Abstract
This article presents historical data on changes in punishment policy in Texas, examining how Texas’s prosecutors played an important role in shaping law and policy. This article helps parcel out the relative influence of various factors in driving more punitive policies by examining an unsettled period of legal and policy change when some state leaders were pushing back against the growing tide of prison expansion. Ultimately this period resulted in a new penal code that retained most of the harshest punishments for offenders, and created an additional layer of prison facilities to manage lower-level offenders. My findings emphasize how these legal changes reflected conflict between state and local government. It also suggests that important contextual factors deeply embedded in Texas’s history helped establish conditions more likely to lead to mass incarceration. These findings suggest that ‘top–down’ and ‘bottom–up’ theoretical accounts of punishment might omit important intervening institutional factors.
Keywords
Introduction
By the late 1990s Texas imprisoned more people than all of Western Europe combined, and was second only to Louisiana in terms of incarceration rate and to California in terms of total prison population in the United States (Walmsley, 2005). Straddling the southern and western regions of the USA, Texas combines elements of the two regions that have long demonstrated the nation’s highest rates of incarceration (Harrison, 2000). Between 1988 and 1998 the Texas prison population increased from around 40,000 to over 160,000, a fourfold increase that cost(s) the state billions of dollars (Hill and Harrison, 2005). By 2003, nearly seven out of 10 of these prisoners was Black or Latino (Institute, 2005). This article examines one of the periods of political and legal transformation that helped generate the Lone Star State’s current prison behemoth, explaining how growing concerns with prison costs and overcrowding triggered a reconsideration of punishment in Texas. While this effort seemed to signal a shift in diverting low-level offenders from prison, the legislative changes that followed this reform effort instead greatly expanded the state’s prison capacity, drastically increased punishments for serious offenders, and retained long sentences for all but a handful of low-level offenders. By looking closely at these developments in Texas, I aim to add to our theoretical understanding of punishment, while adding valuable empirical depth to our knowledge of this important case.
My findings emphasize how Texas prosecutors and their statewide association—the Texas District and County Attorneys Association (TDCAA)—played a central role in shaping policy. The TDCAA is a nonprofit organization that does not lobby or take official positions on crime policy, but they do work extensively with legislators as a legal resource, and in doing so, have been an important voice in crime policy conversations. In forums and committee meetings, Texas prosecutors successfully challenged recommendations to standardize sentencing in Texas, to use alternatives to incarceration, and to lower penalties for nonviolent offenders, and lobbied instead for prison expansion. Texas prosecutors were influential because they provided an important link between state and local politics, and because prosecutors have specialized skills linked to their position as legal experts and political actors. They operated as an important interpreter of popular demands, and as a powerful voice in opposing legal changes that would limit their discretion. They advocated for local control over sentencing and argued that the state should provide whatever prison space was necessary to imprison the flood of convicts sent to state prisons from Texas’s disparate counties. This emphasis on local control and long sentences resonated with Texas’s long historical tradition of harsh punishment, which is directly linked to the state’s slave and frontier past. In a period of political and legal uncertainty, driven by federal litigation and intense socioeconomic changes, they helped ensure that Texas would retain its reputation as a state where offenders were certain to face harsh punishments, even for minor crimes.
By helping explain why Texas embraced mass incarceration as fervently as it did, I aim to shed light on the broader dynamics that have shaped patterns of incarceration across the nation. Any explanation of mass incarceration in the USA must grapple with the regional patterns that played a key role in punishment and in national politics. Among these, the southwestern USA is among the most important. Population growth and the rising political influence of Sunbelt states, from North Carolina and Florida across to Arizona and California, made states from these regions highly influential on a national level, and helped shape the federal context in which prison policies formed. Texas and its neighbors have been among the most punitive states throughout the modern era; by 1998, the nation’s 10 states with the highest incarceration rates were all situated in the southern half of the nation, and Louisiana (1), Texas (2), Oklahoma (3), and Mississippi (4), had the nation’s highest (Harrison, 2000). In other words, Texas represents one of the most prominent cases in the most important region in explaining mass incarceration in the USA, and any theoretical explanation of punishment in the USA must explain it.
Theory
Mass incarceration’s rise has spawned a growing theoretical branch of criminological and sociological inquiry, much of which is rooted in classical theoretical traditions sharing key ideas and methods with Michel Foucault, Max Weber, and conflict theory, among others. The first wave of research on mass incarceration’s rise in the USA focused on macro-level developments, seeking to explain on a national level why the nation seemed to depart erratically from incarceration rates that had remained stable for nearly a hundred years, and from imprisonment trends in other modern democracies. A more recent second wave of research has magnified the analytical lens by examining these processes at the state level where crime policies are often established and implemented. These state-level explanations have added valuable empirical depth and new theoretical insights to theories of punishment. Table 1 maps the primary theoretical explanations engaged in this article and relates them to the theoretical traditions with which they share some important links, or for which they provide empirical support. This is not to suggest that these scholars singularly identify with certain theoretical traditions, but is only meant to demonstrate how they fit within broader criminological and sociological traditions. Below, I engage some of the key assertions of the first wave of scholarship and examine how the second wave of research supports or questions those assertions. I then lay out some unresolved directions of inquiry and suggest how my findings from Texas might reorient our understanding of punishment in the USA.
Mapping theoretical contributions
David Garland’s (2001) macro-level account of changes in punishment stands as one of the most provocative and comprehensive, arguing that the USA’s punitive turn was accompanied by similar trends in the United Kingdom, and that the onset of more stringent modes of social control were part of broader structural changes in late modern societies. He argues that perpetually high crime rates, combined with the breakdown in certain social institutions, such as marriage, pessimism about government’s capacity to manage social problems, and economic uncertainty, generated cultural conditions favorable to harsher punishment (Garland, 2001). He argues that these changes undermined the dominant rehabilitative model, and penal actors and policy makers responded with measures that satisfied an increasingly anxious public (Garland, 2001). Like Michel Foucault, Garland explains macro-level developments by tracing the genealogy of contemporary social phenomena, and teasing out how they are shaped by micro-level pressures.
