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

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.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

History

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2011

Author dc:creator

• Kohler-Hausmann, Julilly

Contributors dc:contributor

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

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

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2010 Julilly Kohler-Hausmann

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

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

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/18634