Joe Biden declared over the weekend that he would drastically shrink U.S. prison populations when a voter asked him if he would commit to a 50% reduction of incarcerations. The 2020 Democratic front-runner said enthusiastically, “More than that. We can do it more than that.”
In a brief interview at a South Carolina campaign event, a self-identified ACLU “rights for all” voter, Keith Albert, told Biden that he had already spoken to four other presidential candidates who had endorsed bipartisan reforms to criminal justice and wanted to hear what Biden’s intended commitment would be. Biden told him he would cut even more than the 50% Albert proposed, and then told an aide to take his name so that they could send him the complete campaign plan for criminal justice reform.
Albert pressed for a more direct commitment from Biden asking, “Is it a yes or no?” to which Biden replied sharply, “Yes, the answer’s yes! But I’ve got a better plan than you guys have.”
Biden was asked a very similar question about cutting prison populations by half in a New Hampshire event in June to which he gave a different answer. In that case, he said, “Folks, there are some circumstances in which people should be behind bars, because, in fact, they have committed a heinous crime and they remain a threat to society. But to arbitrarily say, I’m just going to make a commitment I will cut arbitrarily in half or by a third or by 90%, is not a rational way of going about it.”
When asked if Biden had changed his position, campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said on Tuesday, “Joe Biden was proud to work alongside President Obama in reducing the federal prison population by 38,000 while they were in office. But much more work needs to be done and he is committed to passing the SAFE Justice Act, ending mandatory minimums, reforming bail, and outlawing private prisons — as well as to investing in job training programs in prisons and the full restoration of voting rights once sentences are served.”
Bates did not say whether Biden was currently committed to a specific percentage reduction of prison populations but said that he “would also fight to further shrink the federal prison population and to bring down the number of Americans in state-level prisons.”
