Will criminal justice reform take on a bigger role in round two of the 2020 Democratic Prez candidate debates?
The next round of debates among the Democratic candidates eager to take on Prez Trump in Nov 2020 takes place this week in Detroit (and this local article provides a partial review and preview of the candidates). I have an inkling that Prez Trump's varied attacks on various Democratic members of Congress may take up a lot of the conversation, but I am of course hoping that we get more focus on criminal justice reform issues. For various reasons, I think we might.
For starters, federal criminal justice developments have been in the news quite a bit of late. Two weeks ago, we had the implementation of the FIRST STEP Act kick into a new gear, and last week Attorney General William Barr announced a change in the federal execution protocol and the scheduling of five federal executions. These developments certainly could justify a focused question ("Will you pledge to commute all federal death sentences as Prez?") or general question ("What should be prioritized in the NEXT STEP Act?") on federal criminal justice reforms.
In addition, a number prominent candidates, in particular Joe Biden, Cory Booker and Pete Buttigeig, have put forth major criminal justice reform plans in recent weeks. These candidates now have developed positions and "talking points" on various criminal justice reform topics, and they may be interested in bring up their plans in more general discussions to highlight their priorities.
And speaking of Joe Biden, it is possible that some of his competitors might think that he can be attacked based on his past role in various federal laws that are now the subject of much justified criticism. With Biden seemingly still the front-runner, there might be an interest in bringing up his criminal justice reform past. This new lengthy Washington Post article, headlined "How an early Biden crime bill created the sentencing disparity for crack and cocaine trafficking," certainly tees up one possible line of attack. Here is an excerpt:
As he makes another bid for the White House, Biden, now 76, is facing criticism over his past advocacy for tough-on-crime policies, particularly his authorship of the 1994 omnibus anti-crime law that is blamed for accelerating incarceration rates, especially of black men. One of his Democratic rivals, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, last week said that the law “inflicted immeasurable harm on black, brown, and low-income communities.” Booker is expected to raise the issue again before a national audience during this week’s primary debate.
Biden’s role in passing the lesser-known 1986 law and creating the crack-powder disparity reveals how he grappled with policies years earlier that would affect the black community. The episode could further complicate his ongoing struggle to reconcile his decades-long record with changing political and societal norms....
An examination of Biden’s work on a half-dozen criminal justice bills found that his legislation included liberal priorities but also broadly served to push federal criminal policy to the right in response to a surge of violent crime. Biden’s language and policy positions were mainstream for Democrats at the time, reflecting a political consensus around tough-on-crime policies during the crime wave that began in the 1970s and efforts by many in the party to assert a more centrist image.
Critics now say those policies helped fuel incarceration and racial disparities in the criminal justice system — and are calling on Biden to take responsibility for his part....
The Anti-Drug Abuse Act authorized more than $1 billion for drug enforcement, education and treatment programs. But one of its most consequential provisions was the “100-1” rule, so named because it required a five-year mandatory minimum sentence for trafficking in 500 grams of powder cocaine or five grams of crack.
Though Biden took responsibility for the formula in 2002, it is unclear exactly how it came to be part of his bill. The ratio was more aggressive than proposals from either the Reagan administration, which sought a “20-1” rule, or House Democrats, who held the majority and sought a “50-1” rule, but less aggressive than the “1,000-1” ratio proposed by Sen. Lawton Chiles (D-Fla.), the co-chairman of Biden’s working group.
The process had turned into a political “bidding war” between Republicans and Democrats, who were courting fearful voters ahead of the 1986 elections, said Eric Sterling, a former House Democratic staffer who worked on the 50-1 proposal.
No experts recommended a 100-1 ratio, said Sterling, now president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, a drug policy and criminal justice reform group, who said he regrets working on the House proposal. “Biden was the lead anti-drug guy among the Democrats. As ranking member, he had critical sign-off authority on legislation. A lot of these concerns about the 100-to-1 ratio really are questions that Biden needs to answer for,” Sterling said in an interview this month.
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