Joe Biden wants Democratic voters to see past his key role in the major crime bills of 1986 and 1994 that critics charge disproportionately punished blacks.
As the 76-year-old former vice president prepares to take his place between only two black candidates in the 25-strong field — Kamala Harris and Cory Booker — activists say that his new criminal justice reform plan will not be enough to get him off the hook.
The two senators are likely to point out that his conversion to reform is conveniently timed: As recently as 2015, he talked of the 1994 legislation as the “Biden Crime Bill” and in 2016, he stated that it “restored American cities.”
Hoping to blunt criticism of his support of the two crime bills, Biden released his 2020 criminal justice reform plan. It proposes an end to mandatory minimum sentences, the abolition of the federal crack and powder cocaine disparity, the decriminalizion of cannabis use, and the automatic expungement of previous cannabis use convictions. In addition it would end all incarceration for drug use alone, and divert offenders to drug courts and treatment programs.
But Michael Collins, the director of national affairs at Drug Policy Action, a Washington, D.C., based nonprofit organization that has long advocated for reforming in U.S. drug policy, says Biden cannot just “run away” from his past through the progressive new proposals.
“I think Biden’s problem is that he is pretending that he was a passenger on the road to mass incarceration when, in actual fact, he was driving the train — He was the lead author of this legislation,” Collins told the Washington Examiner. “He was the Senate Judiciary Committee chair. He was the top Democrat on these issues and he was a cheerleader for expanding the drug war and increasing incarceration and in trying to resolve the crack epidemic.”
Collins also says that Biden’s criminal justice reform proposal, while it has some “good ideas” it also contained “flaws” that were a problem.
“This is really sort of 1990s Biden talking in this plan. You know, the emphasis on drug courts, for example, as a means of diversion. It’s such an outdated idea. You know, drug courts are not a way out of the criminal justice system. They’re a way into the criminal justice system. They’re keeping individuals in the criminal justice system who should otherwise be treated through the public health system,” Collins said.
“That’s not reform. That’s not criminal justice reform. That’s just doubling down in a failed system … ideas from the 1990s have no place in the course of a current criminal justice reform debate.”
One of provisions in the 1986 bill that Biden has been castigated for was was the 100-1 rule, which mandated that a five year minimum sentence be applied for trafficking in 500 grams of powder cocaine or five grams of crack. This led to dramatic federal sentencing disparities between white and black offenders.
This ratio was far harsher the Reagan White House proposal of a 20-1 rule. Biden later teamed up with President Barack Obama to reduce it to 18-1.
He worked closely with Bill Bennett, the conservative “drug czar” appointed by President George H.W. Bush in 1989 and who once proposed beheading drug dealers.
Biden’s defenders say his stances should be seen in the context of the times, but this undermines his claims to having been a legislative leader.
Police in Washington, among other municipalities, welcomed the 1986 and 1994 anti-crime bill, giving the policy support at the time support from law enforcement, Wyndell Watkins, retired chief of detectives for the District of Columbia told the Washington Examiner.
“Listening to the different arguments, it really depends on where you are in the equation. Now, I was on the side of where we were overwhelmed. Violence everywhere — a proliferation of guns everywhere drugs everywhere. The jails were full, so when those bills came through they provided a much needed resource for the people who were on the front line dealing with the actual numbers,” Watkins said.
“We were in a situation where violence was rampant, and we needed resources, and what those bills brought to us was federal support and resources and it allowed us to do some things that we could not do by ourselves.”
Drug reform activists see political expediency in Biden’s pushing of a new criminal justice reform plan, saying he is doing it for political expediency. They point out that his son Hunter, 49, has been a drug user or addict for close to three decades and his daughter Ashley was arrested possession of marijuana. Neither are ever known to have faced a criminal charge.
“Joe Biden is met with a lot of suspicion from the criminal justice reform movement and I think we know that these kinds of statements and attempts to rewrite history are really only happening because he’s running for president,” Collins said. “He’s trying to get across the finish line in a very competitive primary. If he was not running we would not be hearing from him on this stuff.”
