DETROIT — Joe Biden may be attempting to right the wrongs of the 1994 crime bill, but for his Democratic presidential primary rival Cory Booker, it is too little, too late.
“For a guy who helped to be an architect of mass incarceration, this in an inadequate solution to what is a raging crisis in our country,” the New Jersey senator told reporters on Wednesday after speaking at the 110th annual NAACP convention.
The former vice president on Monday released a criminal justice reform plan on Monday in an attempt to distance himself from criticized aspects of the 1994 crime bill, which he sponsored as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman. Biden’s plan calls to abolish the federal death penalty, decriminalize marijuana, and end incarceration for drug use alone.
“We have 5% of the global population but 25% of the world’s prison population,” Booker said. “For him not to have a more comprehensive, bold plan to deal with this is unacceptable to me, especially because he is partly responsible for the crisis that we have.”
Booker last month proposed a plan to offer clemency to more than 17,000 nonviolent drug offenders on the first day of his presidency.
“It’s taken Joe Biden years and years until he was running for president to actually say that he made a mistake and there were things in that bill that were extraordinarily bad,” Booker said.
