Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"One of CHOICE’s Outstanding Academic Titles for 2017"
"Honorable Mention for the 2018 Frederick Jackson Turner Award, Organization of American Historians"
"A vital reminder that reactionary ideas gestate at the local level before they get nationalized. And, with enough organizing, so too might emancipatory ones."
---Dan Berger, Truthout"This extraordinary book analyzes changing state-level policies toward drugs, welfare, and incarceration in the 1970s in the US, revealing connections between welfare and imprisonment as institutions of social regulation. . . . Drawing on statements and letters from officials, activists, prisoners, welfare recipients, and concerned citizens, Kohler-Hausmann illuminates the often contradictory and always contingent dialogues through which 'tough' policies were legitimized and enacted. . . . The inclusion of so many voices leads to a lively and engaging read." * Choice *
Table of ContentsList of Figures ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 Part I Pushers 29 1 Addicts into Citizens: The Tribulations of New York's Treatment Regime 33 2 The Public versus the Pushers: Enacting New York's Rockefeller Drug Laws 79 II Welfare Queens 121 Three The Welfare Mess: Reimagining the Social Contract 125 4 Welfare Is a Cancer: Economic Citizenship in the Age of Reagan 163 III Criminals 207 5 Unmaking the Rehabilitative Ideal 211 6 Going Berserk for Punishment: A Prelude to Mass Incarceration 250 Conclusion Forging an "Underclass" 289 Index 299