Other macro-level explanations have attributed less significance to cultural pressures, and instead emphasize politics in explaining the punitive turn. Katherine Beckett and Theodore Sasson (2000) argue that crime rates were not uniformly increasing in the 1970s, and that fears of crime were stirred by claims-makers, politicians, and media pundits, who exploited crime’s sensational qualities for their own benefit. They explain how public concern about crime often followed political and media focus, especially on sensational events (Beckett and Sasson, 2000). This strategy was intentional and successfully appealed to Whites disaffected with changes in race relations; it essentially tapped underlying concerns about race, and propelled anti-New Deal Republicans to political power (Beckett and Sasson, 2000). Loïc Wacquant (2001) also points directly at the explicitly oppressive political dynamic under-girding mass incarceration, linking it to the USA’s long historical tradition of racial inequality. Similarly, Jonathon Simon (2007) has argued more recently that the USA’s embrace of harsh punishment is embedded in broader political dynamics, arguing that crime politics has reshaped political institutions to the benefit of executive branches. Also drawing on Foucault, Simon (2007) argues that the same technologies that once were relegated to crime control now permeate the workplace and schools. Quantitative analyses of incarceration and partisanship have also pointed to the importance of politics, noting how Republican Party control of the governorship and legislature are important factors in explaining prison growth (Jacobs and Jackson, 2010).
These accounts differ in important ways. One fundamental difference lies in explaining from which direction demands for harsher crime policies emerged—above or below? While Garland (2001) views changes in punishment as the product of cultural developments conditioned by new structural arrangements, others see the punitive turn as the product of political strategies purposely deployed by conservatives and elites in the interest of political power (Beckett, 1997; Beckett and Sasson, 2000; Simon, 2007; Wacquant, 2001). This difference strikes to the core of what makes understanding the USA’s embrace of mass incarceration so important—was it the product of popular demands for harsher policies in light of concern about crime? Or was it a masterful political strategy that potentially threatens fundamental aspects of democratic politics? In the discussion section I return to this important question, and I consider how my findings might help us better understand this dynamic.
The second wave of scholarship emerging from state-level research on punishment has increasingly emphasized the importance of historical traditions and institutions. State-level research is particularly valuable in studying crime and punishment because crime policy is largely the domain of state government. Recent examinations of processes increasingly suggest that historical conditions associated with the structure of state government and race relations are essential factors in explaining the punitive turn (Barker, 2009; Campbell, 2011; Lynch, 2010; Perkinson, 2010; Schoenfeld, 2010). Several specific institutional factors seem to be particularly important—centralized vs decentralized state structures (Barker, 2009), federalism and its capacity to channel citizen and interest group involvement in politics (Miller, 2008), and resistance and opposition to federal attempts to regulate punishment (Campbell, 2011; Lynch, 2010; Schoenfeld, 2010).
These findings confirm certain aspects of macro-level accounts and challenge others. First, shifts in punishment were undoubtedly bound up within broader developments that facilitated mass incarceration’s rise. Those states that most fervently turned to mass incarceration—California, Texas, Arizona, and Florida—underwent dramatic changes to their social and economic fabric (Campbell, 2011; Gilmore, 2007; Lynch, 2010; Schoenfeld, 2010). These states experienced volatile economic growth and profound demographic change. This suggests that important aspects of Garland’s (2001) account, which partly rests on the assertion that changes fundamental to ‘late modernity’, such as higher divorce rates and perpetually high crime, helped stir popular anxieties and led to harsher punishment. But whether changes in family structure or criminal offending were primary causes of anxiety, or simply reflections of tumultuous periods of demographic and economic change is not clear. What is clear is that intense changes in the socioeconomic context created uncertain times that made legal change more likely.
Second, crime’s emergence as a primary political topic was undoubtedly a central force in driving prison expansion, and this initially benefited Republican Party candidates, as Beckett and Sasson (2000) suggested. Findings from Florida, California, Arizona, and Texas all reflect the powerful ways that crime forcefully entered the political arena in the 1970s and 1980s (Barker, 2009; Campbell, 2011; Gilmore, 2007; Lynch, 2010; Schoenfeld, 2010). What remains unclear is how and why those pressing crime politics were more successful in exploiting crime’s appeal than other political actors were in pressing their concerns. Part of the answer to this question seems to lie in the historical political traditions that shaped institutions in particular states. After all, not all conservative politicians pushing harsher punishments won elections and implemented more punitive policies throughout this period. State-level research suggests that states with decentralized state structures were more likely to turn to mass incarceration more forcefully (Barker, 2009; Campbell, 2011). Additionally, states that had historically opposed federal intervention in state affairs were among those that embraced mass incarceration most fervently; the institutional impetus driven by federal litigation seems to have triggered responses in several states that pointed to prison expansion (Campbell, 2011; Lynch, 2010; Schoenfeld, 2010).
Another key factor that has emerged from state-level studies is a state’s history of intense racial conflict. Racial conflict seems to have been a key factor in shaping crime and punishment policy in California, Arizona, Florida, and Texas, where punishment policies had long reflected deeply rooted concerns about racial minorities (Campbell, 2011; Gilmore, 2007; Lynch, 2010; Perkinson, 2010; Schoenfeld, 2010). Regional variations in mass incarceration are stable and unequivocal; for most of the 20th century southern states incarcerated and executed people in much greater numbers than any other region, followed by western and Plains states (Harrison, 2000). Though northeastern and midwestern states did much to close this gap as the millennium neared, these regional differences largely remain (Statistics, 2008). It seems that those states in the South and Southwest with histories of deep and persistent racial conflict are also more likely to embrace mass incarceration more forcefully.
Findings from state-level accounts that focus on the role of law enforcement organizations in shaping policy have found considerable evidence that they have played a prominent role in mass incarceration’s rise and entrenchment. In his examination of the California Correctional and Peace Officers Association (CCPOA), Joshua Page (2011) argues that the union played a pivotal role in shaping crime and punishment policy in the Golden State. He contends that a ‘perfect storm’ emerged in California as prison guards effectively organized into a union that benefited from the massive prison expansion project that was launched in the early 1980s; they remain an intimidating force in state politics and defend policies that threaten their interests (Page, 2011). Similarly, Michael Campbell’s (2011) research on the rise of crime politics in Texas in the 1980s demonstrates how insurgent politicians capitalized on crime’s strategic value in the political realm by coordinating their activities with state-wide law enforcement agents. This research suggests that while Texans have always favored harsh punishment for criminals, their willingness to invest in expensive prison construction was the product of highly contested political processes (Campbell, 2011). In a sense, these findings suggest that law enforcement organizations might operate similar to the interest groups that have been influential in shaping punishment throughout much of the latter 20th century (Gottschalk, 2006).
Prosecutors in particular might play a key role in shaping mass incarceration. Joachim Savelsberg (1994) suggested that crime is more politicized in the USA due to the fact that district attorneys and judges are elected. More recently, Jonathan Simon (2007) has suggested that crime and punishment’s political ascendency has coincided with greater emphasis on the role of the executive branches of state and local government. Simon (2007) describes this new orientation as a ‘prosecutorial complex’ that increasingly guides governance along lines of decisive executive action, and marginalizes more democratic processes that serve as checks and balances on power.
