Governing Through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear

by Jonathan Simon

Across America today gated communities sprawl out from urban centers, employers enforce mandatory drug testing, and schools screen students with metal detectors. Social problems ranging from welfare dependency to educational inequality have been reconceptualized as crimes, with an attendant focus on assigning fault and imposing consequences. Even before the recent terrorist attacks, non-citizen residents had become subject to an increasingly harsh regime of detention and deportation, and prospective employees subjected to background checks. How and when did our everyday world become dominated by fear, every citizen treated as a potential criminal?

In this startlingly original work, Jonathan Simon traces this pattern back to the collapse of the New Deal approach to governing during the 1960s when declining confidence in expert-guided government policies sent political leaders searching for new models of governance. The War on Crime offered a ready solution to their politicians set agendas by drawing analogies to crime and redefined the ideal citizen as a crime victim, one whose vulnerabilities opened the door to overweening government intervention. By the 1980s, this transformation of the core powers of government had spilled over into the institutions that govern daily life. Soon our schools, our families, our workplaces, and our residential communities were being governed through crime.

This powerful work concludes with a call for passive citizens to become engaged partners in the management of risk and the treatment of social ills. Only by coming together to produce security, can we free ourselves from a logic of domination by others, and from the fear that currently rules our everyday life.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, American History, Sociology, History, Social Justice, United States

344 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2006

About the author

I'm Jonathan Simon, author of CODE RED: Computerized Election Theft And The New American Century, co-founder and currently Executive Director of Election Defense Alliance (www.ElectionDefenseAlliance.org), a nonprofit organization founded in 2006 to restore observable vote counting and electoral integrity as the foundation of American democracy.

I have expertise in polling and statistical analysis derived from my time as a political survey research analyst in Washington, DC. I've also authored, both individually and in collaboration, numerous papers related to various aspects of election integrity. I've been active in election integrity efforts since 2001, appearing in several election integrity-related films, as an interviewee on several dozen live programs, and tweeting @JonathanSimon14.

I'm a graduate of Harvard College ('78), New York University School of Law ('86), and New York Chiropractic College ('90). I am admitted to the Bar of Massachusetts, hold membership in the legal honor society Order of the Coif, and since 1993 have directed an interdisciplinary healthcare facility in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Lucas · Rating 3 out of 5]

A thought provoking argument that a widespread prosecutorial model of governance is changing who government thinks they are governing and deforming the range of things the government will lift a finger to try to accomplish. And it's not just a right-wing law and order type thing, though the book comes in pretty heavily against the mass incarceration state. It spreads to the way that citizens think about what just outcomes from policy would be. For instance, the book made me worry that it's a lot easier for me to wish that the government would throw some bankers in jail as a consequence of crashing the global economy than it is for me to wish that the government would regulate the financial sector in a way so that the banks wouldn't have enough concentrated power for their crimes to tank the global economy in the first place. The chapters on surveilance and governance in education and the workforce are good. The chapter on family law much less inspiring.

Overall, my main complaint is that the book feels dated. He leans heavily on SUVs and gated communities as a somewhat less than metaphoric vision of consumer buy-in to a crime fixated way of life, and I just don't think I buy it. It's not that there's nothing to that perspective, it's just that I think that the days of the SUV as being a dominant cultural image are done and I don't perceive gated communities as being as prevalent in America as they are in his picture of America. Meanwhile, as he relies on tropes, like the gas-guzzling SUV, that I think are of a distinctly Bush-era vintage, the word Enron does not appear anywhere in the book. Corporate crime was a big story in the years right before this book was written (in 2007), and I think that in the aftermath of the 2007 crash, it will continue to be a hot topic. So, it seems like a big blind spot that you didn't have to be a clairvoyant economic prognosticator to have seen fit to opine on. This book was pretty good, but a good follow-up edition or companion volume ought to say more about the how or whether a crime-focused model of governance contributes to inequality and regulatory failure.

[Teresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely one of the books which has influenced me the most over the last 5 years. I found myself trying to explain to a friend the other day why I felt that taking her ex to court was only going to worsen their problems and render even more remote any chance at future reconciliation - and found myself yet again talking through various arguments and examples developed by Simon. My friend feels that the case represents empowerment, assertiveness - though she would in fact gain little financially. The fact that this person who otherwise has extremely "alternative" politics and lifestyle has turned to criminal law to resolve her personal disputes very much supports Simon's thesis - that we have learnt to conceive of almost every ill as "crime" and to willingly bring the punitive state into the home, school, and other institutions of daily life. In doing so, we get more and more used to the easy definition of rule-breakers, poor people forced to be rule-breakers, or just people behaving badly due to extreme distress as criminals, people who need punishment. This way of seeing in turn validates the obscene incarceration rates of the US and the rising punitive state in many other countries. This wonderful book focuses primarily on the law - but its implications go so deep. I can't think of a work which more skilfully unites the micro and the macro, the subjective/everyday and the transformation of government with the rise of the penal-industrial complex. If you haven't read it, please do!

[Sharlyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really appreciated the core thesis of this book: that crime and criminality have been a primary force in U.S. governance since at least the late 1960s, and that that has changed functions of our governmental bodies and the relationships between them as much as it's changed the ways we build houses or educate our children. Much of the discussion is about the rhetoric of crime and criminal threats as a way of creating legitimacy and authority (in many different contexts). There is also great discussion about the centrality of the victim's voice and what victim-centered policies have done to criminal justice and to lawmaking, including what I thought was very insightful commentary on proximity to the (potential) victim and and proxy-victim status does in public debates. I also particularly appreciated the review of how Dem-Republican policies on crime/punishment have coalesced over time to create a unified stance on maximum penalization across the two parties. Anyway, very worth the read!

[GJF · Rating 5 out of 5]

Compelling Approach to Understanding US Political Culture

The US Constitution puts restraints on government. To legitimate the vigorous exercise of political power, leaders must claim to serve the interest of some large segment of American citizens--yeoman farmers, industrial workers, Disadvantaged minorities, or, since the Nixon administration, potential victims of crime. This claim in turn structures how social problems are perceived and addressed. The current obsession with crime has encouraged courts to disregard constitutional guarantees such as habeas corpus and due process. The impact the current obsession with crime has on family life is even more disturbing. Simon's work is conceptually powerful and well documented.

[Monika · Rating 1 out of 5]

This entire book felt like political rage bait and honestly it might have worked a bit.
The main point was that since the 60s US has used crime as a pawn, hence the title governing through crime.
Yet, he failed to show actual evidence of this, merely relying on metaphors and evidence which he cannot link as being the main cause (this is usually painfully obvious as we can tell that a different factor caused this.)
While I like his style of writing, it was an incredible painful read due to the content of the book.

Also, how convenient that white collar crime was not spoken about especially because of the time that this book came out.

[Kylie Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of this book has some commonly understood concepts in this day and age, though it had interesting points about how the idea of crime has infiltrated more parts of society than those commonly associated with crime. Pretty dry though, and I am not as interested in the legal focus and framing that came up a lot.

[Leah Montange · Rating 4 out of 5]

-i read intro and chapter one.
-this framework has a lot of explanatory power. i think its one of those things that, once it was published it became completely obvious.

[James Norman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trenchant and unique perspective on criminal justice and government and the symbiotic relationship they have developed. Maybe pair with Foucault and Donzelot.