Saturday, January 8, 2022: 2:10 PM
Napoleon Ballroom B2 (Sheraton New Orleans)
In 1983, Harold Washington became Chicago’s first Black mayor. While Washington’s
victory is widely regarded as a culminating success of the city’s “Rainbow Coalition” of Black
and Latinx voters, less has been said of the “tough on crime” backlash led by his political
nemesis, State’s Attorney Richard M. Daley. Through this lens, Washington’s status as the
Chicago’s first formerly incarcerated mayor takes on new significance. This paper situates the
rise and fall of the Rainbow Coalition amid Daley’s efforts to punish communities of color for
their loyalty to Washington. Daley’s resistance to the civil rights of prisoners was a key political
tool as he cultivated police as a political constituency. Advancing a politics that presumed
defendants’ guilt and sustained a new mode of jailing called “preventative detention,” Daley
pressured Cook County Jail to expand and launch an expansive electronic monitoring regime. In
1989, Daley won election as mayor, beginning a 22-year tenure that sustained police torture and
violence.
The punitive politics of the Chicago case offer wider lessons for scholars of the carceral
state and urban politics. In centering jailing, this paper offers the untold story of what happened
as municipalities in the 1980s ran out of carceral space. Linking prisoner rights and punitive
prosecutors, this paper assesses how the carceral capacity of jails constrained the excesses of the
War on Drugs. Further, it shows how neoliberalism informed the development of electronic
monitoring, which in the ultimate privatization scheme, turned every home into a potential jail.
Critically, the Chicago example demonstrates the role of counties in suppressing Black freedom
at the end of the 20th century. By the time Congress passed the 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill,
derided for funding jail and prison construction, many of the nation’s largest jail systems had
already completed the expansion needed to sustain mass incarceration.
victory is widely regarded as a culminating success of the city’s “Rainbow Coalition” of Black
and Latinx voters, less has been said of the “tough on crime” backlash led by his political
nemesis, State’s Attorney Richard M. Daley. Through this lens, Washington’s status as the
Chicago’s first formerly incarcerated mayor takes on new significance. This paper situates the
rise and fall of the Rainbow Coalition amid Daley’s efforts to punish communities of color for
their loyalty to Washington. Daley’s resistance to the civil rights of prisoners was a key political
tool as he cultivated police as a political constituency. Advancing a politics that presumed
defendants’ guilt and sustained a new mode of jailing called “preventative detention,” Daley
pressured Cook County Jail to expand and launch an expansive electronic monitoring regime. In
1989, Daley won election as mayor, beginning a 22-year tenure that sustained police torture and
violence.
The punitive politics of the Chicago case offer wider lessons for scholars of the carceral
state and urban politics. In centering jailing, this paper offers the untold story of what happened
as municipalities in the 1980s ran out of carceral space. Linking prisoner rights and punitive
prosecutors, this paper assesses how the carceral capacity of jails constrained the excesses of the
War on Drugs. Further, it shows how neoliberalism informed the development of electronic
monitoring, which in the ultimate privatization scheme, turned every home into a potential jail.
Critically, the Chicago example demonstrates the role of counties in suppressing Black freedom
at the end of the 20th century. By the time Congress passed the 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill,
derided for funding jail and prison construction, many of the nation’s largest jail systems had
already completed the expansion needed to sustain mass incarceration.