Crime or Punishment: How a 1990s Hysteria Forced A Difficult Choice on the Clinton White House
Long Article...
......Something had to be done.
So the Clinton administration acted. In 1994 then Senator Joe Biden of Delaware helped to write a 356-page bill called the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, later to be called the Crime Bill. Among the highlights were funding for 100,000 new police officers, $9.7 billion in funding for prisons, and $6.1 billion in funding for prevention programs. There was also a federal assault weapons ban, an expanded federal death penalty, new statutes for immigration law, hate crimes, sex crimes, and gang-related crimes, and even the authority to create a registry for sex offenders. It was the largest crime bill ever written up to that point and it initially seemed as if it would address the nationwide concern over what Americans were seeing as increased violence in their everyday lives. In fact, the Crime Bill even had the support of African-American leaders in Congress, many of whom admitted the bill was imperfect, but knew that something had to be done to protect their communities. In describing his motivation behind signing the bill, President Clinton said, "Gangs and drugs have taken over our streets and undermined our schools...Every day, we read about somebody else who has literally gotten away with murder."
more in between....
...But what the Black Lives Matter protesters in Philadelphia are too young to realize is the culture surrounding the 1994 Crime Bill was so prevalent, so pervasive, that President Bill Clinton had no choice but to act. Inaction was not never an option, not when the public's health and safety was involved. The only option then was to put forth legislation based on both public sentiment and social science at the time in an effort to stem the violence seen on our city streets. As history has shown us, it is always preferential to have both crime and punishment. But President Bill Clinton ended up facing an impossible situation: If he chose not to act there would be crime all over our city streets. If he chose to act, he and his administration might very well be punished politically for the effects of their decision down the road. And so for the Clinton White House it came down to one huge choice: Crime or punishment.
They chose to address the crime and are still feeling the political punishment twenty-two years later.
http://www.thepeoplesview.net/main/2016/4/8/crime-or-punishment-how-a-1990s-hysteria-forced-a-difficult-choice-on-the-clinton-white-house
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