Getting Tough - (Politics and Society in Modern America) by Julilly Kohler-Hausmann (Paperback)

Getting Tough: The Expansion of the Penal System and Reduction of Welfare Programs in 1970s America is a groundbreaking book that sheds light on the historical events leading to the unprecedented growth of the penal system and the evisceration of the nation's welfare programs.

Through three legislative cases, the book reveals how politicians responded to social upheaval by repudiating the commitment to individual rehabilitation that had governed penal and social programs for decades.

The architects of these tough strategies insisted they were necessary due to the failure of liberal social programs and the supposed pathological culture within poor African American and Latino communities.

However, Kohler-Hausmann rejects this explanation and shows how the spectacle of enacting punitive policies convinced many Americans that social investment was counterproductive and the "underclass" could be managed only through coercion and force.

This book offers new interpretations of dramatic transformations in the modern American state, providing a vital reminder that reactionary ideas gestate at the local level before they get nationalized.

With enough organizing, so too might emancipatory ones.

Don't miss out on this illuminating and engaging read!