http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ten-miles-square/2016/02/the_current_crime_debate_isnt059655.php
The Current Crime Debate Isn’t Doing Hillary Justice
To grasp the difference between Clinton and Sanders you have to truly understand the 1994 crime bill.
By Mark Kleiman
Long explanation before these paragraphs:
As Kevin Drum has pointed out, it’s simply not the case that the 1994 crime bill created the mass-incarceration problem; most of the damage had already been done. (In 1994, the prison-plus-jail headcount had reached 1.5 million, about triple its 1975 level, on its way to the current peak of 2.3 million.) But the crime bill certainly made the problem worse, and it contributed - directly through the money, indirectly through the rules, and even more indirectly by spreading truth in sentencing as a policy meme - to the policy of continuing to increase the size of the prison population as the crime rate collapsed. The prison-building money, and especially the truth in sentencing provision, were predictably bad policies, and the people who fought for those provisions should be held accountable for what was at best a bad mistake and at worst an act of pointless, politically-motivated cruelty.
But the people who fought for those provisions almost all had (R) behind their names. In the politics of the crime bill, the death penalty, the anti-prisoner-education provision, and especially prison-building and truth in sentencing were understood to be the conservative interests, while the VAWA, the assault weapons ban, and the “prevention” agenda were designed to appeal to liberals. (The cops provision was designed to appeal to the broader public, but the political muscle behind it came mostly from the White House and, obviously, local law enforcement.)
Again, it’s crucial to remember the political mood of 1994. The alternative to the 1994 crime bill was not a bill written by the American Civil Liberties Union - though with better presidential leadership and more adroit maneuvering from congressional progressives we might have passed something better than what actually emerged by getting something through in 1993, a year farther out from the midterm elections - but a truly appalling crime bill the Gingririchized Congress would have passed in 1995.
lot more.....
= new reply since forum marked as read