From the Vagrancy Law Regime to the Carceral State

Abstract

The recent burst of scholarship on policing in 1960s America has produced two literatures that have often spoken past one another. One literature has taken a presentist perspective and has found in the 1960s the roots of the current carceral state. A second literature has characterized the 1960s as a period in which a century-old policing system collapsed. This essay uses Risa Goluboff's Vagrant Nation to tie these two literatures together, arguing that the terms on which Papachristou (1972) tore down the “vagrancy law regime” prompted and channeled the growth of the carceral state. The elimination of vagrancy law encouraged the state to expand the institutional and political reach of the police, ultimately helping produce a police power that was more intractable.