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Critically Recognized
  • From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America by Elizabeth Hinton book cover
  • From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America by Elizabeth Hinton book cover
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From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America

by Elizabeth Hinton

Tracing mass incarceration to the Great Society era

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Awards & Recognition

  • Award recognition

    Co-winner of the Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize

    Co-winner of the prize.

  • Editorial selection

    A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

    Selected as a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice.

  • Critical praise

    Imani Perry called the book “more than an argument; it is a revelation”

    Imani Perry described the book as a revelation and highlighted its contemporary implications.

AlbakiReads Editorial

Tracing mass incarceration to the Great Society era

Elizabeth Hinton reframes the history of mass incarceration by looking beyond the commonly cited War on Drugs of the Reagan years. Her account traces its roots to Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs, placing the growth of crime-control policy within the social welfare initiatives and civil rights struggles of the 1960s. That connection gives the book its central historical question: how programs intended to address social problems became part of the story of expanding penal control. The focus is the development of U.S. policy and institutions across a consequential period, offering a historical lens on the relationship between social programs, policing, and incarceration.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Readers interested in U.S. history and public policy
  • Readers studying the Great Society and the civil rights era
  • Readers seeking historical context for mass incarceration and policing

Themes

Mass incarcerationThe Great SocietyCivil rights eraSocial welfare and crime-control policyPolicing and penal control

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

Co-Winner of the Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
A Wall Street Journal Favorite Book of the Year
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year
A Publishers Weekly Favorite Book of the Year

In the United States today, one in every thirty-one adults is under some form of penal control, including one in eleven African American men. How did the "land of the free" become the home of the world's largest prison system? Challenging the belief that America's prison problem originated with the Reagan administration's War on Drugs, Elizabeth Hinton traces the rise of mass incarceration to an ironic source: the social welfare programs of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society at the height of the civil rights era.

"An extraordinary and important new book."
--Jill Lepore, New Yorker

"Hinton's book is more than an argument; it is a revelation...There are moments that will make your skin crawl...This is history, but the implications for today are striking. Readers will learn how the militarization of the police that we've witnessed in Ferguson and elsewhere had roots in the 1960s."
--Imani Perry, New York Times Book Review

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