Does it help you if your work . Helps me on wind there is a lot of reading to do but it is bills and reports and nonfiction. For fun i will breakout novel. [inaudible conversations] hello everyone thinks for joining us today on behalf of the Harvard Book Store i am pleased to welcome you to our friday Forum Presenting our new book from the war on poverty. The friday forum series takes place on friday afternoon during the Academic Year to highlight books in a wide range of scholarly fields the final book is Malcolm Spero and his book handcuffs. Visit us online order to pick up the book on your way out. The author talks and we will have questions and a book signing we do have copies for sale at the registers we are pleased to have cspan booktv here when asking questions please know you are recorded in please wait for the microphone to come to you. As ole is todays title is 20 off you supports the author series and insure the future of the independent bookstore. Amply silence yourself phones. Now i am pleased to introduce today speaker assistant professor from the department of history and africanamerican studies at harvard. Coeditor of the book the new black history she has been published in the journal of American History and today she will be discussing her new book the guardian calls it a new history a clear eye and timely book traces of president destrier complex back to what was created on the war on poverty. This is one that affects an enormous percentage of the country. Were so pleased to halt toaster here today. [applause] thank you for this introduction it is an honor and of privilege to be here when know it is an incredibly busy time of year but it is overwhelming to see so many colleagues and friends and students that are in the midst of finals. This book is really the first historical account that tracesthe rise of mass incarceration in the United States the guardian calls it a precalled to the work that michele a salad alexander has done and i take that as a complement. It is a labor of love with the white house central files and then i began the project a decade ago as to why we need to steady crime control policy to understand those developments in the aftermath of the Civilrights Movement and now theyre at the forefront of National Conversations from the democratic side say the fact you are all here now coming with those policy decisions that have been made over the past half century. The book is deeply rooted in the travel documents but i will read from the epilogue i hope he will read the book to provide the first narrative account but if you dont get it to read the book to help the least everybody will walk away with the implications that ittook me and a decade of research to come into with the criminal Justice Reform or questions about of book itself there has been a lot of focus on the johns and administration thinking of the war on poverty but it is also a important to lay the groundwork for the crime control and the infrastructure that Ronald Reagan and to urge. The transformation of domestic policy followed a historical pattern. In the shadow of emancipation and they stopped at a formal equality instead as the penal system a merged in fleecing that systematic criminalization leaving three people and their dependent to shape practices of the beginnings of reconstruction through the start of the war on crime after the dismantling of jim crow capable to sustain a new threshold the development of the year earlier period richard into a different approach. With equal opportunity satisfied federal policy makers to expose for americans to a dominant values while alienating those of collective violence with the second half of the 60s priories shifted from fighting poverty to fighting crime for the right remainder of the decade with the surveillance measures of urban communities. Those that had a concrete means to shelter in employment it increased during the ensuing 15 years. At the crime control strategies developed through the opposite impact in the cities and neighborhoods one of the most disturbing ironies in the history of american domestic policy by the time Ronald Reagan took Office Americans were fuller ball on to friends against each other and the institutions of policies at the core of the National Law Enforcement program so we hope he will read about them in more detail except aimed to catch robberies in progress and underground economies to criminalize generations and black shoes to bring federal Law Enforcement authorities career criminal court units to expedite the Justice System all that hastens the trend to internal violence and incarceration this gave rise to the network of social welfare institutions with the discourse serving as the intellectual foundation. Though long mobilization of social control and with a subsequent creation of new industries of support another late 20thcentury the things that the policy policymakers to make it the highest levels of government but some of those choices may have been added different timer political moment. Ultimately the bipartisan consensus fixated on the policing of urban space and removing generations of young men and women of color who lived inside the prison we could excuse these decisions as a product of their time or as the electoral packet that still prevents the nation to realize the promise of principles. And tell the devastating outcomes have went unnoticed discrimination ended with the Civilrights Movement and to move on it beyond race based issues. Unconstitutional to give convicted