[Mark McDonnell]

That Trump doesn't come out of this well is hardly surprising; the man is dangerous and clearly unfit for public office. But Clinton's contribution, which Matt highlighted, is shocking too. Particularly disturbing is the phrase 'the kind of kids that are called superpredators' (my italics): the idea that if one labels somebody a certain way it makes it easier to treat them more harshly that one would somebody else.

Edit: Of course, the first and primary victim in all of this is Trisha Meili, the woman who was beaten, raped and left for dead. The amoral, politically or racially motivated othering that went on afterwards (by the police, the media, Trump, Clinton) is vile, but let's not forget the violent, misogynist mindset that allowed someone to see Meili as less than human and so feel able to do this to her.

[John Isbell]

Speaking as a Democrat, exactly what Mark said. Bill Clinton's presidency is notorious for soaring incarceration rates. Here's a research article addressing that truism, which however also notes that Black incarceration rates soared particularly under Reagan and Bush I:
https://www.ssc.wisc.edu/soc/racepol...tons-policies/
There is also, of course, this famous "tough on crime" story from the 1992 Clinton campaign:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricky_Ray_Rector
Rudy Giuliani was Mayor of New York, and made himself famous, from 1994 to 2001: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayora..._Rudy_Giuliani. This was more or less a national trend.

Cheers,
John

[Erik Olson]

Journalists in the national print media during the '80s and '90s used startling statistics of an uptick in all crime, from homicide to vandalism, to construct quantified claims about cocaine and street crime epidemics. Threatening imagery of grimacing hoodlums in cuffs and horror stories of crack babies was a daily commonplace disseminated on the news. All media elaborated on hardhearted thuggery, indiscriminate murder, and spiraling crack use, the levels of which the nation had not seen before and has not since. This drove anxiety home in the populace, who believed the script from so-called experts (one academic hack gained currency who coined a word to describe the behemoth, superpredators). Enter politicians, each used the people's fear to eke out a career in Washington. Indeed, promising policies of zero tolerance for the intolerable guaranteed them the support of the fearful; not doing so lost it in the same proportion, or at least in such quantities that most believed it political suicide to be anything but tough-on-crime. No party was exempt. Clinton, for instance, harnassed the momentum to help push him over the threshold between him and the White House; after the tsunami of street crime hysteria that had swept the '90s crested and crashed in the '00s at long last, he went to the NAACP headquarters to publicly apologize for overzealous sentencing policies. Too little too late, though to see a politician admit to having been woefully wrong is exceedingly rare, and so on and so forth.

[R. S. Gwynn]

There was obviously a lot going on that night that was overshadowed by the rape case, trial, and aftermath.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/netflix...ve-11560207823

https://abcnews.go.com/US/case-settl...ry?id=63077131

[John Isbell]

Wait - are you saying, Sam, that police and prosecutors wanted some other verdict than that they had falsely obtained convictions in about the most high-profile NYC case of the 1990s? Wow, now that is one for the record books!
Or in the immortal words of Mandy Rice-Davies, "Well he would, wouldn't he?"

Cheers,
John

[R. S. Gwynn]

John, I think the Scottsboro Boys were totally innocernt. I think the Central Park Five admitted to some criminal acts but not to rape, even though the police claimed they had. I am with the DA; they were not innocent bystanders who were picked up in some kind of random sweep.

[John Isbell]

Yes, the Central Park Five certainly did confess to things. That as I understand it is part of the point of the miniseries.
Sorry, I've heard of the Scottsboro Boys but don't know their story.

Cheers,
John

[James Brancheau]

Nah. I don't want to get into this.

[Martin Elster]

Sam - I just finished reading the whole Wikipedia article on the Scottsboro Boys. Thanks for mentioning it!