“But he’s actually done really deeply disturbing, dangerous reforms that have made the criminal justice system more lethal and just bigger.”īiden’s criminal justice plan, then, isn’t just a chance to line up with the preferences of most Democratic voters. “There’s a tendency now to talk about Joe Biden as the sort of affable if inappropriate uncle, as loudmouth and silly,” Naomi Murakawa, author of The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America, told the Marshall Project in 2015. That’s made Biden a consistent target for criminal justice reformers for years, going back to his time in President Barack Obama’s administration. As a member and head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he wrote and was the key leader in passing policies that helped develop today’s punitive criminal justice system - escalating mass incarceration, the war on drugs, and more aggressive policing. Kamala Harris (D-CA) - another lawmaker with a mixed record on criminal justice issues - as his running mate.įor Biden, though, the topic is of particular interest because his long record in the Senate goes against many of the preferences of today’s Democratic voters on criminal justice issues.
But the plan has only gained relevance since then, as Black Lives Matter protests have taken off across the US this year and after Biden named Sen. And he’d direct the savings from less incarceration at the federal level along with additional federal money to boost spending on education (including universal pre-K), mental health care, addiction treatment, and other social services.Īltogether, it’s an incredibly progressive plan - going much further than President Donald Trump, who has no criminal justice reform plan.īiden introduced the plan during the primary, as Democratic candidates competed to prove their progressive credentials on criminal justice issues. It’s largely aimed at reducing incarceration and fixing “the racial, gender, and income-based disparities in the system,” according to Biden’s campaign.īiden would also create a new $20 billion grant program that encourages states to reduce incarceration and crime.
PRISON ARCHITECT GRANTS CRACK
It even seeks to end policies that Biden previously backed - most notably, a sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine offenses that contributed to racial disparities in federal incarceration. It also includes many other ambitious goals: decriminalize marijuana, eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent crimes, end the death penalty, abolish private prisons, get rid of cash bail, and discourage the incarceration of children. Most relevant to the Black Lives Matter protests, police reforms - boosting funds for federal efforts to incentivize police reforms at the local and state level while taking steps to hold local and state police more accountable for abuses-are in Biden’s plan. But the plan, which Biden’s team told me is still his core criminal justice platform, nonetheless addresses many of the concerns raised by protesters not just about police but the criminal justice system more broadly - in a serious effort by Biden to align his views with a shift in crime politics, particularly among Democrats, over the past three decades.
But now Biden is running to dismantle much of that legacy with a sweeping, progressive criminal justice reform plan.īiden’s plan was released before he became the Democratic nominee and before the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd triggered a national reckoning over race and policing. Former Vice President Joe Biden spent decades in the Senate implementing many of the “tough on crime” policies increasingly criticized by the left, libertarians, and racial justice activists, especially in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests.
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