Ethan BLUE. Doing Time in the Depression

Tom Joad, the fictional character from John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (1939), famously said, “Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there.” Ethan Blue's Doing Time in the Depression makes clear that a stretch in San Quentin would be the sure result of such an encounter. Once there, Joad would join a rapidly growing population of new migrants. Blue begins his book by documenting how mobility shaped growing prison populations. Poor whites from Texas and the Dust Bowl region accounted for much of the increase in California's prison population; Texas's prisons were filled with state residents recently arrived in its cities. This contrast sets the tone for other comparisons, many of them demonstrating a shared goal of reform. Both California and Texas implemented or expanded systems of classification, recreation, and supervised early release during the 1930s. Officials in both states described their efforts as “modern,” yet older ideologies of race, gender, sexuality, and class shaped prison life. Prisoners hoping for early release in Texas relied on political patronage, whereas those in California applied to the parole board. In Texas, the system of patronage benefited only the few—mostly whites—who had the ability to forge political ties. In California, the parole board demanded that those eligible for parole needed to secure employment, a Kafkaesque obstacle during the Great Depression. Blue is careful to point out that these systems were not capricious, as earlier historians asserted. Rather, each state's policies and practices were firmly rooted in either bureaucratic liberalism (favored in California) or in gaining the support of elite white patrons (favored in Texas).

Criminology · Great Depression · Ideology · Political science · Politics · Population · Prison · Sociology · State (computer science) · American History and Culture · Demography · History · Homelessness and Social Issues · Law · Race, History, and American Society