The Criminal You Conspired to Create

“News coverage during this time both sensationalized and misrepresented the crack epidemic. Media representation of crack cocaine and its users was yet another instance of the media deploying Hall et al.’s (1978) “equation of concern” to stoke white fears about Black inner cities. Similar to the ways in which mugging was used throughout Britain in the 1970s to expand the police state, the crack epidemic of the 80’s and 90’s was constructed as a crisis, necessitating all manner of violent policing and draconian policymaking to supposedly control it. Hall et al. (1978) narrativize the “implied chain of argument” on which this equation rests — one that could easily be used to describe media coverage of the crack epidemic: 

“the rate of violent crime was on the increase, a trend encouraged by a 'soft-on-the-criminal' policy in the courts (as well as in the country at large, the result of 'permissive' attitudes); the only way to deal with this was to revert to traditional 'get-tough' policies which were guaranteed to have the required deterring effect on those attracted to violent crime” (p. 9).  

In this instance, the rate of violent crime was framed as being due to rampant crack cocaine use, allowing “tough on crime” policies to pervade this era and the decades that followed it.”

Chapter 2 Paranoid or Perceptive?: Theorizing the Crack Conspiracy in Hip-Hop Music