The new wave of research has brought into question important assertions raised by the first wave of macro-level research. First, they suggest that in some of the states that readily adapted particularly harsh anti-crime policies, there was no historical commitment to the rehabilitative ideal as deep as some accounts suggested. Second, the history of existing racial antagonism suggests that at least some of the populations of certain states needed little stirring by elites to turn to crime amid anxieties about race. Third, these accounts suggest that while the punitive turn was a national phenomenon, regional variations in historical and institutional factors offer some promise in helping explain the variation in timing and degree in the turn to mass incarceration. While it is beyond my purposes here to address all of these important questions raised by this new literature, I hope that by fundamentally engaging the ‘top–down vs bottom–up’ debate, and providing some empirical depth to our understanding, I can at least speculate about what these continuing theoretical problems might suggest.
As this account helps demonstrate, in Texas prosecutors capitalized on their strategic location and legal and political expertise to shape crime policy. They provided an important link between often complex state legislation and local constituents. As elected officials directly engaged in crime control, they were centrally located and highly motivated to orient legislation in ways that best suited their own goals. As prominent and trusted state officials, they were highly regarded by the public. Their take on legislation and punishment policy was important, and they were capable of drawing unwanted attention to those who opposed their goals, which most often equated to harsher punishments for offenders and additional prison cells in which to cage them. At the same time these prosecutors operated in the state capitol as a well-organized, highly motivated, and well-trained group, monitoring and shepherding legislation they supported, and targeting those they opposed. While aspiring politicians might have sought to exploit fear of crime for political gain, and popular anxieties might have generated popular concern about crime, mid-level political operatives played a key role in channeling and tapping these currents.
Methods
The article relies on in-depth archival research to construct a case study of the political processes associated with prison and punishment policy in Texas from 1989–1993. My aim was to establish the most comprehensive narrative explaining the political and legal developments associated with changes in punishment. My goal was to approach the research in such a way to make sure that, in addition to a wide collection of secondary accounts, I also unearthed developments that did not necessarily make it into newspapers and television reports. This required a labor-intensive examination of archival data across multiple sites over the course of more than a year. The nature of the data varies considerably, from inter-governmental memoranda and meeting notes, to taped radio debates and legislative bill files and campaign materials. Though no history is complete, my collection aimed to integrate all of the possible historical data on the legislative processes and public and political developments that were relevant to explaining the course of change in Texas.
The primary documents that form the backbone of this research were collected at the Texas State Archives in Austin, Texas. A considerable portion of that data was extracted from the Texas Punishment Standards Commission Collection (TPSC), which consists of dozens of cubic feet of data collected by the committee from 1991–1993. The TPSC did extensive research on the state’s sentencing laws, prisons, and legislation affecting prison overcrowding, and conducted extensive public hearings across Texas in which certain officials and members of the public were able to express their concerns about the nature of and the potential for changes in punishment. The collection consists of meeting minutes, agendas, meeting materials and handouts, legislative records, printed materials, drafts of legislation and recommendations, correspondence, reports, publications, and newspaper clippings, and other miscellaneous materials.
Archival material was also gathered from the legislative bill files associated with the passage of legislation—House Bill (HB) 92—authorizing the rewriting of the Texas Penal Code, and the four bills that emerged from this process, HB 1234 and HB 1235, and Senate Bills (SB) SB 532 and SB 1067. These data were combined with data from the Legislative Reference Library to capture as complete of a history as possible of the debates surrounding the total rewriting of the state’s penal code, and the considerable changes to the state prison and jail system that accompanied it. This involved the analysis of changes in various drafts of legislation to create a legislative genealogy tracing the various amendments and substitutions that ultimately produced one of the state’s most extensive legal reforms. The combined files of the four bills alone amounted to over 6000 pages. Additional material was collected from the Anne Richards Papers at the Briscoe Center for American History and the Tarlton Law Library at the University of Texas at Austin. These collections included material from the Texas District and County Attorneys Association newsletters and the governor’s administrative files on criminal justice issues.
I also collected secondary accounts of the legislative sessions associated with policy change, and searched for public statements from key players in the penal policy field in several of the largest newspapers in Texas. The Houston Chronicle and the Austin American-Statesman were thoroughly searched to provide a clearer picture of the political context in which the debates over criminal punishment reform occurred. I also integrated data from various smaller newspapers that helped provide some sense of how local prosecutors were portraying the crime problem to the public as debates over punishment unfolded in the capitol. These data were combined and used to construct the most accurate account possible of the several years leading up to the pivotal legislative session in 1993 and the legislative overhaul that ensued.
Legislative changes in crime and punishment
Like many other states Texas passed waves of crime and punishment legislation in the 1980s and 1990s. While legislators continuously passed legislation increasing criminal punishments and criminalizing more behavior, Texas also lost Ruiz v. Estelle (1980), a monumental federal lawsuit that forced Texas to reform its underfunded and overcrowded plantation-style prisons. Successive governors grappled with federal overseers and struggled to avoid massive fines; ultimately they did so by refusing to accept new prisoners from counties (Martin and Ekland-Olson, 1987). County governments then sued the state and won in Alberti v. Harris County (1991), forcing the state to find ways to better manage punishment.
To address these mounting problems, the 1991 legislature established the Texas Punishment Standards Commission (TPSC) to investigate punishment in Texas and to present recommendations to the 1993 legislature, and mandated a rewriting of the criminal code (Staff, 1993c). The TPSC consisted of 10 legislators (nine Democrats), multiple judges and lawyers, prison officials, sheriff, one current and one former member of the state prison board, and an associate dean of the University of Texas Law School (Associated Press, 1991). There was no official representative of prosecutors on the commission.
The Texas Punishment Standards Commission
The TPSC embarked on a nearly two-year effort to collect data, compile expert opinions, and seek public input regarding changes to Texas’s penal code. Members worked with law enforcement and prosecutors in subcommittees that reconsidered much of crime policy in Texas (Reynolds, 1992). Governor Richards publicly stated that the TPSC was necessary to restore faith in the troubled criminal justice system, which had relied heavily on early releases to manage the prison population: Our criminal justice system is broken … Texans are fed up with the spectacle of violent offenders being released from prison after serving only a fraction of their sentence. They are frustrated and angry with the revolving doors in our prison system.
The conservative Democrat backed the TPSC’s work, and framed it along terms that fit Texas’s history of tough justice.
