undocumented workers are protected under the law and do not face the same risks.
By penalizing access to public services and social welfare benefits, these legislations especially targeted undocumented migrant women and their children.
An ever-growing, already significant, and potentially indispensable segment of the work-ing class within the space of the US nation-state (both in agriculture and in numerous metropolitan areas), Mexican/migrant labor is ubiquitously stigmatized as “illegal,” sub-jected to excessive and extraordinary forms of policing, denied fundamental human rights, and thus is consigned to an always uncertain social predicament, often with little or no re-course to any semblance of protection from the law. De GENOVA, P. 46
As stated earlier, the COVID-19 pandemic saw a disproportionate number of undocumented workers- many of them essential workers- forced to put themselves at risk, suffering illness and death. These same essential workers did not qualify for federal relief in the form of stimulus checks.
The capitalist system is reliant on the labor that undocumented immigrants provide, yet it is keeping those valuable people marginalized, labeling them "criminal aliens" and denying them the most basic rights. These undocumented workers provide essential services and benefits, paying into Social Security and other systems, and yet they're denied fundamental rights and freedoms.
Sources
Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press, 2012.
Fund Excluded Workers, n.d. "Essential and Excluded." Accessed May 10, 2021. http://www.fundexcludedworkers.org
De Genova, Nicholas. “The Legal Production of Mexican/Migrant ‘Illegality’” in Governing Immigration through Crime: A Reader. Eds. Julie A. Dowling and Jonathan Xavier Inda. Stanford: Stanford University Press. (Pp.41-55)
Golash-Boza, Tanya Maria. 2015. Deported: Immigrant Policing, Disposable Labor, and Global Capitalism. New York: New York University Press.
Jordan, Miriam. 2021. "Migrants Separated From Their Children Will Be Allowed Into U.S.." New York Times, May 3, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/03/us/migrant-family-separation.html
Ngai, Mae M. 2005. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Oppel Jr., Richard A. and Jugal K. Patel. 2019. "One Lawyer, 194 Felony Cases, and No Time." The New York Times, January 31, 2019. (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/01/31/us/public-defender-case-loads.html).
Stellin, Susan. 2019. "Is the 'War on Drugs' Over? Arrest Statistics Say No." The New York Times, November 5, 2019. (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/05/upshot/is-the-war-on-drugs-over-arrest-statistics-say-no.html).
Timeline. 2017. "Watch: Ronald Reagan and his ‘War on Drugs.’" Timeline, June 26, 2017. (https://timeline.com/ronald-nancy-reagan-war-on-drugs-crack-baby-just-say-no-cia-communism-racial-injustice-fcfeadb3548d).
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