felons the right to go to ever since the of decision that 6 million americans most have already served sentences are deprived of of franchise. As a result of the racial disparities, an estimated one at a 13 africanamericans will not vote in the 2016 election due to a prior conviction because of this disenfranchisement date of the 60s has come undone. Party has a questionable situation it takes those that are incarcerated as residents of poor they serve time in then to determine representation the rule area is home to the majority of prisons in other words, urban america favors democrats and ruled districts favor republicans gains representation and to read while Public Schools are more segregated today than before the Civilrights Movement. So that that divided the Great Society to move towards a more equitable and just nation with the organization of social Welfare Program put if approved to be misleading to be designed by grassroots organizations with a toplevel positions and before given a chance to work on the wider level the federal policy makers and a check on a more prominent role in low income neighborhoods. We can only imagine with lookalike today by a bipartisan mobilized behind the principle participation that spear the Community Action program for the same linkedin level of commitment and with the sense they are becoming unraveled federal policy makers are holding them accountable to take the wrong policy to the militarized Police Forces and to build more prisons instead of seeking to resolve the problem with the it was largely relegated to the Law Enforcement around and they awarded the urban Police Department and other communitybased programs. The White House Department was far more interested for the omnipresent control in new lawenforcement technologies pueblo bluntly with its unwillingness with the hierarchys with this social economic relations historically the bipartisan consensus that they were governing themselves there is never in its history and the only race of which this is true i have been getting a lot of press lately and it is even more telling behind those policies of the administration and. As a critical component of the urban program to fund a citizen groups that advocated strategies that were very much in line with the administration without oversight from police and authorities when reagan took office the rhetoric vanished from the area never to return and donned the punitive shift lawenforcement officers the only social services to render as a first point of Contact Police officers assume various duties depending on the group but they are charged with protecting Police Patrol of the white and middle class to guard the up property from outsiders is a search for suspects from the streets the numbers of africanamericans as a result of the differential approach from crime control legislation by introducing greater numbers of Police Officers federal policy makers with lawenforcement authorities only 4 percent of those Police Officers through the 70s were of africanamerican descent given the over representation and inside the prison system. Baldwin answer to the impact of this as the only way to police the ghetto and was the force of the white world to keep the ball like a man crawled here in his place like an occupied soldier threw bitterly hostile isle country those that would gladly see him dead if he knows that. And with individual policemen and. Met with the deadly policing practices with the response of residents was the outcome of both Historical Development and socioeconomic circumstances that shears he had been conditioned but more than a half a century of mass incarceration becomes the most formal civil rights issue of our time to change their own circumstances at all levels climbed crime control is a local matter they should be responsible to keep their own communities safe. The reforms such as body gms continued taxpayer dollars which is a process that began with the Law Enforcement assistance act the militarization of over policing a black neighborhoods that has proven highly the unsuccessful into fuel mass incarceration now is the time to try new strategies to autonomous grassroots social program for the policy makers that were labeled the outside of the Service Economy to see the entrenched inequalities that exist within the criminal Justice System and in August August 2014 images of Law Enforcement drops teargas bombs shot to the heart of the American Public galloped like a war zone prompting discussions among the general public since dollars and policy makers. With the general lack of accountability from the ferguson outbreak i will say their names in tribute to them. They have set the new climate to for federal action in the conditions is an in the loss of their lives and other citizens that will never be known would not have existed and could have been avoided had federal policymakers decide to respond in a different way to the Civilrights Movement in the my in protest of the 60s. Question is of intent to which federal policy makers of the choices that they made our only relevant to a certain extent will uncover a series of decisions in order to discover our own Natural History those domestic policies of black women and men in their communities they will shape like prospects for black children and their childrens children even if the system is transformed once again this will not solve the nations policing problems commuting sentences of the eight federal prisoners it would still be home if we only have those incarcerated