The TPSC held meetings and public forums discussing policy with government officials, representatives of interested groups, and private citizens across Texas. The TPSC considered a variety of approaches to managing the overcrowding problem, even traveling to Oregon to examine that state’s system, and collecting ample material on sentencing practices in other states (Staff, 1993b). Members debated a more standardized sentencing framework modeled on the sentencing grid used in Minnesota, which would have addressed sentencing disparities that existed across various counties and districts, and varied for different racial groups. This was adamantly and successfully opposed by district attorneys who insisted that such variations were healthy (Fabelo, 1994; Lyon, 1992). The TDCAA’s executive director wrote in the organization’s newsletter that ‘technocrats’ were driving this effort, and stated, ‘Are we redesigning a system to satisfy the champions of predictability, consistency and uniformity, or are we fashioning a better response to the public’s cry for greater security and protection for themselves, their loved ones and their property?’ (Krampitz, 1992: 3). Throughout subcommittee meetings, prosecutors repeatedly emphasized the need to preserve jury sentencing and local control of punishment decisions (Commission, 1992). Tension over discretion in sentencing permeated meetings and discussions between members of the TPSC and judges and prosecutors.
In December of 1992 the TPSC reconvened a joint meeting and presented their recommendations for major reforms to Texas’s system, including lowering punishments for certain minor drug and property offenses, and creating sentencing schemes that more closely resembled the actual time offenders served, instead of the maximum or usual amounts that they were sentenced (Reynolds, 1992). These recommendations emphasized the need for community corrections as punishment for minor property and drug offenders as a more efficient means for lowering recidivism and grappling with mounting prison costs. The TDCAA issued a response to the committee’s recommendations, endorsing the allocation of more resources for more facilities and increases in penalties for serious offenders (Association, 1992). But the TDCAA objected to the TPSC recommendations that would have limited punishments for minor offenses and diverted some offenders from prison (Association, 1992).
The state legislature considered the TPSC’s recommendations in 1993, which were integrated into two House and two Senate Bills, and became the subject of intense debate, gridlock, and numerous modifications. District and county attorneys mounted intense opposition to those measures that would have diverted minor property offenders and drug offenders from prison and into community corrections by creating a fourth-degree felony category that did not automatically impose prison time (Fabelo, 1994). One prosecutor stated, ‘We don’t believe the answer is to decriminalize certain crimes’, and the TDCAA and its members fought against any reduction in punishment for minor crimes (Editorial, 1993: A8). In sharp contrast to community corrections and alternative sanctions, the TDCAA’s president suggested a tax increase to subsidize prison expansion, and the use of county facilities that would require manual labor to alleviate costs (Editorial, 1993). The prosecutors’ objections to the TPSC’s recommendations, and the subsequent lack of a Senate sponsor for the necessary bill led to weeks of gridlock in the legislature (Fabelo, 1994).
The legislature finally passed legislation at the end of the session that incorporated few of the TPSC’s major recommendations, and that preserved harsh sentences for minor offenders, and placed no new limits on prosecutorial discretion. The final legislation added a new ‘state jail’ system that would house and punish lower-level offenders, essentially adding a new layer to a prison system already undergoing massive expansion (Ward, 1993). The final bill created institutions of 1000 or more inmates mostly housed in dormitory-style conditions (Fabelo, 1994). Though reforms had initially aimed to limit the amount of time that counties and districts sent lower-level offenders to prison, and sought some consistency across the various districts in Texas, these reforms were ultimately omitted. The final legislation considerably increased sentences for serious and repeat offenders, eliminated parole, provided a billion dollars to construct a new layer of incarceration for lower-level offenders, and did little to limit prison sentences for minor crimes (Fabelo, 1994). The only sentencing reform that limited punishment involved changes in sentencing for the lowest amounts of controlled substances and burglary of an automobile, which became a fourth degree felony (Fabelo, 1994).
Historical background and socioeconomic instability
Changes in crime policy in Texas in the 1980s and 1990s unfolded against economic volatility and a demographic transformation. Population growth, especially in Texas’s Hispanic population, created three massive urban areas—San Antonio, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Houston—that experienced predictably higher crime rates (Hobbs and Stoops, 2002). This population increase did not equate to much political power for many Hispanics. Though their numbers increased, Hispanics voted at extremely low rates; their political integration did not mirror their growing numbers (Campbell, 2009). These socioeconomic developments had important political implications that potentially threatened the state’s traditional power relations, which had seen the Democratic Party control all of the state’s major offices and the legislature since the late 19th century.
The entrenched power of the state’s Democratic Party and the state’s decentralized structure stemmed from Texas’s Civil War experience. Texas had been among the original seven slave states to join the Confederacy, and after the Confederacy’s defeat, experienced a brief but turbulent imposition of Republican Party rule by the victorious Union Army during and immediately after Reconstruction (R.B. Campbell, 2003). After the Union Army’s withdrawal, the state’s conservative Democratic Party swept into power and rewrote the Constitution, establishing a conservative, decentralized state, that Democrats dominated until 1978 (R.B. Campbell, 2003). Texas’s political structure was expressly designed to limit government’s ability to impose social change, and to prevent the nonwhite population from threatening the traditional power of Whites (R.B. Campbell, 2003; Keyssar, 2000; Perkinson, 2010). An extremely decentralized system of government endured through reforms in the early 1970s, and Texas entered its period of intense modernization with a state legislature that met just once every two years, allocated limited powers to the governor, and established a state structure that deferred power to local government and away from centralized decision making (R.B. Campbell, 2003). Taxes were low and state institutions meager. For prison policy, this meant the emergence and perpetuation of plantation-style prisons that endured into the early 1980s, with prisoners, mostly Black and Hispanic, toiling fields in rural Texas under guard by poorly paid rural Whites (Perkinson, 2010).
This history established important preconditions that shaped Texas’s turn to mass incarceration. The state’s extremely decentralized structure created formidable obstacles to mobilizing government to address social issues. As the state debated crime and prison policy in Texas, no organization or association representing the poor communities where crime was most prominent were actively involved. Decentralized state structures are strongly associated with low levels of political participation (Holbrook and Raja, 2008), and voter participation rates in Texas were (and are) among the lowest in the nation (US Census Bureau, November 2002 and earlier years). Texas’s history of racial conflict also established conditions that made the turn to mass incarceration more likely. Law enforcement and prisons had always stood as a symbol of Texas’s racial order (R.B. Campbell, 2003), and appeals to preserve the state’s historical commitment to harsh punishment were grounded in long traditions. These historical contextual factors slanted the political playing field in ways that favored law enforcement’s orientation, making prosecutors a central player in the policy arena.
