COLUMBIA, S.C. — Joe Biden on Saturday joined Elizabeth Warren in calling for an end to the private prison system.
“No more mandatory minimums, period. End private prisons,” the former vice president and 2020 front-runner told attendees of the South Carolina Democratic Convention as he ran through a list of policy positions.
Biden, a former Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, also said prisons should be required to treat inmates suffering from addiction.
Warren, a Massachusetts senator also competing for the Democratic presidential nomination, proposed banning private prisons a day earlier, calling the for-profit system “exploitation.”
“Our criminal and immigration systems are tearing apart communities of color and devastating the poor, including children,” Warren said.
Biden did not give more details on his plan, rushing through applause lines to fit his proposals into a a less than 10-minute speech.
Warren’s plan would end contracts between the Bureau of Prisons and Immigrant and Customs Enforcement and private detention facilities and prisons. The former Harvard Law School professor said she would also extend the ban to states.
Another 2020 hopeful, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., who previously served as San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general, has vowed to “end private prisons and the profiting off of people in prison.”
