Joe Biden claimed in a 1976 speech that the role of the criminal justice system was to punish rather than rehabilitate criminals, arguing that “you don’t have to be some racist so-called redneck to say that.”
Biden also rejected the idea that rehabilitation programs needed more federal funding, saying there was no effective way to cure criminals.
Biden’s remarks, captured on an audiotape obtained by the Washington Examiner, are at odds with his current criminal justice reform plan, which says the “criminal justice system must be focused on redemption and rehabilitation.” They also contradict his claim that he only helped pass strict crime bills in the 1980s and 1990s because he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time, suggesting he held tough-on-crime views for decades.
Biden spoke at an annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Boise, Idaho in February 1976, over a decade before he became chairman of the Judiciary Committee. He said: “We liberals stand up and we say, ‘What we need to do is rehabilitate.’ And yet we go to any university in the United States of America and we find among the [academics] a recognition of the fact that we do not know how to rehabilitate.
“We have not found a way to rehabilitate. And yet we conduct the debate and tell ourselves if we only had more money we’d correct the system. That is not true. Flat out not true,” he said.
Biden claimed the objective of the criminal justice system should be to punish lawbreakers, and he slammed other Democrats for failing to agree with him publicly.
“Why should we liberals, why should we Democrats, apologize for saying a criminal justice system has implicit in it the idea that a crime should be met with a punishment? What is wrong with that? I don’t know. I don’t have any idea,” he said. “If you commit a crime you should be accountable for it. And you don’t have to be some racist so-called redneck to say that.”
Biden also argued that if Democrats didn’t support tough-on-crime measures, then it would drive Americans to embrace figures such as then-Alabama Gov. George Wallace, a prominent segregationist, who did back stricter crime laws.
“When we don’t respond, we don’t talk in those terms, we allow men like the governor from Alabama to run around the nation talking about ‘pointy-headed federal judges’ and about the fact that we need more severe penalties in the government for crime, and people begin to believe him,” said Biden.
“We don’t respond and give the field to him, to what the majority of the American people know makes good common sense, that if you commit a crime you should be accountable for it.”
During his current presidential campaign, Biden has sought to distance himself from his prior support for stricter crime laws, including his drafting of the 1994 crime bill and support for harsher penalties for crack cocaine than powder cocaine. Biden said in April that he “got stuck with” drafting anti-crime legislation because he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He served as chairman from 1987 to 1995.
“I got stuck with it because I was the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, writing most of the drug legislation that occurred in that period,” said Biden. “The big mistake was that I was buying into the idea that crack-cocaine was different than powdered cocaine and having penalties should be eliminated.”
Biden’s work drafting the 1994 crime bill, known as the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, has been controversial with many Democrats. Critics of the law, which significantly increased funding for state prison construction, claim it has led to over-incarceration and racial inequalities in prison sentences. In the 1990s, Biden also backed more funding for drug enforcement measures, including local police departments, criminal prosecutions, and prisons.
William Bennett, the Republican “drug czar” under George H.W. Bush, told the Washington Examiner in April that he and Biden worked “hand in glove” on tougher anti-drug policies. “The pushback I had [from Biden] was, ‘Czar, you’re not being tough enough,’” said Bennett. “He told me over and over again, ‘I want you to get after it.’”
But in a campaign speech in South Carolina last month, Biden claimed he had not supported funding to build prisons. “I didn’t support more money to build state prisons. I was against it. We should be building rehab centers and not prisons,” said Biden.
