Date of Award
2017
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelors
Department
Social Sciences
First Advisor
Goff, Brendan
Area of Concentration
History
Abstract
The current mass incarceration crisis in the United States has a long and complex history rooted in the criminalization of poor people and people of color. Qualitative case studies on the formation of state and local criminal justice systems offer researchers insight into how the forces of racism and capitalism, which have shaped the crisis, are embodied in the interests of public and private actors, groups, and communities. This thesis considers two policing campaigns launched in Florida in 1967 as representative of the failures of modern policing from a civil rights framework. Both were discontinued within a year of their founding. The first campaign, a privately funded and staffed statewide corruption crackdown initiated by Governor Claude Kirk, illustrates the consequences of allowing law enforcement to function without public oversight. The second campaign, a community youth patrol called the White Hats based in Tampa’s historically Black Central Avenue neighborhood, demonstrates the liberal state’s inability to reconcile its security prerogatives with marginalized populations’ wellbeing. Each of these shortlived campaigns exemplifies the historical and systemic tensions that eventuated in the world’s largest prison system, and are thus instructive to reformers and abolitionists thinking to the future.
Recommended Citation
Rettig, Melissa, "“Cool It, Man”: Race and Policing before Mass Incarceration in Florida, 1967" (2017). Theses & ETDs. 5412.
https://digitalcommons.ncf.edu/theses_etds/5412