The Great Depression is when we saw another change in the type of language being used. This was around the first time crime and punishment made an appearance in a speech. President Hoover started to talk about how the country needed to bring down crime rates and since then there have been several Presidents who have explicitly and implicitly talked about crime. Within his speech, President Hoover had a section entitled “The Failure of the Criminal Justice System” dedicated to talking about the criminal justice system and ways that it needs to be changed.
“To reestablish the vigor and effectiveness of law enforcement we must critically consider the entire Federal machinery of justice, the redistribution of its functions, the simplification of its procedure, the provision of additional special tribunals, the better selection of juries, and the more effective organization of our agencies of investigation and prosecution that justice may be sure and that it may be swift”
Hoover 1929
He spoke of having to go back and “reform, reorganization and strengthening” the system (Hoover 1929). Since President Hoover, there have been more instances of crime rhetoric. Out of the presidents who spoke about crime 60% of them were Republican and 40% were Democrats, showing that it was mainly a Republican issue but was still open to the Democrats speak about it.
The way that crime was spoken about caused a much larger conversation to occur and presented more coded language. This language included “welfare,” “gangs,” etc. Many of the terms used by Presidents Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, and Trump all have racial connotations but do not explicitly talk about people of color. Rather than finding this language in an inauguration speech, one must look at the policies and rhetoric from other speeches. Looking at their respective policies it becomes clear that they were putting policies into place that either was intentionally or unintentionally targeting communities of color. “There are few clear areas in which we as a society must rise up united and express our intolerance. The most obvious now is drugs” (Bush 1989). When speaking about drugs he is referencing the war on drugs which was started by his predecessor Ronald Reagan. The war on drugs targeted primarily black and brown communities. This helped to put an unequal proportion of black people in jail for the same offenses that white people were committing.
In the same vein, President Clinton said: “Our streets are safer and record numbers of our fellow citizens have moved from welfare to work” (Clinton 1997). This is about the 1994 crime bill that helped to continue the war on drugs and over police black and brown communities while not creating the same structure within white communities. The use of the criminal justice system and speaking on the increase in crimes and arrests allowed for other stereotypes to arise. “Hiring people off welfare rolls; coming out from behind locked doors and shuttered windows to help reclaim our streets from drugs and gangs and crime” (Clinton 1997). Welfare and “reclaiming our streets from drugs and gangs and crime” are specifically talking about communities of color. As previously mentioned they were being disproportionately targeted and therefore were the ones who needed to use the social safety net of social security. Instead, politicians at the time used welfare as a way to make it seem as though these people were lazy and not actively trying to work.
