Clinton claims his tough-on-crime policies had good effects but experts say Bill & Hillary decim
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Former President Bill Clinton has repeatedly defended the crime bill he signed into law in 1994, which scholars say fueled the rise of racist mass incarceration.
At a May 13 event in Paterson, New Jersey in support of his wife, the Democratic Party’s presidential front-runner, an audience member asked Clinton, “Why did you put more people in prison?”
Clinton insisted the questioner was ignorant of the legislation, pointing out that it included a provision that exempted first-time drug offenders from certain sentencing laws.
“Did you know that? I bet you didn’t,” Clinton condescendingly told the audience member, who was escorted out of the rally, Politico reported.
The former president defended the $30 billion crime bill, boasting that it put an addition 100,000 police officers on the streets and increased gun restrictions.
Activists from the Black Lives Matter movement and other anti-racist groups have repeatedly blasted the Clintons for their role in pushing these “tough-on-crime” policies, which experts say boosted the prison population, devastating millions of people’s lives and disproportionately impacting black and Latina/o Americans and the poor.
Clinton has persistently credited the legislation with creating a 25-year low in crime, 33-year low in murder and 46-year low in illegal gun deaths. While he has often repeated these talking points, nevertheless, scholars say he is wrong.
When he made similar comments in April, FactCheck.org reported that “Bill Clinton overstated the effect of the crime bill he signed in 1994.”
“Independent analyses have found that the bill had a modest effect on crime rates,” the organization noted.
At the May 13 campaign event for Hillary, Bill Clinton did admit, “We overdid the sentencing in the ‘90s. We need to reverse it,” Politico reported.
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