As I will show below, these contextual factors and organizational and positional arrangements associated with prosecutors were important in ensuring that legal and policy reforms in Texas would continue to incarcerate low-level offenders for long periods. Prosecutors enjoyed many advantages that help explain why they were especially well equipped to shape the legal and political process. First, they maintained a permanent presence in the capitol in the TDCAA, operating as a repeat player in the crime policy field; this experience helped the TDCAA successfully navigate the complex legislative and political processes necessary to shape policy. Second, as elected officials, prosecutors are especially attuned to the political nature of crime policy and are thus well poised to utilize their familiarity and political capital to affect it. Third, all prosecutors are legally trained experts with intimate familiarity with law and policy and are uniquely poised to understand how legislative change will affect punishment in practice. And finally, prosecutors frequently interact with the media regarding crime and court cases, providing familiar networks and access to the public.
Prosecutors, policy, and the Texas District and County Attorneys Association
The TDCAA began as a loosely knit association of the state’s widely distributed prosecutors that gathered just once a year during the attorney general’s annual meeting (Krampitz, 1991a). In 1970, the Criminal Justice Division of the Governor’s office began providing the TDCAA with funding allocated by the federal government’s Law Enforcement Assistance Administration programs, which was intended to aid the professionalization of local criminal justice organizations (Krampitz, 1991a). The TDCAA included prosecutors, district attorneys, and associated staff from across Texas, and has played a central role in the formation of crime policy throughout the state’s modern era. The organization’s origins stem directly from their role in helping rewrite Texas’s Penal Code and Controlled Substances Act in the early 1970s at the request of then-governor Preston Smith (Krampitz, 1991a). The TDCAA is a non-profit organization that provides educational and technical resources for prosecutors, and does not take official policy positions.
The TDCAA’s membership increased dramatically from 1975–1990. In 1975, 250 people attended the group’s annual meeting; this increased to 800 by 1988, and 2170 in 1990, when the TDCAA claimed over 90 percent of the state’s elected prosecutors as members (2009 membership totaled 5450) (Foundation, 2010; Office of Governor William P. Clements, Jr, 1982). The TDCAA claimed the largest membership of any prosecutor organization in the nation, and by 1991 it had more representatives on the Board of Directors of the National District Attorneys Association than any other state (Staff, 1991). By 1990 the group sustained a permanent staff of 11 in Austin, and maintained eight standing committees, including the Legislative Committee, which worked most directly in the policy arena, and had 29 members in the year that Texas rewrote its penal code (Staff, 1993a).
Only elected district and county attorneys can vote on the organization’s leadership (Staff, 1990), which might suggest that representatives from Texas’s many rural districts and smaller towns hold considerable influence over the organization’s direction. Though data are not available for elected prosecutors in 1993, an analysis of elected prosecutors in 2009 shows that of the 74 elected prosecutors (there are 330 total) only nine (12%) came from counties with a population of 100,000 or more, and 35 (47%) came from counties with less than 20,000 residents (Services, 2009; Staff, 2009). This is interesting because counties with over 100,000 residents include just over 13 million residents, while those with under 20,000 contain around 1.3 million Texans, (Services, 2009). In other words, 47 percent of this cohort’s voting members came from counties that represented about 5 percent of the state’s population. The fact that such a high percentage of the TDCAA’s members who could vote on leadership came from rural counties might have affected the organization’s priorities and goals.
Some of the TDCAA’s leadership reflected this rural orientation; the group’s executive director wrote of his hometown being, ‘a rural community located on the edge of the featureless Texas coastal planes’ (Krampitz, 1991b: 3). The TDCAA’s president in 1990 was a district attorney from Sterling County, a district in West Texas with a county seat that has a population of around 1300 (Durham, 1990). Though Texas had modernized in many facets, the TDCAA’s organizational structure seems to have preserved considerable influence for the state’s more rural population; the group’s disposition to crime and punishment was consistently aligned with the harsh punishment favored in these areas, as the group’s president noted, ‘the juries in Sterling County are going to render a harsh punishment—soap on a rope and jail time’ (Durham, 1990: 4). In the TDCAA’s newsletter, he noted that people in West Texas believed that the state had become soft on criminals, ‘Most of us in West Texas think that prison has become some sort of country club deficient of any true punishment due to federal mandates and “revolving door” policies’ (Durham, 1990: 4).
The TDCAA’s expansion and long-term involvement in the crime and punishment policy arena made them an important repeat player in a state that had few organizations involved in crime policy. Many members were legally trained political actors who carried important skills that made prosecutors important actors in shaping policy. The state’s decentralized structure, which included regular legislative sessions that met just once every two years, established a political terrain unfavorable to the formation of interest groups opposed to harsh punishment. Groups that might oppose such policies—such as those representing poor and minority constituents—would have great difficulty in sustaining an active presence in the capitol given the infrequency of legislative activity. No other organization sustained an active and engaged presence in public forums and legislative committees during this important period. As a long-term player with intimate access to the policy arena, and with ample human resources and a long history as a key factor in shaping criminal law, the TDCAA cast a long shadow in the state’s capitol.
Policy positions and politicization
Though the TDCAA does not take official positions on crime policy, its newsletter and comments by its leadership reflected a firm commitment to a decidedly punitive approach to managing criminal justice. In the 1980s, Texas prosecutors had been a major supporter of Governor William P. Clements’s attempts to expand the power of law enforcement, supported prison expansion, and opposed legislation that would have lowered penalties for drug and low-level property crimes (Campbell, 2009). TDCAA leaders demonstrated a commitment to preserving local discretion in sentencing, and frequently made statements that emphasized individual responsibility and the perceived value of harsh punishment in deterring crime.
As representatives of local government, prosecutors reflect an important point of conflict between state and local interests. Local governments pay no extra price when courts sentence offenders to long prison sentences; once convicted, these offenders become state prison inmates and the cost is passed along to the state government. The growing stream of prisoners from Texas’s counties overwhelmed the state’s prisons, and attempts to impose limits on admissions, or to require counties to pay to support imprisonment stimulated opposition from prosecutors (Durham, 1990). It was these limits on prison admissions that eventually led to jail overcrowding and the Alberti (1991) ruling, which, in a perverse twist, generated an incentive for counties to expand backlogs of prisoners when federal courts ruled that the state government was required to pay counties a fee for each inmate every day that the state was unable to receive them. This helped create the legally chaotic conditions that led to county governments suing the state government.
