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: Governing Through Crime

Jerry Brown for Governor of California

By Jonathan Simor

Nobody should vote on a single issue, but as you might guess, there is one issue on which my vote can move decisively. I tend to vote against candidates that play the crime card by calling their opponent "soft on crime." For forty years now that has been the move for candidates in both parties to appeal right to voters fear factors in way that few other issues (race in fact) do. Even more importantly, self identification as "tough on crime," is as sure a proxy as there can be of the candidate's commitment to the "war on crime" and "mass incarceration." With Democrat Jerry Brown and Republican Meg Whitman, in a close contest for governor of California, I have been undecided whether this blog would take a position. As I noted last Spring, Brown was governor before the war on crime took over California and made our prisons the leading institution in the state...continue to full post

Full post as published by Governing Through Crime on October 13, 2010 (boomark / email).