Featured Reviews
ELIZABETH HINTON. From the War on Poverty to the War on
Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America. Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2016. Pp. 449.
$29.95.
Earlier this decade, Heather Ann Thompson complained
that mass incarceration was “largely ignored” (“Why Mass
Incarceration Matters: Rethinking Crisis, Decline, and
Transformation in Postwar American History,” Journal of
American History 97 [December 2010]: 703–734, here 703)
by historians of the post–World War II United States.
That is no longer true. The past few years have witnessed a
surge of scholarship explaining the remarkable growth in
the U.S. prison population and its political, economic, and
racial effects. A stellar 2015 special issue of the Journal
of American History showcased the work of some of the
best historians in what has rapidly become one of the dis-
cipline’s most exciting subfields. This work has obvious
contemporary relevance, as Black Lives Matter and
other groups protest mass incarceration, unchecked po-
lice violence, and other failings of the criminal justice
system. At its best, this new scholarship demonstrates
how historians who are morally engaged yet profession-
ally rigorous can bring the past to bear upon the issues of
the present.
Elizabeth Hinton’s From the War on Poverty to the War
on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America is
a significant contribution to this literature. It explores
how federal policymakers from Lyndon Johnson to
Ronald Reagan waged a “war on crime” that included ag-
gressive policing and surveillance as well as mass incar-
ceration. Hinton argues that “the expansion of the car-
ceral state should be understood as the federal govern-
ment’s response to the demographic transformation of
the nation at mid-century, the gains of the African Amer-
ican civil rights movement, and the persistent threat of ur-
ban rebellion” (11). The author highlights, in particular,
the role that liberals played in supporting such measures.
In her account, the War on Crime was a wholly bipartisan
project. Hinton offers insightful analysis of how the War
on Poverty intertwined with the War on Crime and how
crime policy from Richard Nixon to Reagan built on
structures put in place by Johnson.
Readers will find much in Hinton’s book to admire. It
is thoroughly researched and beautifully written. It would
make for a great course adoption even at the undergradu-
ate level. Hinton provides a compelling case for the need
to integrate crime policy into our larger understandings
of American political history since the 1960s. Her narra-
tive arc “from the War on Poverty to the War on Crime”
complements the more traditional trajectory “from the
War on Poverty to the War on Welfare” (Michael B.
Katz, The Undeserving Poor: From the War on Poverty to
the War on Welfare [1989]). However, dating the War on
Crime from the Johnson administration distorts our un-
derstanding of Great Society liberalism and the origins of
mass incarceration. Hinton’s book also illustrates some
broader limitations typical of current literature on mass
incarceration, namely its focus on racial explanations to
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
795
the exclusion of other factors and its failure to grapple
with the reality of crime.
Crime policy has often been relegated to the margins
in accounts of Johnson’s domestic policy. Hinton shows
that it deserves a central place. In March 1965, fourteen
months after Johnson had declared a “war on poverty,”
he proclaimed a “war on crime.” Johnson viewed the two
wars as interconnected: while anti-poverty measures were
necessary to attack the root causes of crime, expanded
and more professional policing were required to address
its immediate threat. To that end, Johnson introduced
the Law Enforcement Assistance Act, passed in 1965
without opposition. It established “a direct role for the
federal government in local police operations, court
systems, and state prisons for the first time in American
history” (1–2). The act established the Office of Law
Enforcement Assistance (replaced in 1968 by the Law
Enforcement Assistance Administration) to support po-
lice training. Johnson also formed a national commission
to conduct a comprehensive review of policing. Reporting
in 1967, the commission “advanced the punitive turn”
(100) by endorsing aggressive policing and surveillance of
low-income areas. In 1968, Johnson signed the Safe
Streets Act, which set aside $400 million “to promote the
modernization of law enforcement and to help each state
build its respective criminal justice apparatus” (2). Even
police departments “found guilty of grave civil rights vio-
lations and discrimination charges” (95) received assis-
tance. As Hinton wryly observes, the legislation offered a
job creation program for police, nearly all white, that was
denied to poor African Americans.