TDCAA leadership was consistently critical of the state’s various attempts at criminal justice reform, stressing the need to expand prisons and leave control of sentencing in local hands. As local government officials, prosecutors could criticize legislators for not building enough prisons because local governments did not have to pay for them. In their bimonthly newsletter, TDCAA leadership depicted the legislature as a quagmire, a place where well-intended but misguided attempts to govern generated problems for prosecutors and local government. The organization’s newsletter suggested in 1991 that prosecutors could either set back and allow legislators to declare the crime problem solved, or ‘we can become big, ornery, sharp-toothed alligators, impressing upon the Legislature that their work on real criminal justice reform has not yet been completed’ (Krampitz, 1991c: 3). Prosecutors leveled intense criticism against intermediate sanctions, and suggested that state legislators must build prisons to protect public safety (Krampitz, 1991c).
Political activities by some prosecutors who formerly held leadership positions in the TDCAA translated into the formation of a political action committee in 1990 with the founding of Texas People Against Crime (TPAC). TPAC was a political action committee led by Rusty Hardin, a former prosecutor and TDCAA member, who attempted to link law enforcement, crime victims’ groups, and the public behind candidates endorsed by prosecutors (Hardin, 1991). Unlike the TDCAA, which is legally prohibited from direct advocacy, TPAC was a political action committee that could legally endorse and support candidates and policies. Though TPAC’s fund raising was limited, its goals and strategies seem to reflect the growing politicization of law enforcement generally and prosecutors in particular. In an article published in the TDCAA newsletter, Hardin (1991: 1) noted, ‘For all too long, many of us in TDCAA had lamented the need for a way to educate and inform the public as to law enforcement’s position on major issues, candidates, and points affecting the criminal justice system’. He noted TPAC’s potential impact: The implications for the future are momentous. If prosecutors are willing to serve as the galvanizing force, a combination of law enforcement, crime victims, and members of the general public can have a tremendous impact on the Texas criminal justice system.
In the TDCAA’s bimonthly newsletter, Hardin (1991: 17) noted: ‘Most of the efforts in the Democratic Primary were spent on trying to organize district and county attorneys around the state to get out the word in their local communities’. TPAC was bipartisan, but endorsed more Republicans than Democrats despite the Republicans’ slim chances given the Democratic Party’s dominance in state politics (Hardin, 1991). TPAC worked with prosecutors across the state, distributing over a million slate cards; prosecutors in West Texas paid for newspaper advertisements to voice their support for the group’s candidates, and all of those endorsed won in those areas (Hardin, 1991). Texas People Against Crime reflected a more direct means by which prosecutors could shape policy, and access to the TDCAA’s newsletter provided valuable access to potential supporters.
Goals, strategies, and conflict
Statements by prosecutors and TDCAA leadership in the organization’s newsletter seem to have been guided by two primary goals—to influence legislation in ways that defended local autonomy, and to shape policy in ways that emphasized the use of incarceration to fight crime at the state level. These two goals are related; without ample prison space, prosecutors have less ability to pursue and impose the harsh sentences meted out in local courts. In this sense, prison expansion preserves prosecutors’ autonomy in shaping punishment. Prosecutors worked to shape policy by disseminating information relevant to the TPSC’s work across the state, and helped direct local prosecutors in their participation on local panels in which discussions of punishment policy were held. Also, and most important, the TDCAA maintained a relatively large staff in the capitol that was extremely influential during legislative and committee meetings. As representatives of ‘the people’ in court, elected officials tasked with punishing and helping prevent crime, prosecutors were practically and symbolically significant in the penal policy realm. With one foot in state politics and the other at the local level, district attorneys posed a powerful potential ally or foe; this strategic positioning likely made prosecutors and their policy positions something state legislators would carefully consider.
Prosecutors differed from many TPSC members and staff on several key issues, and their objections were central to defeating those reforms. The evolution of the TPSC’s recommendations and the ultimate form of legislation provides strong evidence of prosecutors’ influence in state politics. The TPSC ultimately aimed to establish ‘truth-in-sentencing’ reforms that would establish punishment guidelines that reflected the current time served for many lower offenses (Staff, 1992). Prosecutors and TDCAA members were among the most frequent and vocal of all attendees at the TPSC’s public meetings across Texas and in the subcommittee meetings in which policy specifics were discussed. From the beginning of deliberations over changes to punishment, prosecutors were hostile to any reforms that would lower punishment or restrain local discretion in charging and sentencing offenders (Staff, 1992). Prosecutors were particularly opposed to preventing the implementation of ‘truth-in-sentencing’ reforms that would have established new guidelines based on the shorter periods people actually spent in prison versus the much longer official sentences for minor crimes (Fabelo, 1994).
The TPSC spent considerable time debating sentencing disparities and limits on discretion. Some TPSC members noted how various districts had sometimes large discrepancies in sentencing for the same crime, and that sentences also varied across racial groups for the same crimes (Subcommittee Meeting Minutes, 1992: 2–3). In a subcommittee meeting, a representative of the attorney general’s office noted that sentencing disparities disproportionately affected certain groups, and that the percentage of Black admissions to state prison had increased 40 percent from 1986–1990 (Regular Panel Hearing Summary, 1992: 5). Danny Hill, president-elect of the TDCAA responded that ‘Disparity in sentencing across the state is not a bad thing. It is the sign of a healthy criminal justice system’ (Regular Panel Hearing Summary, 1992: 5). The sentencing subcommittee considered sentencing grids that had been used in Oregon and Minnesota to create more certainty in sentencing, but these alternatives were strongly opposed by prosecutors and were ultimately rejected (Subcommittee Meeting Minutes, 1992: 2–3).
Prosecutors also vigorously advocated for serious enhancements for repeat offenders; some members of the committee noted that criminal records were partly the product of growing up in high-crime, high-police neighborhoods, and that enhancements would adversely affect those from already disadvantaged backgrounds (Criminal History Subcommittee Meeting Minutes, 1992: 1–6). But prosecutors countered that ‘minor’ property crimes had to be punished vigorously or property crime rates would escalate (Criminal History Subcommittee Meeting Minutes, 1992: 1–6). Several prosecutors contended that minor offenders were major offenders in the making, that they posed a serious threat to public safety and should be incarcerated (Regular Panel Hearing Summary, 1992: 5). TDCAA representatives and other members of law enforcement painted the crime problem in stark terms—even minor criminals were a dangerous enemy to public safety and they must be dealt with severely.
