> On Apr 1, 2009, at 3:36 PM, Miles Jackson wrote:
>
>> Let's put Foucault's point bluntly: the purpose of the prison system
>> is to create criminals and expand various social practices and
>> discourse to "control" criminality. As far as I can see, the U. S.
>> prison system is a wonderful case study that illustrates Foucault's
>> point.
>
> I find this a seductive explanation, but just how does it happen? Did
> Nixon sit down and plan it out when he unleashed the war on crime? And
> what about the role of politicians pandering to the "get tough" crowd
> of voters? In the U.S., the incarceration boom had pretty broad
> popular support.
There was, in reality, an explosion of violent street crime that started around 1960. It reached a peak sometime in the late 70's and plateaued there until the early 90's. Then it collapsed and now we're back to 1960's levels. You can't blame Foucault for not having all that data handy, but I would guess those data would have to factor into any explanation, Foucauldian or otherwise, of the politics of prisons in the postwar U.S.
SA