Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T05:52:42.731Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From the Vagrancy Law Regime to the Carceral State

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Christopher Lowen Agee
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The recent burst of scholarship on policing in 1960s America has produced two literatures that have often spoken past one another. One literature has taken a presentist perspective and has found in the 1960s the roots of the current carceral state. A second literature has characterized the 1960s as a period in which a century-old policing system collapsed. This essay uses Risa Goluboff's Vagrant Nation to tie these two literatures together, arguing that the terms on which Papachristou (1972) tore down the “vagrancy law regime” prompted and channeled the growth of the carceral state. The elimination of vagrancy law encouraged the state to expand the institutional and political reach of the police, ultimately helping produce a police power that was more intractable.

Type
Review Essay
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , Fall 2018 , pp. 1658 - 1668
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Agee, Christopher. The Streets of San Francisco: Policing and the Creation of a Cosmopolitan Liberal Politics, 1950–1972. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Agee, Christopher. “Freedom, Policing and Urban Liberalism.” In The SAGE Handbook of Global Policing, edited by Ben, Bradford, Beatrice, Jauregui, Ian, Loader, and Jonny, Steinberg, 279–99. London: SAGE Publications, 2016.Google Scholar
Bachrach, Marion. “The Decoy Policemen: Walking with Fear.” Philadelphia Inquirer July 21 (1974): 6A.Google Scholar
California State Assembly Interim Committee on Judiciary, Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights. A Public Hearing of the Assembly Interim Committee on Judiciary, Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights, held in San Francisco, CA, July 28–29. Sacramento, CA: Interim Committee on Judiciary, 1958.Google Scholar
De Martini, George. “Confidential.” Little City News (San Francisco) December 2 (1950): 1.Google Scholar
Felker-Kantor, Max. “‘Kid Thugs Are Spreading Terror Through the Streets’: Youth, Crime, and the Expansion of the Juvenile Justice System in Los Angeles, 1973–1980.” Journal of Urban History (2016): 1–15. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0096144215623260 Google Scholar
Fleeson, Lucinda. “In FOP Election, Garvey Is the Issue.” Philadelphia Inquirer, March 22 (1982): B1.Google Scholar
Fogelson, Robert. Big-City Police. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Gibbons, Thomas. “Hurst Suit Seeks 700 More Officers on Force.” Philadelphia Inquirer September 23 (1988): B5.Google Scholar
Goluboff, Risa. Vagrant Nation: Police Power, Constitutional Change, and the Making of the 1960s. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.Google Scholar
Harcourt, Bernard. Illusion of Order: The False Promise of Broken Windows Policing. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Harris, Harry. “3 Shows Go from Saturday Night to Limbo.” Philadelphia Inquirer October 11 (1979): 8D.Google Scholar
Hepp, Christopher. “Philadelphia Rates Low in Pay to Police Chief.” Philadelphia Inquirer December 22 (1985): F1.Google Scholar
Hepp, Christopher, William, Sutton, and Tom, Infield. “Goode Backs Findings of Police Panel.” Philadelphia Inquirer March 12 (1987): A1.Google Scholar
Hinton, Elizabeth. From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016.Google Scholar
Kohler-Hausman, Julilly. Getting Tough: Welfare and Imprisonment in 1970s America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017.Google Scholar
Leary, Mike, and William, Marimow. “False Arrests by Squad Alleged.” Philadelphia Inquirer February 1 (1981a): 1.Google Scholar
Leary, Mike, and William, Marimow. “D.A. Won't Prosecute Police Team.” Philadelphia Inquirer September 2 (1981b): 4.Google Scholar
Leary, Mike, and William, Marimow. “In One Case, ‘The Mugger’ Proved His Innocence—and Won $33,000.” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 2 (1981c): 4.Google Scholar
Marimow, William, and Mike, Leary. “U.S. Grand Jury Indicts Four on ‘Grandpop’ Team.” Philadelphia Inquirer September 11 (1981): 1.Google Scholar
Meyers, Dan. “Goode Wants More Police, Cleaner City.” Philadelphia Inquirer March 9 (1989): A1.Google Scholar
Murakawa, Naomi. The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Osman, Suleiman. The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity in Postwar New York. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Philadelphia Inquirer. “Editorial—Police Misconduct Demands Discipline and Prosecution.” Philadelphia Inquirer February 4 (1981): 10.Google Scholar
Power, Edward. “Union Achieved, Hurst Leaves Fray.” Philadelphia Inquirer September 18 (1988): F3.Google Scholar
Roberts, Chris. “Decoy Officer Natural Bait for the Street Shark.” Philadelphia Inquirer February 28 (1980): B13.Google Scholar
Schneider, Eric. “Dirty Work: Police and Community Relations and the Limits of Liberalism in Postwar Philadelphia.” Journal of Urban History 2 (2017): 1–19. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0096144217705497 Google Scholar
Simon, Jonathan. “Policing After Civil Rights: The Legacy of Police Opposition to the Civil Rights Movement for Contemporary American Policing.” In The SAGE Handbook of Global Policing, edited by Ben, Bradford, Beatrice, Jauregui, Ian, Loader, and Jonny, Steinberg, 371–88. London, UK: SAGE Publications, 2016 Google Scholar
Sklansky, David. Democracy and the Police Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Stewart-Winter, Timothy. Queer Clout: Chicago and the Rise of Gay Politics. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.Google Scholar
Terry, Robert. “2 Men Shot and Killed by Police.” Philadelphia Inquirer September 6 (1979): 1.Google Scholar
Thompson, Heather Ann. “Why Incarceration Matters: Rethinking Crisis, Decline, and Transformation in Postwar American History.” Journal of American History 97, no. 3 (2010): 703–34.Google Scholar
Williams, Vanessa. “Police Receive 11% Raise.” Philadelphia Inquirer July 20 (1988): A1.Google Scholar

Cases Cited

Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville, 405 U.S. 156 (1972).Google Scholar
Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968).Google Scholar