On 29 March 2008, Zimbabwe’s ninth poll took place. Zanu PF felt insecure being in power, legitimised by only 47 and 19.5 per cent in the 2005 parliamentary and senate election, respectively. Following changes to the Constitution of Zimbabwe in September 2007, the electorate was asked to vote for a set of four political representatives for: president, parliament, senate and local government council. The 2008 socio-economic contexts showed that the electoral playing field and election processes and outcomes echoed excesses of previous flawed elections. The 29 March and 27 June 2008 elections were critical watershed moments in that while the March elections were the most peaceful (and even enjoyable) since the genesis of Zimbabwe’s mega-crisis in 2000, the June run-off will go down in history as the bloodiest since independence. The pre-poll arena for the harmonised elections had hallmarks of a rigged election, especially the use of state-financed patronage, poor voter education, the decrepit state of the voters’ roll and the violent pronouncements by members of the military-security sector, all of which skewed the playing field in favour of the incumbent regime.

The Unity Accord sealed between Mugabe and Nkomo and their supporters in 1987 not only drastically reduced violence against the Ndebele, but it also ended dissident activity generating a totally different election framework in the 1990 elections. Twenty seats reserved for whites were abolished. In 1989, Edgar Tekere, a former Zanu PF party stalwart disenchanted by Mugabe’s leadership style formed the urban-based Zimbabwe Unity Movement (ZUM). ZUM and independent candidates from within Zanu PF were not evidence of a gradual decline in elite cohesion. Zanu PF’s political stranglehold in the country directed violence at civil society. Pent-up intolerance of political opposition draped in a dictatorship outfit replaced ethnic conflict in driving violence. From the dominant power politics analysis, a social narrative approach shows the resilience of ethnicity, nationalism, loyalty, legitimacy and unity as explanatory factors for violence. However, Zanu PF also used paramilitary organisations to maintain or regain control and the abuse of legislative and judicial powers to stay in power. The 1990 general elections took place from 28 to 30 March, with many unresolved teething problems, including persistent division and weakness in the opposition. Five parties competed in the election; ZUM, the UANC, NDU, Zanu-Ndonga and Zanu PF.

Police are the gatekeepers to the criminal justice system. Without police officers investigating offenses and bringing cases to prosecutors, criminal courts would have little to do. Thus, the decisions made by police are critical to understanding Mass Incarceration.

Following the Torch operations, de Gaulle faced an escalating imperial crisis in the Levant. Indigenous nationalist groups demanded that de Gaulle follow through on his independence promises. These demands placed the British-Gaullist relationship under increasing pressure. This chapter explores the first of two major crises that erupted in the Levant between 1943 and 1945. Following nationalist victories in the November 1943 elections, French colonial official Jean Helleu arrested the newly elected Lebanese leadership in a bid to preserve French influence.

The arrests were criticised in the local, regional and global press. In the Arab world, the Egyptian press brandished the Atlantic Charter’s promises of the right of self-determination, much as anti-imperial nationalists had drawn on American President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points in 1919. In Britain, the press called on its own officials to back independence demands to uphold British honour, which had been compromised thanks to French intransigence.

This episode also highlighted the contradictions between maintaining British regional prestige and preserving the public face of the British-Gaullist relationship. British Foreign Office officials argued that intervening on the side of the Levantine nationalists would jeopardise British influence in Egypt, Palestine and Iraq. Publicly backing the French position, however, would destroy British regional influence.

This chapter reconstructs Haitian and Dominican life along the border in the years before the 1937 Genocide. It addresses the history of the old border by studying new laws and new forms of enforcement that changed border life during the 1920s and 1930s. It draws from records of migratory and non-migratory arrests of ethnic Haitians. Offenses included contraband, illegal border-crossing, sanitary laws, theft, and failure to produce national identity documents. It argues that ethnic Haitians were disproportionately targeted for the enforcement of these laws and the pattern of enforcement reflected a rising tide of official persecution. Far from being a harmonious, open, bicultural border, the chapter shows that border and migratory enforcement grew over the course of the 1920s and 1930s and the new patterns of enforcement were changing everyday life in places where people had once crossed freely. Struggles over claims to land, livestock, and crops are recorded in the remarkable testimonies from ethnic Haitians who spoke boldly against their persecution in Dominican courts. Through an analysis of excuse-making, the chapter also details the strategies ethnic Haitians employed as they struggled to maintain old ways of life amidst news legal forms of ethnic and racial discrimination.

The chapter covers the arrests and detention of the conspirators, the coercion used to force some to testify against their colleagues, preparations for the trials and the selection of the juries, public reactions to the news, identities of the men freed without prosecution.

1947–8 saw fateful decisions by the MCP and the British, with these interweaving to create a spiral towards violence. This chapter traces the ‘long cold war’ that preceded and framed these events, the decision-making by both sides and how they combined both with international communism and local events at Sungei Siput to spark a full-scale insurection and counterinsurgency.

“Punishing Disrespect,” bemoans the loss of free speech. Here’s another constitutional right that I dare not share with the young people at risk for police stops: their First Amendment right to tell an officer what they think about his harassment. If the Supreme Court was right when it stated that the “freedom of individuals verbally to oppose or challenge police action without thereby risking arrest is one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police state,” then stop-and-frisk threatens our very republic. Police routinely punish disrespect. Masculinity theorists describe the policing profession as hypermasculine and resistant to change. Coercing respect lies deep within police culture, and punishments range from arrest to brutality. Just as wolf whistles and other forms of sexual harassment on the streets remind young women that they don’t control their bodies, repeated stops and frisks convey a similar message to young men of color. The culture of coercion underpins all the aggressive policing stories throughout this book and makes it almost impossible to exercise rights during police stops. Any exercise of any right might be viewed as disrespect.

Today, the full scope of liberty-infringing pregnancy interventions, including threats of arrest and other coercive conduct that does not necessarily lead to criminal punishment, is unknown. There is no national database, and any state-level record-keeping related to mothers prosecuted under the guise of fetal protection can be difficult to access. Reporters like Nina Martin file “multiple information requests to identify” those arrested under child endangerment laws and child abuse statutes, which now apply to fetuses in a number of states. Vigilant investigation in Alabama revealed dramatic undercounting by “more than three times the number previously identified.” Evidence of arrests and prosecutions gathered by reporters, as well as national and international advocacy organizations such as National Advocates for Pregnant Women and Amnesty International, indicate the numbers of women vulnerable to pregnancy policing are on the rise. New prosecutions of pregnant women for acts of feticide and attempted feticide illustrate this shift; such prosecutions simply did not occur before.

Chapter 2 examines the practice of internment, from initial arrests through to the closure of the camps. It details how large numbers of internees were arrested through mandatory registrations, raids, or targeted or more random arrests. It then charts how, and how quickly, they were categorized, processed, and released or transferred to another status. The chapter shows that the western powers began releasing significant numbers in 1946, whereas the Soviets did not until 1948. Nevertheless, the chapter argues that the nature and even the speed of internees’ processing differed less than is often assumed. In all zones, internment was distinct from formalized denazification procedures and only a small proportion of internees were tried for individual crimes. Many more were released through administrative processes and various amnesties, often for political reasons. Soviet processes differed primarily in not affording internees opportunities to plead their case or defend themselves with due process. The chapter’s final section confirms the importance of political and broadly defined security considerations in the western zones by discussing the treatment of internees and their families in the context of French deportations from the Saarland in 1946–7 and a British settlement for ‘dangerous’ militarists and Nazis in 1947–8.