Tough on crime enforces and reinforces poverty. To me, tough on crime says, "By no means whatsoever will you be allowed to come up."
It's quite literally "the law." https://twitter.com/john_b_ill/status/1387119822853578752

Tough on crime originated from and is rooted in the oppression of Black folks.
I want you to understand that anything an enslaved person did was a crime. They were beaten mercilessly. They were humiliated.

Enslaved people were often mutilated as punishment. Plenty of them were certainly branded with hot irons.

That brand?

That's a criminal record.

Although no slave state can sustain itself, particularly one so bottom heavy as the US, white supremacy has sustained itself.
It continues to sustain itself because from the very beginning targeted laws were written.

And a white dude just told me that handcuffs don't go with his complexion, but that's neither here nor there...

Anyway, they knew that criminalizing being Black was the way to maintain white supremacy, and even slavery. Vagrancy laws created criminal records out of thin air. Vagrancy laws impacted everyone but they were written against Black people.

Skipping forward to today in order to provide a little anecdotal context.
(Also, I can do this because ain't shit changed)
I have a criminal record and every day I'm beating the odds.

After the time I spent performing slave labor, and another short bid, I'm home. I'm a husband and a father. I'm housed and employed. I got lucky with a landlord and an employer who don't give a fuck about my criminal history.
That pesky criminal record.

The criminal record is the thing. It helps maintain the cycle of poverty. People need to live, and will do what they must to feed their families. Poverty drives "crime"...

Coming around full circle, I you can see how tough on crime rhetoric enforces and reinforces white supremacy. If not, take a look at recidivism rates. Take a further look at prison population demographics.

If you saw the Chauvin Trial, you saw what a criminal record means. They tried to strip a dead man of his dignity by using his priors against him. They really tried to justify that man's murder because he was "branded".

Pay attention.

Most people with a criminal record can tell you how hard it is to get on your feet. Just getting a job alone is sometimes impossible.
If getting a job is that difficult, what do you think a person will do? Might sell crack. Might boost cars. Might rob. Might kill.

People go to prison, and that income is removed from those households. That income goes to the state in the form of cheap labor. Generational wealth doesn't have the time to build or the labor to build it when the workers are born Black.

In the early 60s my PawPaw went to prison for trying to keep my daddy and his siblings fed. In the early 80s my daddy went to prison trying to keep me fed. Right now, neither of us are homeowners.

Don't talk to me about generational trauma.

Tough on crime keeps people from rising. When Blackness is criminalized, it becomes a death sentence. Tough on crime can mean death for a counterfeit bill. It can mean death to a woman sleeping in her own bed or a man on the corner selling singles or a child with a toy.