Harris Has a New Excuse for Her Policy Flip Flopping
Someone Tell Kamala to Shut Her Face Over DeSantis Reportedly Not Taking Her...
FEMA Better Not Ask for More Money After This Revelation
Feminist Law Professor Will Vote Republican After Experiencing the Ultimate Betrayal by De...
Don't Nuke the Senate Filibuster!
'Shark Tank' Star Says the US Must 'Bring China to Its Knees With...
Cook Political Report Makes a Ratings Change to Wisconsin Senate Race
RNC Notches Another Win for Election Integrity in Michigan
Tampa Mayor Has a Very Stark Warning to Residents in Evacuation Zone
How Trump Wants to Be Remembered 100 Years From Now
Mayorkas Was Questioned If FEMA Has Enough Resources for Hurricane Milton. Here's What...
Team Kamala: Gosh, We May Need to Distance Ourselves From Biden Some More
Do No Harm Introduces First-of-Its-Kind Database to Pinpoint 'Gender-Affirming' Hospitals...
Americans Have Become Second Class Citizens Under the Biden-Harris Administration
Kamala’s Capital Gains Tax Surprise
OPINION

Bill Clinton's Crime Bill Ambivalence

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement

Bill Clinton wants you to know three things about the 1994 crime bill: He is proud of it, he is sorry about it, and it wasn't his fault. In any case, he says, his wife had nothing to do with it.

Advertisement

The former president's position on the 22-year-old Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act is newly relevant now that Hillary Clinton, who enthusiastically supported the bill as first lady, is running for president as a criminal justice reformer. Depending on your sympathies, her husband's take is either nuanced or incoherent.

Speaking in Philadelphia last week, Bill Clinton was repeatedly interrupted by Black Lives Matter protesters who blame him for contributing to the "mass incarceration" he and his wife now decry. He defended the crime bill as an appropriate response to violence that disproportionately hurt African Americans.

"Because of that bill," Clinton said, "we had a 25-year low in crime [and] a 33-year low in the murder rate." While it's true that violent crime began a long decline in the early 1990s, crime rates started falling before the 1994 bill took effect, and there is little evidence that the elements of the bill Clinton touts played an important role in the continuation of that downward trend.

Last week, for example, Clinton bragged about providing $10 billion in grants that helped put 100,000 or so additional police officers on the streets. In 2014, "Washington Post" fact checker Glenn Kessler gave Clinton's claims about that program's impact "three Pinocchios," saying it "was not the primary or even secondary factor in the dramatic reduction in crime during the 1990s."

Advertisement

What about the crime bill's ban on so-called assault weapons, which expired in 2004? That year, a report commissioned by the Justice Department concluded that "we cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation's recent drop in gun violence."

Clinton also mentioned the 1993 Brady Bill, which required background checks for people who buy firearms from federally licensed dealers. According to research by Duke University criminologist Philip Cook, a gun control supporter, that requirement "made no discernible difference" in gun homicide rates.

Clinton did not cite incarceration as a factor in falling crime, because he was bending over backward to distance himself from that aspect of the 1994 bill. He said the bill's punitive provisions, which included new mandatory minimum sentences and subsidies for state prison construction that were contingent on passage of "truth in sentencing" laws (which limit or abolish parole), were forced on him by Republicans.

According to Clinton, Vice President Joseph Biden, then chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the crime bill's main sponsor, told him, "You can't pass this bill, and the Republicans will kill it, if you don't put more sentencing in." Yet as first lady, Hillary Clinton cited tougher sentencing rules as one of the bill's main advantages, and after it passed, the administration bragged about making prison terms longer.

Advertisement

It seems likely that increased imprisonment did help reduce crime, if only by incapacitating people inclined to commit it. But the effectiveness of that policy depends on locking up the right people for the right amount of time, and Clinton now concedes that the sentences he supported as president went too far.

"I signed a bill that made the problem worse, and I want to admit it," he said during another visit to Philadelphia in 2015. "In that bill, there were longer sentences, and most of these people are in prison under state law, but the federal law set a trend. And that was overdone; we were wrong about that."

Clinton was in a less apologetic mood last week. Perhaps he was tired of overheated criticism that exaggerates his role in the explosive growth of the U.S. prison population, a trend that began a decade before he took office and occurred mainly at the state level. But if Clinton wants less blame, he should stop taking so much credit.

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Recommended

Trending on Townhall Videos