Governing through crime : how the war on crime transformed American democracy and created a culture of fear /

This book examines the dramatic shift in the way social problems are confronted in contemporary America. In the New Deal era, social problems were regarded as imperfections in an otherwise well-functioning society. Currently, social problems are treated as the actions of evil agents that need to be rooted out and destroyed. Today, the author maintains, the most pressing social problems are understood as issues of crime, with government waging "war" on drugs and other social evils. The author's term for these new practices is "governing through crime." In this important new book, Simon traces the rise of governing through crime to the collapse of the New Deal approach to social problems; welfare has been replaced by "warfare"--hence the succession of ever-widening "war and crime" campaigns. This powerful book demonstrates just how corrosive to a healthy society this approach has been. It divides communities, undermines institutional integrity, and fosters cynicism. It provides powerful and emotive slogans successful for mobilizing political support, but little else. It provides no basis for serious social policy. Every thoughtful citizen should confront the arguments that are so lucidly presented in this book. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers, upper-division undergraduates through practitioners. M. M. Feeley University of California, Berkeley