Hinton argues that Great Society programs paved the
way for the more punitive policies introduced by Nixon
and his successors. The Johnson administration estab-
lished new administrative capacities that Nixon put to
more extreme ends. Hinton shows that policing filled the
void left when War on Poverty programs were cut. In
fact, “neighborhood police stations were installed inside
public housing projects in the very spaces vacated by com-
munity action programs” (98).
However, Hinton overreaches when she claims that the
“extraordinary expansion of the urban police forces,
court cases, and prison populations during the War on
Drugs should be understood as the culmination of the
[Great Society’s] domestic policies” (4, my emphasis).
Certainly, the failure of Great Society liberals to address
adequately the economic, social, and political crises of ur-
ban African Americans was a precondition of mass incar-
ceration, but that hardly means that mass incarceration
was the “fulfillment” of Johnson’s policies (4). Hinton’s
reasoning is teleological. Had Robert Kennedy been
elected president in 1968 and enacted the massive invest-
ment in urban African American neighborhoods called
for by the 1968 Kerner Report, would we say that his
JUNE 2017
796 Featured Reviews
measures were the culmination of Johnson’s more limited
anti-poverty policies?
From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime is limited
by its focus on federal crime policy. In fact, crime re-
mained mainly a matter for states and localities. Even to-
day, extraordinary geographical disparities in police prac-
tices and incarceration rates exist even between states
with significant urban African American populations. Fed-
eral officials were never the main actors in crime policy.
For example, the Law Enforcement Assistance Adminis-
tration (LEAA) spent $7.5 billion between 1969 and
1980, yet this never amounted to more than 5 percent of
state budgets on criminal justice (Michael B. Katz, Why
Don’t American Cities Burn [2011], 91). An undeclared
“war on crime” was being fought at the local level long
before Johnson proclaimed it. Many of the policies Hin-
ton identifies as increasing surveillance of African Amer-
ican neighborhoods predated the War on Poverty. The
LEAA helped them spread but did not originate them.
In fact, a central defect of Johnson’s crime policy was its
reliance on local authorities. The War on Poverty re-
vealed a similar flaw after local officials insisted on con-
trolling community action programs.
Hinton misinterprets the War on Crime as resulting
from the “pathologist” ideas of federal officials: “a set
of assumptions about African Americans, poverty, and
crime that in time became a causal and consensus-build-
ing force . . . [by which] policy-makers interpreted black
urban poverty as pathological—as the product of individ-
ual and cultural ‘deficiencies’” (3). In fact, there were nu-
merous pathologists, from Kenneth Bancroft Clark to the
National Urban League, who saw pathology as the conse-
quence of inequality, not its cause. They called for massive
social investment rather than punitive crime measures.
Many policymakers certainly held racist assumptions,
unconsciously or not, that led them to accept that crime
resulted from black pathology. Their actions, however,
were more influenced by power dynamics, a factor mini-
mized by Hinton. For a political history, From the War on
Poverty to the War on Crime is remarkably short on poli-
tics. It largely ignores public opinion, including the views
of African Americans, many of whom advocated for more
aggressive policing. It overlooks the political contests that
produced Johnson’s policies and mostly neglects the legis-
lative process. For example, the Safe Streets Act of 1968
owed much to the sweeping Republican success in the
1966 midterm elections. Johnson signed it reluctantly.
Hardly a “liberal” law, it reflected the conservative pre-
emption of liberal priorities.
