Exporting Harshness: How the War on Crime Helped Make the War on Terror Possible

Abstract

In this Article I seek to begin a more sustained comparison between the wars on terror and crime. While I share much of the criticism of how we have waged the war on terror, I suspect it is both too simple and ultimately too comforting to assert that the Bush administration alone remade our justice system and betrayed our values … Many critics of the Bush administration's terror policies open with some version of the question-how did it come to this? My Article seeks to address the same question. Specifically, I will explore five areas in which our domestic criminal system has informed our approach to the war on terror: (1) the scope of our prison complex, (2) prison conditions and prisoner abuse, (3) our harsh treatment of juveniles, (4) attacks on judicial authority, and (5) undermining the role of defense counsel. In addition, I will discuss the innocence movement, which I argue has somewhat tempered the prosecution of both the wars on crime and terror.