From the beginning of the TPSC’s work, it was clear that prosecutors opposed many of the commission’s proposals and objectives, and they voiced these in committee meetings and in public hearings across the state. When the TPSC issued its final report and presented its recommendations to the legislature, the TDCAA issued its own statement opposing key elements of the proposed changes (Association, 1993). In particular, they objected to the creation of the fourth-degree felony that would have kept low-level offenders out of prison. The TDCAA statement endorsed the ‘exploration’ of community corrections, and commended the commission for suggesting that the state invest $1 billion into corrections (Association, 1993). But the bulk of the statement was a rebuttal to recommendations that would relax punishment (Texas Punishment Standards Commission Report, 1992). Prosecutors insisted that legislators should establish penalties that Texans thought were sufficiently punitive regardless of the state’s prison problems; they argued that cost should not be a factor in determining punishment because that would threaten public safety (Texas Punishment Standards Commission Report, 1992). Prosecutors pushed a narrow framing of punishment that excluded the importance of cost and public opinion surveys that showed considerable support for rehabilitation.
Opponents of the proposed reforms that would have relegated punishment for property crimes to jail time publicly derided TPSC proposals in the press, and TDCAA officials presented an alternative plan. They suggested an increase in the state’s sales tax to fund the construction of 85,000 jail beds that would augment the 109,000 prison beds already planned, and would be modeled on county-level work farms similar to the old agricultural system (Editorial, 1993). The TDCAA leadership’s vocal opposition, and opposition among certain members of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, led to gridlock on criminal justice reform (Fabelo, 1994). John Whitmore, who chaired the Senate committee and the TPSC, eventually made a public plea for support from the prosecutors: ‘Will you work with us to get from this knee-jerk reaction to fourth-degree felonies?’ (Editorial, 1993: A8). This public call for support from prosecutors in fighting the perspective that reforms were soft on crime was important; it marked a very public acknowledgement of their power as a key link between state politics and public opinion. Law-makers sought their endorsement to fight the perception that reform met coddling criminals, and law-makers backed away from those reforms that might have limited harsh punishment for minor property crimes (Fabelo, 1994). Senator Whitmore later explicitly cited prosecutors’ objections as the primary reason that the TPSC’s recommendations stalled in the Senate and were eventually abandoned (Ward, 1993).
In addition to making public statements regarding crime policy, the TDCAA also maintained a powerful presence in the legislature and faced no serious organized opposition. No organization representing defense lawyers regularly participated in public forums or legislative sessions. In 1992, TDCAA leadership acknowledged the significance of the upcoming legislative session and established a special committee to expand the group’s presence (Implementation of Long-Range Goals for Services to Prosecutors Under Way, 1992). The group’s leadership sought to expand public outreach programs to inform Texans about the association’s positions. The TDCAA sent 27 members to the capitol during the contentious debate over criminal justice reform, augmenting the association’s permanent staff in the capitol with a team of legal experts well versed in the politics of crime and punishment (Krampitz, 1993). These efforts combined to help Texas prosecutors play a pivotal role in shaping the nature of punishment reform in Texas.
Ultimately the changes in Texas’s penal code dramatically increased punishment for serious offenders, and created an entirely new, cheaper punishment apparatus to incarcerate first-time, nonviolent, and property offenders. No limits were placed on prosecutorial discretion regarding sentencing, and legislators committed $1.4 billion to further expanding facilities despite the massive ongoing construction program. The resources to build these facilities were provided by a constitutional amendment authorizing bonds to finance prison expansion that voters passed overwhelmingly in 1993. These were major victories on every front for prosecutors, who successfully protected local government, and their own discretion; it was the state government that would ultimately have to pay the heavy cost, which they did by borrowing.
Discussion
What appeared to be an opportunity to reform some of Texas’s most punitive policies for minor offenders triggered by the Ruiz and Alberti cases ultimately resulted in incarceration’s expansion and harsher punishments. The TPSC was intended to examine less costly strategies for managing offenders, and the committee’s most substantial recommendations would have diverted many lower-level offenders from detention. Prosecutors opposed this plan and the TPSC’s recommendations for a more structured sentencing scheme. Prosecutors did indeed become ‘ornery alligators’ in the political sphere; their success can be attributed to their position as repeat players in the penal policy field, to their considerable knowledge of both politics and law, and to their unique position as a key link between local and state politics. Though the TDCAA did not directly lobby for particular pieces of legislation, the organization did operate as a key factor in the penal field by working closely with legislators within the capitol, where prosecutors were well positioned to take advantage of brief and frenetic legislative sessions. Their legal and political knowledge made them a powerful rhetorical asset in influencing policy.
Theoretically, these findings support an interpretation of the USA’s punitive turn that questions ‘top–down vs bottom–up’ conceptualizations of the emergence of mass incarceration. My findings from Texas suggest that this might be a false dichotomy. When examined closer to the ground we find forces operating from both directions simultaneously. What becomes glaringly important is how the historically conditioned social and political structures in Texas tilted the political playing field in ways that favored law enforcement’s perspective. Law enforcement institutions might operate simultaneously as a force that conditions popular anxieties through campaigns and comments on crime and punishment, and operationalizes their expression as an inside player in the state capitol. This is not to suggest that Beckett’s assertion that political strategy, or Garland’s focus on cultural shifts are not important—they most certainly seem to be. But ultimately it was the ways that these strategically situated local and state political actors translated these processes into political capital and policy change that was important.
My findings seem to support an account embedded in Max Weber’s (1978) emphasis on the power of institutions and the recursive relationship between legal developments and public order. In Texas, law enforcement groups played an important mediating role in the state legislature by projecting themselves as local representatives of public opinion. Simultaneously, law enforcement organizations might serve an important interpretive function for public opinion; they take complex state-level political issues and provide constituents with an interpretation that resonates with local attitudes and beliefs. In a political context lacking in diverse political institutions or organizations that might have resisted a ‘lock ’em up’ approach, those who might have opposed the harshest crime policies were unlikely to succeed. Instead, prosecutors were the most powerful voice in the legislative process.
Prosecutors’ positions on crime policy were usually framed within a pragmatic framework; they sought to protect prosecutorial discretion (and local power) and to procure ample prison space from the state to provide teeth to sentences. Their positions rarely considered the fiscal costs that triggered reform or other factors associated with criminal offending, such as poverty and urbanization. These problems were marginalized in the debate, which was framed in a very simple and localized understanding of the crime problem—offenders should be punished severely. Prosecutors not surprisingly advocated for policies that preserved their power and autonomy—particularly those that provided more prison space. Given Texas’s long history of strong local government and dispersed state power, and its historic commitment to harsh punishment, this was not a tough sell.
