In the broader political arena beyond of Congress, the disparate treatment and overrepresentation of blacks in criminal justice were downgraded to nonissues during the late sixties. In other words, racial justice concerns were relegated to the sidelines of national crime politics. From the late 1960s onward, the two major national political parties re-fashioned “the problem” in law enforcement to be exclusively a matter of safety, not justice. Crime politics thus metamorphosed from a sphere in which the distinctiveness of the black law enforcement experience mattered briefly into one in which it did not matter for decades to come. This de-racialization of crime politics was facilitated by four major developments.

First, violent crime was effectively nationalized, that is to say re-branded as a serious problem facing all American neighborhoods in equal measure, not chiefly minority or inner city communities. Second, the rights of criminal defendants were pitted against the rights of crime victims in a zero-sum game. The result was the virtual disappearance of concern for the criminally accused, a disproportionate share of whom were black. Third, a new set of primary stakeholders in the crime policy process was designated; it was composed primarily of children, women, and the elderly. These groups were envisaged as the new “special” victims of crime, in place of blacks and other racial minorities. Finally, drugs were declared the most dangerous evil facing American society at large, dangerous enough to render historic levels of black imprisonment tolerable collateral damage.