Certainly. The reality of the rise of crime, beginning in the late 60s and continuing through the 70s and 80s, is something that we emphasize against a typical reluctance in leftist and liberal work on this phenomena to acknowledge crime. I mean, the standard story about the War on Drugs is really about an invention of crime. According to this story, new laws are criminalizing activities that wouldnt otherwise lead to a prison sentence. Thus, all we need to do is change these laws, and we can get rid of the problem: we can address mass incarceration simply by releasing all these people who clearly shouldnt be in prison anyway.

Of course, in our view, most people shouldnt be in prison. Were not supporters of incarceration as a strategy for addressing crime. But what we do want to say is that the real rise in crime reflected a broader social crisis that America was facing in the 70s and 80s. Denying that context by emphasizing the drug war as this state-manufactured intervention is, in our view, to miss the fundamental story. Between 1960 and 1980, homicide rates doubled in America, property crime rates increased about threefold, and violent crime increased about fivefold. That major crime wave, which we think is unmistakable in the historical evidence, is played down by many liberal and progressive commentators, in part, I think, because they assume that acknowledging the reality of crime is to somehow play the blame game, to blame individuals rather than the system.

We want to push back strongly against this assumption. For us, crime is an index of oppression. To deny the reality of crime is tantamount to denying the reality of the causes of crime, which are, in our view, poverty, inequality, social vulnerability, and exploitation. The Left should not be in a position of denying such things.

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How Mass Incarceration Was Built in the United States And How We Can Undo It - Jacobin magazine