Forging a punishing state: The punitive turn in U.S. criminal and social policy, 1968-1980

Kohler-Hausmann, Julilly

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Description

Title

Forging a punishing state: The punitive turn in U.S. criminal and social policy, 1968-1980

Author(s)

Kohler-Hausmann, Julilly

Issue Date

2011-01-21T22:52:36Z

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Pleck, Elizabeth H.

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Leff, Mark H.

Committee Member(s)

• Barrett, James R.
• Pleck, Elizabeth H.
• Roediger, David R.
• Lang, Clarence E.

Department of Study

History

Discipline

History

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• Welfare Reform
• Political History (1970s)
• Welfare Fraud
• Rockefeller Drug Laws
• Criminal Sentencing
• Determinate Sentencing
• U.S. History (Modern)
• Public Policy
• Punitive Policy

Abstract

This dissertation examines two intertwined recent phenomena: welfare state retrenchment and burgeoning carceral institutions. Through research on seminal struggles over welfare, drug, and criminal sentencing policy, it chronicles a profound shift during the 1970s where programs that championed punishment, expulsion, and retribution supplanted policies that stressed rehabilitation and social reintegration. Specifically, it examines New York’s adoption of the nation’s harshest drug penalties in the Rockefeller Drug Laws; campaigns in Illinois and California designed to control “welfare abuses” through criminalization and community surveillance; and California’s passage of the first major determinate sentencing law, which abandoned rehabilitation as an aim of incarceration. The project explores legislators’ motivations for these policies, their fervent public support, and the constrained agency of prisoners, welfare recipients, and drug offenders. These legislative battles served a productive cultural role in rationalizing new economic conditions, demarcating membership in the polity, and redefining state legitimacy and responsibility.

Graduation Semester

2010-12

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/18634

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2010 Julilly Kohler-Hausmann

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