Bill Clinton: I Made Criminal Justice ‘Worse’

[BrotherIvan]

27. It was a "mistake"

"We need more police, we need more and tougher prison sentences for repeat offenders. The three strikes and you’re out for violent offenders has to be part of the plan. We need more prisons to keep violent offenders for as long as it takes to keep them off the streets." --Hillary Clinton, 1994

As First Lady, Clinton lobbied for her husband's crime bill, which (among other things) encouraged states to enact harsher sentencing statutes and expanded the list of crimes subject to the federal death penalty. In 2001, Clinton co-sponsored a bill to provide more funding and stricter sentencing for hate crimes. In her 2006 book It Takes a Village, Clinton praised stricter punishments for people charged with sex crimes.

In 2007, she voted to reinstate $1.15 billion in funding for the COPS Program, a police funding initiative launched by the crime bill. Clinton also co-sponsored the COPS Improvements Act of 2007, which amended existing grants for community policing programs to hire more officers on anti-terror and homeland security duties, hire more school-based police officers, and create "school-based partnerships between local law enforcement agencies and local school systems to combat crime, gangs, drug activities, and other problems facing elementary and secondary schools".

Not a momentary lapse, but a concerted effort.