ABSTRACT
In the late 1960s after the big-city riots in America, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders and the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence submitted their final reports to President Johnson. This chapter summarizes trends in race, poverty, inequality, crime, prison building and justice in America since the Kerner Commission and Violence Commission, point out policy for the inner city and the truly disadvantaged that has and has not worked, and suggests ways to overcome the disconnect in America between knowledge and action, by replicating what works to scale in politically feasible ways. In the 1990s, the large income gaps of the 1980s actually widened. The incomes of the best off Americans rose twice as fast as those of middle-income Americans, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
