Governing Through Crime: How The War On Crime Transformed American Democracy And Created A Culture Of Fear

TLDR

The book argues that the war on crime has inflicted widespread harm across U.S. social institutions, undermining their original purposes. In schools, tying funding to crime metrics turns classrooms into punitive environments, replacing pedagogy with zero‑tolerance policies, security interventions, and a focus on test preparation.

Abstract

Governing Through Crime is a satisfyingly nuanced book. It highlights the manifold harms of the war on crime across a variety of social institutions in the United States. These range from the incarceration binge that has characterized the last quarter of a century to the increasing vulnerability of schools, families and workplaces to a crime control mentality that is as pernicious as it is omnipresent. The effect of this new dispensation is to sunder relationships of trust and put in their place a corrosive sense of anxiety. With respect to schools, when funding is tied to the crime problem, the learning experience is transformed from one based on pedagogical, to penal, principles. In this way, lives, hopes and expectations are ruptured and crime control comes to dominate. The schoolroom becomes a place where disruption is met by zero tolerance, detention and expulsion. Teachers become ‘test preparation instructors’ (p. 175) rather than fellow travellers in the educational project. They withdraw from the corridors, where order is maintained by professional security staff. Even within the classroom, disruptive behaviour is met by a call for backup from the nearest security patrol.