For those who want to know more about the Omnibus Crime Bill
The 1994 crime bill, briefly explained
The "1994 Crime Bill" Trump referred to was a bipartisan measure called the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act that was signed into law by President Bill Clinton. The legislation "included the federal 'three strikes' provision, mandating life sentences for criminals convicted of a violent felony after two or more prior convictions, including drug crimes." The omnibus bill made federal grants available to states that adopted "tough on crime" laws as well as instituting a semi-automatic rifle ban and the Violence Against Women Act.
The crime bill came at a time when violent crime rates in American cities were skyrocketing, and policies aimed at cracking down were popular on both sides of the aisle. Even Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) supported it. But the bill in and of itself contributed little to America's mass incarceration problem, mainly because states preside over most of the vast majority of the US criminal system, not the federal
government.
In 1994, Biden was chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and played a key role in getting the crime bill through that chamber of Congress. It's long been something he hasn't been shy about championing. During his 2008 presidential run, he even referred to the bill on his website as the "Biden Crime Law." As
my colleague German Lopez has explained, Biden's support for punitive criminal justice measures during that era often went further than Republicans. He helped write and pass
legislation creating sentencing disparities that resulted in the disproportionate incarceration of African Americans, and laws that increased police powers.
Despite what Trump suggested in his Memorial Day tweets, Biden has expressed remorse for his "tough on crime" past. In recent years, Black Lives Matter and other groups have helped make criminal justice reform a central issue among Democrats, and Biden has expressed some degree of regret about this aspect of his record. From Lopez's aforementioned explainer:In 2008, [Biden] backed the
Second Chance Act, which provides monitoring and ounseling services to former prison inmates. In his last few years in the Senate, he supported the full elimination of the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine. (The disparity was reduced from 100-to-1 to 18-to-1 in 2010 with the passage of the
Fair Sentencing Act of 2010.)Biden even
offered somewhat of an apology during a 2008 Senate hearing:"Many have argued that this 100-to-1 disparity is arbitrary, unnecessary, and unjust, and I agree. And I might say at the outset in full disclosure, I am the guy that drafted this legislation years ago with a guy named Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was the senator from New York at the time. And crack was new. It was a new 'epidemic' that we were facing. And we had at that time extensive medical testimony talking about the particularly addictive nature of crack versus powder cocaine. And the school of thought was that we had to do everything we could to dissuade the use of crack cocaine. And so I am part of the problem that I have been trying to solve since then, because I think the disparity is way out of line."
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/5/28/18642881/trump-joe-biden-1994-crime-bill-explained
