Fact Checker: Joe Biden’s defense of the 1994 crime bill’s role in the incarceration trend
By Glenn Kessler Glenn Kessler The Fact Checker Email Bio Follow May 16 at 3:00 AM “This idea that the crime bill generated mass incarceration, it did not generate mass incarceration."The former vice president and 2020 presidential hopeful was a key senator working on the passage of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, better known as the 1994 crime bill. Biden has taken to calling it the “1994 Biden Crime Bill,” so he’s obviously paternal about it.
“While there is no guarantee that the federal government will continue paying for prison construction beyond these next six years, the state sentencing laws will no doubt remain on the books, continuing to increase the prison population,” the New York Times noted when the bill was approved. “Folks, let’s get something straight. 90/92 of every 100 prisoners behind the bars is in state prison, not a federal prison.
In 2016, responding to a protester, Clinton blamed the sentencing provisions in the law on Biden. “Vice President Biden . . . he was the chairman of the committee that had jurisdiction over this crime bill,” he said. “Biden said, ‘You can’t pass this bill. The Republicans will kill it if you don’t put more sentencing in.’”
Lauren-Brooke Eisen, also of the Brennan Center, said the federal money galvanized the prison construction boom, with the number of prisons rising 43 percent from 1990 to 2005. The Biden campaign disputes the impact of the federal dollars on incarceration. The campaign cited Bureau of Justice Statistics figures showing that from 1980 to 1994, the average annual percentage increase in the incarcerated population was 8.01 percent — and then 5.14 percent from 1994 to 2000.
“Rather than as a major force for changing sentencing practices among the states, the federal TIS grant program is better understood as a program that reflected current sentencing practices and the reforms that were going on in the states,” the report said.
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