THE
POST-VIETNAM HISTORY OF MILITARY INVESTMENT IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE
Hal
Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, “peacemaking”
at pepinsky.blogspot.com
August
17, 2014
When I started teaching criminal justice in 1970, the Law
Enforcement of the Justice was selling military equipment like mad, and the
National Institute of Justice was releasing research reports, as on the
stopping power of handgun bullets, as the Vietnam war drew down. The Justice
Department also funded "tactical squads," now known as SWAT teams. At
the official end of the Cold War in 1989, "economic conversion"
brought a whole array of military hardware, especially adapted to prison
construction and security. I was once at the American Correctional Association
meeting during the period. With Salvation Army chaplains scattered along and
amidst the technical exhibit, the array from barbed wire to portable cells, to
firepower including tasers. was awesome. And so, here we go again, startled by
how much hardware the Defense Department is selling police. Let's not fail to notice the longstanding
synergy between the military- and prison-industrial complexes. love and peace,
hal
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