Like Naomi Murakawa (The First Civil Right: How Lib-
erals Built Prison America [2014]), Hinton holds liberals
and conservatives equally responsible for mass incarcera-
tion. But missing from Hinton’s account is any clear defi-
nition of “liberal.” We cannot equate any action of a
Democratic politician with “liberalism,” a distinct politi-
cal philosophy with roots in the New Deal and civil rights
movement that was never in fact hegemonic in the Demo-
cratic Party. In fact, many liberals offered alternatives to
punitive crime policies. Hinton is mistaken that “inci-
dents of collective violence during the second half of the
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
1960s moved liberal sympathizers away from structural
critiques of poverty and support for community action
programs” (12). In fact, many liberals stepped up their
support for structural solutions to poverty during this pe-
riod. Americans for Democratic Action, the quintessen-
tial liberal organization, endorsed civil rights leader Ba-
yard Rustin’s $100 billion social-democratic Freedom
Budget. George McGovern ran on a policy of guaranteed
annual incomes. To be sure, liberal policies inadequately
addressed concentrated urban racial and class inequality.
As Hinton correctly observes, few liberals fully criticized
the racist practices of local police forces. Nevertheless, it
is perverse to argue that liberals were equally as complicit
as conservatives in mass incarceration.
Hinton also neglects alternative approaches to crime
policy that would have lent greater contingency and nu-
ance to her narrative. The prison reform movement,
which called for moratoriums on prison construction and
alternatives to incarceration, crested in the early 1970s. It
had a mainstream wing as well as a radical one. For exam-
ple, in 1972, country musician Johnny Cash testified be-
fore a U.S. Senate subcommittee on prison reform. Hin-
ton also overlooks the role of the judiciary, which did at
least as much to define a liberal position on crime during
the 1960s as did the other two branches of government.
The Warren Court’s landmark decisions expanding the
rights of criminal defendants sparked the ire of conserva-
tive “law and order” proponents.
While the aggressive policing of urban African Ameri-
cans built on local policies that predated the War on Pov-
erty, the mass incarceration boom clearly occurred after
Johnson left office. It is indisputable that the nation’s
prison population was radically reduced during Johnson’s
presidency, “with 16,500 fewer inmates in 1969 than in
1950” (remarkable given overall population growth). In
the 1970s, there was a 25 percent increase in prisoners;
incarceration rates rose for nearly three decades thereaf-
ter (163). By Hinton’s own account, Great Society liberals
did not envision mass incarceration, and it is unconvinc-
ing to see it primarily as an unintended consequence of
their policies.
Though less original than her section on the Johnson
administration, Hinton’s account of federal crime policy
under Nixon and Gerald Ford is superb. She convincingly
shows how Nixon jettisoned Johnson’s progressive pro-
grams and “seized upon the punitive impulses of John-
son’s domestic policies, introducing draconian sentencing
reforms, supporting the targeted deployment of aggressive
local, state, and federal undercover police squads on the
streets of American cities, and incentivizing prison con-
struction” (3). For example, Nixon utilized the LEAA’s
system of block grants to local police forces to provide
them with military equipment and training in the name of
riot control. The first significant deployment of a Special
Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team occurred in Los An-
geles in 1969, with 75 percent of its military-style equip-
ment funded by the LEAA.
Nixon introduced policies designed to put more people
in prison. Hinton is at her best when explaining how such
policies worked in practice and how counterproductive
JUNE 2017
 Featured Reviews
they could be for fighting crime. Though formally race-
neutral, they specifically targeted young African Ameri-
cans. As Nixon said to an aide in 1969, “You have to face
the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks . . .
The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while
not appearing to” (142). Aiming to prevent future crime,
Nixon officials used computerized data to monitor low-in-
come youth of color with no history of arrest or convic-
tion. All lower-class African Americans were viewed as
potential future criminals. Federally funded sting opera-
tions aimed to put thousands of black petty thieves into
jail. Aggressive policing proved a vicious circle, with more
arrests and higher crime rates justifying even greater po-
lice presence. Bringing more people into the criminal jus-
tice system created more career criminals, as those jailed
for the first time mingled with other prisoners and faced
reduced job opportunities when they were released. The
increase in arrests naturally led to the overcrowding of
jails. By the time Ford replaced Nixon, mass incarcera-
tion was the federal government’s explicit if facile strategy
for controlling crime. According to Ford, “The crime rate
will go down if persons who habitually commit most of
the predatory crimes are kept in prison for a reasonable
period, if convicted, because they will then not be free to
commit more crimes” (252).
