Did Bill Clinton Admit His Policies Led to Mass Incarceration?
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
In a CNN interview, former president Bill Clinton admitted that perhaps the harsh “three strikes” sentencing provision in his 1994 crime bill led to mass incarceration.
According to the NY Daily News:
“The problem is the way it was written and implemented is we cast too wide a net and we had too many people in prison,” Clinton told CNN. “And we wound up … putting so many people in prison that there wasn’t enough money left to educate them, train them for new jobs and increase the chances when they came out so they could live productive lives.”
Clinton’s comments came during an ongoing national discussion about policing and incarceration rates that has taken on new urgency following weeks of protests in Baltimore over the death of Freddie Gray in police custody.
Hillary Clinton’s first major policy address of her campaign addressed the subject last week, when she called for incarceration reform and body cameras for police.