of color. When presented with statistics that suggest consistent drug-use rates, some amend the argument to account for this discrepancy. They suggest that Whites are simply more discreet in that they commit the crime within the confines of their homes instead of on public streets. As a corollary to this argument, others then suggest that one of the reasons why crime, such as drug usage, is committed openly in communities of color is that these communities tolerate crime, treating the commission of crimes as a rite of passage for young men of color. Despite the lack of evidence to support such claims, these views have gained surprising traction in the public debate about crime.
The media may be partly to blame for the general acceptance of this view. Media depictions historically have powerfully influenced the development of public opinion, and have provided a launching pad for public policy. Indeed, the coverage of a criminal case or a victim’s story often leads to the introduction of legislation in the name of a victim. Media coverage of crime has often led people to believe that crime rates, violent crime, or drug crime was on the increase even when the reverse was true.
In the mid-1980s, crack cocaine exploded onto the streets and into the national media.20 The media described crack as a “demon” drug that posed dangers that differentiated it from any other drug: it was highly potent, was instantly addictive, and encouraged systemic violence, they claimed, even though these claims would later prove false.21 By the end of 1986, the major daily and weekly news magazines had presented the nation with more than one thousand stories in which crack figured prominently.22 Network television coverage mirrored the print media. The intensive coverage included CBS’s “48 Hours on Crack Street,” a prime-time presentation that was one of the highestrated documentaries in television history.23 The media stories emphasized certain supposed features of the crack cocaine story: that the high addiction rate of the drug caused users to commit crimes to support their habits and that youths were being lured into the crack-selling business. Most importantly, the stories focused on the violence associated with attempts to control crack distribution networks. Finally, the stories had a significant racial edge.
A systematic study24 of drug war coverage in the New York Times, USA Today, the Washington Post, Time, and Newsweek from the late ‘80s and early ‘90s revealed that the print media consistently identified African Americans as the “enemies” that the drug war intended to target. Network television was no different. In a study of network television news in 1990 and 1991,25 it was shown that reporters regularly stressed the theme of “us against them” in news stories, with the “us” referring to White middle-class Americans and the demonized other being typically reserved for African Americans and a few corrupted White individuals.26 In addition to the images on the covers of newspapers and leading the evening news, the War on Drugs generally and crack cocaine in particular allowed the media to link drugs with race, and African Americans with deviance.27 This focus on race and crime fed the public’s fears and helped to embed the impression that most dangerous criminals were people of color. Newsweek boldly declared the threat that White Americans secretly feared: “Crack ha[d] captured the ghetto” and was “inching its way into the suburbs.”28 The media exacerbated White concern by warning of the potential for crack to seep out of the inner city and into their neighborhoods.29 By 1986, the media had labeled crack the most dangerous drug and had decried the outbreak of a national “crack epidemic.”30
At the same time, popular culture adopted the images of people of color as drug dealers and leaders of violent criminal drug syndicates. Prime-time television featured an increasing number of police shows with drug themes and people of color in the role of kingpin or petty criminal. This attached a certain stigma to all people of color. Because of the profound segregation in housing patterns in this country, research suggests that opinions about people of color held by Whites are often based upon images on television.31 Dorothy Roberts argues that the dominant society is not appalled at the racial disparities in arrests and prison sentences because they believe that African American people are dangerous.32 The media portrays the drug problem as one that primarily exists in communities of color, and the racial disparities in the prison system are viewed, if noticed at all, as reflecting reality rather than reflecting overenforcement or discrimination. The media’s barrage of coverage and images of urban youths involved in drug dealing, coupled with high-profile events such as the death of the Boston Celtics basketball team’s number one college draft pick in 1986, Len Bias, caused politicians to enter the fray.33
Politicians came into the criminal justice debate riding the “tough on crime” bandwagon. They used images that the media had provided. They focused on urban youth, with thinly veiled racial attacks. Using terms like “super-predators,” both Democratic and Republican politicians used front-page and television evening news stories to support their political agendas. Politicians focused on a number of areas, but drug laws and drug convictions were the primary targets. According to the Sentencing Project, one in three Black men between the ages of twenty and twenty-nine is under correctional supervision or control, and approximately 14 percent of Black men have lost their right to vote due to felony convictions.34 These crusades created a range of unrelated sanctions, such as the mandatory suspension of the driver’s license of anyone convicted of a drug offense (even if no car was involved in the crime), but not of rapists, robbers, or murderers. This not only seems illogical but further exemplifies the unbalanced focus on drugs. Politicians also embraced mandatory minimum sentencing for drug offenders, adding to the incarceration explosion that took place in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
A. The Politics of Race, Crime, and Reentry
The media’s intense focus on race and crime and its interpretation of the “tough on crime” electoral messages of the 1980s and 1990s helped forge a new political direction for the country.35 This direction focused on increasingly punitive sanctions for people of color. A number of researchers have examined the mass media’s role in creating and fueling the focus on crime and the ensuing response of overincarceration,36 and a number of leading theorists, including David Garland, have grappled with the process by which this punitive approach has crept into popular and political language.37 Particularly during the Reagan/Bush administrations, crime and crime control became the political capital through which politicians assumed and maintained electoral power. When this political focus was coupled with media attention on state and local crime issues, the public became willing and vocal supporters of policies that provided some semblance of controlling the crime problem. The expansion of imprisonment became a primary vehicle to accomplish that, especially at the federal level.38
The rush to embrace crime control as a model occurred as the public clamored for answers to the recurring crime problem and as the perception grew that nothing could be done to change the behavior of offenders. Research in the 1970s began to suggest that rehabilitation was limited in its effectiveness as a treatment for addressing criminal behavior. Although first used in relation to prison-based treatment, this research was later used to characterize probation, parole, and other aspects of the criminal justice system.39 Increasingly, sanctions focused on prison as the primary punishment for drug offenses.40 In the directional shift toward custody, we find the seeds for the current crisis in reentry. The 1980s marked the declaration of the War on Drugs and its intensification.41 In fear of being perceived as soft on crime, politicians moved to increase penalties, incarceration, and collateral sanctions with little or no research as to the long-term consequences of these policies.42
Until the 1970s, the focus of criminal justice intervention seemed to be rehabilitation. But in the ‘70s, an array of news stories, features, and research followed up on Robert Martinson’s suggestion in 1974 that “nothing works” in penal rehabilitation efforts.43 This sparked a major retreat from rehabilitation and treatment in prison settings, both in policy work and by therapists themselves. Although recent studies suggest that prison-based treatment can be effective, we have not witnessed an expansion of substance-abuse services.44 The constant barrage by the media of stories
