Crime and Repression 9/14/2007 1 Repression and Crime Control: Why Social Movements Scholars Should Pay Attention to Policing of Crime as a Form of Repression

Social movement research has tended to ignore the relation between the repression of dissent and the control of “ordinary ” crime. However, the boundaries between crime and dissent are never clear-cut. There is a political aspect to crime, insofar as it benefits some while it hurts others. There are political disputes about which acts ought to be criminalized and what the penalties ought to be for different kinds of crime. Dissent is often criminalized, and “ordinary ” crime may express discontent. Even more importantly, policing around “ordinary ” crime can be an effective way of blocking the capacity for dissent. Data about the mass incarceration of African Americans in the US after 1980 suggest that crime control and especially the drug war have had the consequence of repressing dissent among the poor. The Black riots of the 1960s were crucial for the trajectory of repression of the Black movement since 1970, but social movement scholars have failed to recognize this because of the theoretical turn that built too strong a conceptual wall between crime and dissent