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News :: Miscellaneous |
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New Report Rakes Clinton on Imprisonment |
Current rating: 0 |
by Drug Reform Coordination Network
(No verified email address) |
26 Feb 2001
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A report released this week by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice's
Justice Policy Institute scores former President Bill Clinton for a "prison legacy...
more punitive than those of former Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush
combined," and provides the numbers to back it up. |
The report, entitled "Too Little, Too Late: President Clinton's Prison Legacy,"
(http://www.cjcj.org/clinton/) finds that during former President Clinton's first-term
(1992-1996), 148,000 more state and federal prisoners were added than during
President Reagan's first term (1980-1984), and 34,000 more than were added
during President George Bush's four-year term (1988-1992). The study also
showed that the incarceration rate of African Americans continued to rise
substantially under Clinton.
"President Clinton stole the show from the 'tough-on-crime' Republicans," said
JPI President Vincent Schiraldi in a press release accompanying the report.
"President Clinton was right to call for criminal justice reform in a recent Rolling
Stone interview. He was wrong to do so little about it while he was in office."
The report's authors also called on President Bush to fulfill his recently articulated
interest in "making sure the powder-cocaine and crack-cocaine penalties are the
same" by abolishing federal crack/powder sentencing disparities this legislative
session and "[making sure] our drug-prevention programs are effective" (CNN
Inside Politics, January 18, 2001).
It also called on Bush to support "treatment not jail" programs, pointing to
California's Prop. 215 and to ongoing reform efforts by Republican Governors
Johnson of New Mexico and Pataki of New York.
"When Clinton came into office, he had a ten-year incarceration boom to
outshine," stated report co-author Lisa Feldman. "As the governor with the
nation's largest prison population and the most executions, President Bush has
no need to prove his conservative mettle. He has shown he can be tough on
crime -- now he has the opportunity to prove he can be smart on crime as well."
In other findings, the study reports:
In total, 673,000 inmates were added to state and federal prisons and jail
during President Bill Clinton's two terms in office, compared with 343,000
under Bush and 448,000 under Reagan.
In the Clinton-era, the incarceration rate has climbed to 476 per 100,000
citizens, compared to 332 at the end of Bush's term and 247 per 100,000
at the end of Reagan's.
For African-Americans, the incarceration rate continued to increase by an
average rate of 100.4 per 100,000 per year during the Clinton years. This
comes on top of an already rapid increasing incarceration rate during the
previous 12 years. Between 1980 and 1999, the incarceration rate for
African Americans more than tripled from 1,156 per 100,000, to 3,620 per
100,000 -- nearly nine times the rate for all US citizens.
Under President Bill Clinton's eight years, the number of prisoners under
federal jurisdiction doubled (from 80,259 to 147,126), and grew more than
it had under the previous twelve years of Republican rule. |
See also:
http://www.drcnet.org/wol/174.html#clintonrecord
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