Ep. 100: Willie Hortonism 2020 -- Media Attacks on Prison Reform

Since the rise of Black Lives Matter and a broader cultural awakening in the United States of just how wildly out of whack, cruel and hyper-punitive our criminal legal system is, modest reforms began to emerge across the United States. The lowest hanging fruit for reforms was to get rid of or radically reduce pretrial cash bail: a system that simply exists to punish the poor for being poor.

20 percent of people in the United States currently incarcerated––76 percent of those in local jails––have not been found guilty of any crime, they are simply awaiting their trial and cannot pay their bail because they cannot afford it. One 2015 study found that people in jail had a net median income of less than $5,000 a year, and are overwhelmingly Black and Latino. Put simply: bail exists not to protect the public, it exists to punish the poor for being poor. In response to this jarring injustice, some states began instituting modest reforms, reserving bail for so-called “violent crimes,” but requiring judges to consider people’s income when setting bail for other offenses. A number of cities across the country began to see reductions in the number of people in jail pretrial.

Unsurprisingly, reform has been met with swift and vicious reaction from pro-carceral forces. Police unions, sleazy politicians, rightwing think tanks, and conservative and liberal media alike prey on propagandized public fears to attack reforms as ushering in a new dystopian era of Escape from New York lawlessness. To do this, among other disingenuous tricks of emotional blackmail, they’ve reanimated one of the oldest in the book, Willie Hortonism: seeking out anecdotal cases of a formerly jailed person who goes on to commit a crime, demagoguing this one example often using racist tropes, and exploiting the media feedback loop to pushback and curtail movements for reform.

On this episode, we're joined by Color Of Change's Clarise McCants and Brooklyn Defender Service's Scott Hechinger to highlight various tropes the media use to push back against prison reform and how to fight back against their playbook of fear and racism.

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Guests

Clarise McCants is Criminal Justice Campaign Director at Color Of Change.

Scott Hechinger is Senior Staff Attorney at Brooklyn Defender Services, co-founder of the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund and founder and director of Zealous.

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References

Justice Not Fear: Color of Change & Zelaous

Common Justice

Normalizing Injustice: The Dangerous Misrepresentations That Define Television's Scripted Crime Genre

Color Of Change & USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center | January 21, 2020

Incarceration's Front Door: The Misuse of Jails in America

Vera Institute of Justice | February 2015

Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2019

Wendy Sawyer & Peter Wagner | March 19, 2019 | Prison Policy Initiative

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Show Notes

The Media's Misguided Backlash Against Criminal Justice Reforms In D.C. and New York

Adam Johnson | January 9, 2020 | The Appeal

The Bail Trap

Nick Pinto | August 13, 2015 | The New York Times

How the Willie Horton Ad Played on Racism and Fear

Erin Blakemore | November 2, 2018 | History

George H.W. Bush’s “Willie Horton” ad will always be the reference point for dog-whistle racism

Rachel Withers | December 1, 2018 | Vox

Think prison abolition in America is impossible? It once felt inevitable

Joshua Dubler and Vincent Lloyd | May 19, 2018 | The Guardian

Using Gun Fears To Demagogue Bail Reform 

Adam Johnson | June 14, 2019 | The Appeal

Before The Law

Jennifer Gonnerman | September 29, 2014 | The New Yorker

Exploiting New York City’s Chinatown Killings To Attack Bail Reform

Adam Johnson | October 21, 2019 | The Appeal

A Decade of Bail Research in New York City [PDF]

Mary T. Phillips, Ph.D. | August 2012 | New York City Criminal Justice Agency, Inc.

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Transcript

For a full transcript of this episode, go here.

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