>What I was arguing was that the threat posed by the poor to the
>ruling class is negligible, so the ruling class does not need to use
>the prison system to keep the poor in line.
Ronald Reagan would disagree. This is from the creative society (I just noticed that the title is in lower case) a book by Reagan published in 1968 when he was governor of California. .
This is from Chapter 4, entitled "Crime--- 1968"
"As we look at the many problems facing law enforcement, we cannot afford to overlook the fact that mass criminal violations and mob violence are increasingly endangering our communities. Some euphemistically call this "civil disobedience." It is nothing more nor less than deliberate and premeditated violation of the law by groups of people. Protest that takes the form of criminal violations, leads to violence, mob rule, and ultimately to anarchy, where no man has either freedom or rights.
Those who go about the country forecasting "a long hot summer" and predicting where the next riots will take place contribute to disturbances and disorders because some of the more irresponsible elements seem to feel an obligation to justify these predictions.
I am also a little tired of those who proclaim that we must pour so much money into a community program, or enact this or that social legislation, or else, we face a wave of riots and unrest. Government must be responsible to the needs of its citizens... But it must not bow to threats of violence which amount to political extortion."
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Christian Parenti argues that the ruling class was scared shitless by the wave of '60s riots and by no means considered the threat negligible. And if it isn't initially clear what "groups of people" Reagan is referring to, he clarifies it with his reference to "a long hot summer."
>What you wrote above seems to imply is that the ruling class uses
>the fear of crime etc. to keep the middle class in line - which is a
>very different argument
Depends on how you slice it. It's killing two birds with one stone.
>To sum it up, I think the push for punitive policies against the
>lower class come mainly not from the upper class - because the upper
>class has little to fear from the lower class
Again, I think Parenti's right, they were scared shitless. And a close look at the high-end security industry indicates they still are.
>There are many reasons why the middle and working classes push for
>such policies
The push for these policies started at the top. Parenti sums it up right here:
>Lyndon Johnson, in 1967 proposes legislation, that in '68 passes the
>house of representatives as D.C. is literally burning for the second
>time. Martin Luther King has just been assassinated, there is
>massive riots, there is like smoke billowing over the congress and
>these guys are designing this piece of legislation which creates the
>Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, the LEAA, this huge
>federal bureaucracy, which over the next ten years redistributes
>about a billion dollars a year to local police to retool and retrain
>american law enforcement and the judicial system and prisons, to
>some extent, to deal with the crisis of an incipient revolution
>which is what they had on their hands at the time.
>
>So the LEAA's intervention is when we begin to see the contours of
>the criminal justice system as we know it today.
>Therefore, one needs to take a much broader view than simply blaming
>the ruling class.
That's your hobby horse. I haven't heard anyone simply blaming the ruling class.
>The ruling class would not be able to hold its hegemonic position
>and grip on public policy without consent of the middle and working classes.
A minute ago you said it was the middle class pushing for these policies. Now you say they're consenting.
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