Could Joe Biden’s Role in ’90s Crime Law Haunt a Presidential Bid?
August 21, 2015
"Any Democrat that is interested in gaining support among the current electorate, particularly the progressive civil rights communities, is going to have to say that previous tough-on-crime policies were a mistake," says Jeremy Haile, federal advocacy counsel at The Sentencing Project.
“Already, in the 2016 presidential race, criminal justice has commanded a level of attention unseen since the 1990s and has compelled both Republicans and Democrats to have something new to say about it. For Mr. Biden to win support from the young voters who were critical to President Obama’s election victories, according to activists like Jeremy Haile, he will need to show his views have evolved,” reports the New York Times.
“Any Democrat that is interested in gaining support among the current electorate, particularly the progressive civil rights communities, is going to have to say that previous tough-on-crime policies were a mistake,” says Jeremy Haile, federal advocacy counsel at The Sentencing Project.
In an effort to scale back mass incarceration and the war on drugs, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Amy Klobuchar outlined a plan to set up a new system of clemency that would release thousands of people in federal prison with excessively long sentences, reports Vox.
