Hillary Clinton gave a big criminal justice reform speech on Wednesday, in which she called for the end of “mass incarceration,” reforming mandatory minimum sentencing, releasing low-level offenders, body camera implementation, drug courts, and scaling back police militarization. In other words, the opposite of the “tough on crime” policies championed by her husband while he was in office.
Hillary mourned the deaths of Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, and Freddie Gray, saying, “There is something wrong when a third of all black men face the prospect of prison during their lifetimes.” As a lawyer, she said, “I saw how families could be and were torn apart by excessive incarceration.”
1994 Hillary, however, declared, along with Bill, that “We need more police, we need more and tougher prison sentences for repeat offenders. The three strikes and you’re out for violent offenders has to be part of the plan.” She praised Bill’s “smart and tough” approach to crime.
2015 Hillary is concerned about families “torn apart by excessive incarceration,” “unjust federal sentencing disparity,” and believes that keep low-level offenders behind bars “does little to reduce crime.”
1990s Hillary thought we needed more prisons, while 2015 Hillary rattled off how much prisons cost taxpayers and demanded “a true national debate about how to reduce our prison population.”
And unfortunately for Hillary, as much as the media might love her, multiple news stories Wednesday pointed out just how far the Clintons have come on this issue since the 90s. A sampling:
At the time, Clinton said the 1994 crime bill — which called for 100,000 more police officers, more prisons, and harsher sentencing for crimes, and enacted stricter gun laws — would “make a difference in your lives as police officers and in the lives of the communities you serve.”
“We will be able to say, loudly and clearly, that for repeat, violent, criminal offenders — three strikes and you’re out. We are tired of putting you back in through the revolving door,” remarked the then-first lady.
[…] Her comments then — that the death penalty had her “unenthusiastic support” — riled the most liberal wing of the Democratic Party. The death penalty poses a complicated issue for Clinton, whose husband, Bill Clinton, carried out executions as Arkansas governor and loudly defended capital punishment as he sought to establish himself as a law-and-order Democrat during his 1992 White House bid.
The reversal also caught the attention of 2016 rival Sen. Rand Paul, whom Hillary name-checked in her speech as part of the “growing bipartisan movement for commonsense reforms in our criminal justice systems.
“Earlier today, Hillary Clinton proposed various criminal justice reform ideas in an attempt to undo some of Bill Clinton’s work—the same work she cheerfully supported as First Lady,” his campaign said in a statement. “Not only is Hillary Clinton trying to undo some of the harm inflicted by the Clinton administration, she is now emulating proposals introduced by Senator Rand Paul over the last several years, and we welcome her to the fight.”
Bill Clinton, meanwhile, is right behind Hillary, writing in the foreward for a new essay book, “But plainly, our nation has too many people in prison and for too long — we have overshot the mark.”