as long as lawenforcement remains focused the regressive impulses of the last half century will continue to erode american democracy. But of racial marginal as asian and imprisonment is ever more likely. Thank you. [applause] questions or comments . Hello. I have been and reading your book and he seemed to suggest that the remedies for racism is structural change can you elaborate . If we want to think about the root causes of we call crime and violence that really stems from mass unemployment and the fact United States economy transition during the period from a vibrant Manufacturing Sector to out sourcing much of the slaves so in those communities where the federal government begins investing to augment the police force to simulate the new level of control to put their place under surveillance when really mostly white Police Officers is created there is into program to give low income people those new kinds of opportunities of job creation in terms of rethinking Education Systems and going beyond the program with war and poverty to focus on equal opportunity programs we are more about providing trading trading without thinking about is that could the them to get a job after they have a series of training by the Welfare Programs. Could you talk about the Business Climate . Yes. Police officers, one way to approach Public Safety is to have them live in the communities that they are responsible for keeping safe so instead of having people come to a community that all live and police and arrest people have those Police Officers live in the communities that theyre there to protect to serve a different function this may be a romanticized view but it returns to the earlier forms of policing that we think about where they lived on the block they were responsible for before the era of modernized forces given a different level of responsibility and accountability when youre policing and neighbors instead of those you dont know or understand. I was wondering if you could look at what statute or legislative changes would be needed for what is inherent in the system with their types of laws or statutes . Massachusetts doesnt have a Death Penalty but with the most restrictive clauses in thecountry and to cede the criminalization of poverty every day. How do see that happening with the statute change . Thats a fantastic question. You try to think about how to move beyond, part of what mass incarceration is not just incarcerating people for minor offenses or drug things like drug possession, but the extent of american punitive miss. I believe theres currently 700,000 people serving life without parole sentences which is as large as the entire prison population in japan. So accompanying these gestures that we have met for d incarcerating nonviolent offenders and rethinking the way we prosecuted the warrant drugs, we we also need to think about ways in which our Sentencing Practices and provisions like three strike laws a mandatory minimum sentences, the widespread use of life without parole sentences which some people view is another form of the Death Penalty. We need to rethink the punitive miss of american statutes if we want to think about really enacting many boat criminal Justice Reform. Of course as i mentioned the first line of contacts between the criminal justice institutions and residents we need to rethink policing practices. If the police are meant to take on greater roles especially social welfare rolls as they have been asked to do, much to the result of the federal policies, then we also have to change within the Police Department so please are rewarded just as much for the Community Work they do as they are for apprehending suspects in highspeed chases and meeting their arrest quotas, et cetera. We need to rethink our sentencing provisions and also the General Police practices that have been sustained for the past 50 years. Do you see with the politics away to do it because who you elect makes the statutes. Do you think thats viable . I think electoral politics is key. I think everybody should vote in the selection and for lawmakers who we see represent in our own interest. I think it is also, and i hope that new research and new understanding of these issues especially Qualitative Research can really help us come to a new, identify new avenues for possible change. Is wondering how much do you believe the changes in policing that you documented was facilitated by the actual communities . I think for instance theres a book on my title i cannot remember, maybe the black lives majority, you talked about members of the community desiring better policing, better control over at the time was a large problem with violence. Im wondering what your comments are in that. I recently coauthored an oped in the New York Times that address some of this issue because similar arguments have been made in the case of that book. And that was about the rise of the rockefeller drug laws in the 94 crime bill. Bill clinton himself and Hillary Clinton rationalize her rationalized her support of the bill by saying, this is something the cbc advocated for, this is what black communities want to. This this is the democratic process at work because were giving black constituents what theyre asking for, but the the problem is in that narrative, it obscures the extent to which these calls for greater protection, the calls for for safety and communities were also accompanied with critiques of Police Brutality, with calls for new employment programs, calls for calls for rehabilitation, calls fo