But why would prosecutors be more effective in advocating their positions than other groups? In addition to their strategic position between state and local government, I believe the answer to this question resides in the particular expertise associated with the office. In addition to being political actors, attuned to the realities of state and local politics, prosecutors also frequently engage with the media in the course of their work. Research has demonstrated that prosecutors often enjoy tighter links with media outlets because they are a valuable source during high profile trials and events that media seek (Heinz and Manikas, 1992). Additionally, because the TDCAA has a perpetual presence in the capitol it is better able to monitor developments, share information with prosecutors, and bring experience to bear on legislation—their repeat player status pays dividends.
This is not to suggest that it was simply prosecutors’ efforts that necessarily led to the punitive outcome of 1993. As I have shown elsewhere (Campbell, 2011), profound changes in Texas’s socioeconomic structure, combined with a political culture characterized by extremely low levels of political participation, established conditions ripe for crime’s ascent in the political sphere. Democratic Governor Ann Richards pushed a ‘tough on crime’ position, and legislators from both parties eagerly pushed severe crime policies throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s. But when the more proximate cause of change came—the rewriting of the Texas criminal code and reorganization of punishment and corrections—prosecutors were uniquely positioned to shape policy, and their influence reflected a distinctly punitive bent.
My findings also have implications for unresolved questions arising between the initial and later waves of research on mass incarceration. As Mona Lynch found in Arizona, Texas’s historical commitment to harsh punishment established cultural and political conditions that made less severe penalties a tough sell. As the TDCAA president suggested, many of his rural constituents wanted long sentences and ‘soap on a rope’ for offenders, and they viewed federally imposed reforms to prison brutality as non-Texan. These commitments were rooted in the state’s frontier history and traditional notions of racial hierarchy that had undergirded slavery and segregation, and that were under assault in the state’s prison system (Perkinson, 2010). For some, the state’s growing ‘crime problem’ was likely identified closely with its growing urban areas and their rapidly expanding nonwhite populations.
And, as Heather Schoenfeld (2010) found, federal litigation played an important role in driving prison expansion. Federal rulings effectively dismantled the plantation-style forced labor that sent large numbers of minorities from urban areas to till rural farms, and made prisons cheap. But this did little to change the state’s longstanding commitment to harsh punishment, even for minor crimes. Litigation did, however, force the state to pay dearly to retain such a punitive regime, and in doing so brought two of the state’s most powerful political traditions into conflict—harsh punishment and fiscal conservatism. Prosecutors supported, law-makers passed, and voters approved, measures that drastically increased the size and cost of Texas government. Ultimately, Texans were more committed to harsh punishment than they were to fiscal conservatism; prison and jail expansion amounted to an extremely costly expansion in state size and power.
The state’s political traditions are intricately linked to another factor that seems to be important in mass incarceration’s rise—state structure. Vanessa Barker (2009) argued that decentralized state structures help create political cultures that are more likely to turn to harsh punishment and uncompromising policies. Texas certainly provides an example of the ideal-type decentralized state with low levels of political participation; but Texas’s government has always been so. Its structure is intimately linked to the state’s experience in the post-Civil War period, and reflects concerns about race and political power. In a sense, the decentralized state might be an artifact—though obviously an important one—of historical and ongoing racial tensions, more than a primary cause of uncompromising politics.
In a sense punishment policy pits local against state government. The embattled state government was responsible for the cost of detaining prisoners sentenced in local courts. Some of the staunchest advocates of prison expansion—local prosecutors—were not responsible for the costs that such a policy entails. By framing the issue in either/or terms in which the fiscally conservative reformers either supported prison expansion and public safety, or were opposed to public safety, prosecutors de-contextualized a complex policy issue. The allocation of scarce state resources to punishment affects public safety by limiting resources for prevention or education. But because their responsibilities are limited, prosecutors could define the crime problem in simplistic terms that assume a natural relationship between more prisons and more public safety, a relationship that is at best a small one (Spelman, 2000; Western, 2006; Zimring, 2007). In this sense prosecutors and their association provided an important link between state government and local politics.
This is an issue that was rarely engaged in the first wave of scholarship on mass incarceration, though Stuart Scheingold (1991) did examine its links to the politicization of street crime, and Frank Zimring (1991) noted how local courts face no costs in imposing long sentences. My findings relevant to the local/state structure both support and complicate Lisa Miller’s (2008) findings in her examination of federalism and the ways that federal government structures affect punishment policy outcomes. There was certainly little representation in the state capitol for local community groups that could have represented the interests of the marginalized groups that might have supported more diverse means for dealing with crime, as she found in Harrisburg (Miller, 2008). But my findings also suggest that certain state-wide organizations provide an important link between these two levels of government, and it was in providing this link between state law-makers/law making and local constituencies that local prosecutors played a prominent role. Federalism itself does not seem to be a powerful explanation, but the dynamics associated with American federalism in certain contexts may be.
Finally, my account suggests that the political role of prosecutors in particular and law enforcement groups in general might be an important underappreciated factor in explaining mass incarceration. Joshua Page (2011) found similar degrees of influence in his penetrating examination of the role of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association in shaping prison policy in California. Page found that as imprisonment grew so too did the power of this important union, which has been central to defeating efforts to reform draconian punishments in the state. Mona Lynch’s (2010) research in Arizona also pointed to the prominent role of prosecutors in defeating efforts to reform certain punishment practices, and Lisa Miller (2008) found that law enforcement organizations’ influence expanded in the latter 20th century. Law enforcement’s political influence might be disproportionately influential in states where no powerful countervailing political organizations effectively advocate on behalf of marginalized groups, which was the case in Texas. These findings support Joachim Savelsberg’s claim that the politicized nature of criminal justice in the USA might be an important factor in explaining this nation’s penchant for mass incarceration. My findings and others from this second wave of research also lend considerable support to Jonathon Simon’s (2007) argument that the USA’s obsession with crime has been associated with a surge in the power of executive branches of government, with the prosecutor operating as the local executive.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers, editors, Kitty Calavita, and Joachim Savelsberg for reading earlier drafts of this article. This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Author biography
Michael C. Campbell is an assistant professor of sociology at Northern Illinois University. His research examines contemporary and historical issues associated with crime and punishment, including criminal disenfranchisement laws, incarceration, the role of law enforcement in shaping crime and punishment policy, international comparative studies of punishment, and how inequality and political participation affect crime and punishment policy. His research and commentary can be found in Punishment & Society, the Journal of Contemporary Sociology, Theoretical Criminology, Law and Society Review, and the Handbook of European Homicide Research.