Thread by @KWestSavali

In 1993, after Washington state passed the first “three strikes” law and the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (aka the crime bill) was introduced, television coverage of crime more than doubled.

According to a 2000 study, “Prime Suspects: The Influence of Local Television News on the Viewing Public,” media is complicit in fostering a “crime script” that encourages blatantly biased policing tactics that target Black Americans.

Not surprisingly, there is also a direct link between exposure to the “crime script” and fear and prejudice against Black folks.

When the crime bill passed in 1994, it was with the help of 23 members of the Congressional Black Caucus and the support of NIMBY Black community leaders who believed that increased punitive punishment would save “good” children from “bad” children.

Professor Michelle Alexander explained that some of these leaders were expecting reinvestment in Black communities—schools, better housing, health care and jobs. But that’s not what happened.

Before the 1994 crime bill could make it through the House, it was stripped of the Racial Justice Act, which would have allowed death row inmates to use data showing racial inequities in sentencing.

The bill was also stripped of $3.3 billion—two-thirds of it from prevention programs. A provision that would have made 16,000 low-level drug offenders eligible for early release was also removed.

More states would soon be passing their own version of “three strikes” laws, and they would be awarded Truth in Sentencing grants to build and expand prisons.

John Dilulio Jr. co-authored “Body Count” in 1996—the same year that Hillary Clinton made the “superpredators” statement and the same year that the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act was passed.

The PRWORA Act ushered in the age of time limits, stricter work requirements and less assistance for those in deep poverty.

This disproportionately affected Black families, even more so in the Deep South, and the prison-industrial complex expanded at a steady clip (Also see: the states that are today enacting legislative violence against child-bearing people through these draconian abortion laws).

“Body Count” further stigmatized drugs and called for a ramping up of the war against Black and Latinx communities, as well as tough-on-crime legislation to cure society’s ills. More prisons were built, incarceration rates and poverty increased, and the war on drugs continued.

Further, the myth of Black predatory behavior and criminality has played a role in the current state-sanctioned street executions and systemic criminalization of Black people.

In 2015, Bill Clinton (defensively) acknowledged his role in expanding mass incarceration, while Joe Biden—the architect of it, continues to defend it passionately.

Today, the U.S. is the largest jailer in the world. And I don’t know who needs to hear this, but the crime bill is indefensible.

Full stop.