The U.S. is the world’s leading jailer, with over 2M people currently caged—a 500% increase over the last 40 years. The staggering increase is no accident. It’s the result of decades of ruthless public policy decisions—driven by politically fueled crime panic narratives. 1/11
From the founding of the U.S to present, stories creating panics about crime waves or criminal behavior are ultimately met with policy that dictates the ever-expanding state surveillance and control of people of color, frankly, to make white people feel “safer.” 2/
Take the Reconstruction period of 1865 for example, when politicians leveraged white people’s fear of newly freed, enslaved Black people to create ‘Black Codes’ outlawing behaviors such as “walking without a purpose” or “walking at night.” vera.org/reimagining-pr… 3/
1865 marked the end of the Civil War and the passage of the 13th Amendment, fear mongering about “crime” from the formerly enslaved & the loss of free labor triggered the nation’s first prison boom—where Black people would become an egregious majority of the prison population. 4/
During the same time period, as the work of the Equal Justice Institute shows, a regime of racial terror saw OVER 2,000 racial terror lynchings of Black people. In VA alone, @eji_org has documented MORE THAN 120 incidents of Reconstruction-era racial violence in 40 counties. 5/
At the onset of the 1970’s spawned “War on Drugs,” media stories ran rampant about Nixon’s “public enemy number one”—mandatory sentencing policies followed. In Virginia, mandatory minimums contributed to a 121% increase in the incarceration rate of Black people. 6/
Spurred by the racist narrative of “Super Predators,” the 1994 Crime Bill exploded mass incarceration among Black Americans, as well as racial profiling and police misconduct—the list goes on. The harmful effects are still felt MOST by Black and Brown communities today. 7/
Most recently, FBI & police collected data has been used to fuel crime panic with unfounded correlations between racial justice marches after the murder of George Floyd by police, justice reforms, or specific to VA, fear mongering about a system of parole abolished in 1995. 8/
Sidebar: FYI @PrisonPolicy gives Virginia an F- on their parole release grading scale. An F-. You know what that means?! Parole in VA is definitely NOT the issue the law and order folks want you to BELIEVE it is. prisonpolicy.org/reports/gradin… 9/
No matter your political ideologies, one can’t even hope to address public safety without addressing the way we talk about crime in this country. We need to be vigilant about seeking TRUTH, reckon with our racist history, & pave a new path forward towards a more just future. 10/
We ARE currently living amidst a historical civil rights movement, and that scares its opponents. Crime panic induced policy making has already more than encroached on the lives & freedoms of Black Americans. We can’t repeat it, and we need to fix it. THAT is the real crisis. 11/
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