From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime concludes
with two solid chapters on federal crime policy under
Jimmy Carter and Reagan. Carter ultimately focused on
law enforcement as his main response to urban decay and
social inequality. Much like his approach to foreign policy
and the economy, Carter’s crime policies laid the ground-
work for Reagan. Reagan signed the bipartisan Compre-
hensive Crime Control Act of 1984, which reestablished
the federal death penalty, stipulated mandatory mini-
mums for violent crimes, and introduced civil forfeiture.
Reagan also stepped up the War on Drugs, already begun
under Nixon, which was now notoriously targeting Afri-
can Americans with vastly disproportionate sentences for
possession of crack versus powdered cocaine. Thus, “de-
spite the fact that white citizens account[ed] for roughly
70 percent of all monthly drug users and 65 percent of
drug abuse arrests” (318) between 1979 and 2000, two-
thirds of those serving time for drug possession were
black.
Like many other scholars, Hinton treats the War on
Crime as primarily a story about race. Indeed, one of the
signal features of late-twentieth-century mass incarcera-
HEATHER ANN THOMPSON. Blood in the Water: The Attica
Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy. New York: Pan-
theon, 2016. Pp. xvii, 724. $35.00.
Heather Ann Thompson’s authoritative account of the
1971 revolt at the Attica Correctional Facility in Attica,
New York, and the administrative cover-up that followed
is a page-turner. Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison
Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy is exhaustively researched
and skillfully written, moving deftly between personal ac-
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
797
tion was its growing racial disparities. Black Americans
had made up one-third of the total prison population in
the 1960s, but this had risen to over one-half by the end
of the 1980s (310). Hinton and others have amply demon-
strated that the carceral state specifically targeted African
Americans. But how does one explain the rise in incarcer-
ation rates of white Americans with no college education,
which has increased more than fivefold since 1980 (Bruce
Western and Becky Pettit, “Incarceration and Social
Inequality,” Dædalus 139 [Summer 2010]: 8–19, here
10)? Is it simply an unintended side effect of the mass in-
carceration of African Americans? And did crime poli-
cies toward Hispanic Americans, casually lumped to-
gether with African Americans in Hinton’s book, follow
the same pattern as those directed at blacks? Particularly
missing from Hinton’s explanatory framework is the role
of the declining living standards of working-class Ameri-
cans of all races, which fell in inverse proportion to rising
incarceration rates. An equally valid way to tell this story
might be to look at the mass incarceration not of African
Americans but of lower-class Americans of all races.
Finally, Hinton does not account for crime itself, a sur-
prisingly common omission in recent scholarship. She is
right to be skeptical of reported crime rates, which were
deeply politicized, but surely crime was real. It particu-
larly affected lower-class African American neighbor-
hoods and was a major concern among their residents.
While crime policy was related to a project of racial and
class control, it strains credulity that it was unrelated to
crime itself. Nor was the rise in crime rates wholly due to
the criminalization of drugs. There was also a significant
increase in violent crime, abetted by the proliferation of
firearms. Recognizing the real effects of crime might lead
to a more generous reading of Great Society liberals,
who—whatever their faults—did grapple with the ques-
tion of how to ensure the safety of poor African Ameri-
cans.
From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime is an im-
portant contribution to an innovative subfield that has
rapidly advanced since the start of the decade. Hinton
provides excellent research on federal crime policy, espe-
cially in the Nixon and Ford administrations. She is to be
commended for giving us an important part of the story.
However, we should not mistake it for the whole story.
DANIEL GEARY
Trinity College Dublin
counts from an astonishing array of people and the volu-
minous state papers, institutional reports, and legal re-
cords chronicling the events. Thompson demonstrates
the power of storytelling as she brings to life the deci-
sions, fears, and pain of dozens of people at the heart of
one of the most important civil rights protests in U.S. his-
JUNE 2017
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