13 September 1994
Federal crime law expands punishment and prison funding
United States; communities affected by incarceration
The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act expanded federal criminal penalties and supported prison construction and policing. Zinn discusses punitive policy alongside racial inequalities in incarceration. The law also included prevention programs and the Violence Against Women Act. A 2001 RAND evaluation reported that its violent-offender and truth-in-sentencing grants had supported more than 15,000 completed prison beds by the end of 1999, with over 25,000 still under construction.
Dates preserve the source’s precision. This entry is part of a selected historical record; its qualifications and sources are retained below.
Context / qualification
Enacted September 13, 1994, not 1996 as this passage of the chapter suggests. The RAND study assessed early implementation of one grant program under the law as amended. Because every state received funds, it lacked an unfunded comparison group and could not isolate the program’s overall effect. Longer-term sentencing effects were still uncertain. These findings do not quantify the whole law’s contribution to racial disparities or establish that it had no effect.
Sources
- Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, chapter 24, pp. 647–649; supplied print pages, edition/year unidentified
- Congress.gov: H.R.3355, Public Law 103-322 and legislative summary ↗
- Susan Turner et al., National Evaluation of the VOI/TIS Incentive Grant Program (2001), NCJ 191201, executive summary pp. xviii–xxii; NIJ-sponsored RAND research ↗