Washington, D. C. - Future President, Joe Biden, made comments for what became the 1994 Crime Bill. This was the last new bill of the Mass Incarceration era.
Biden called Americans 'predators' and wanted them in jail. He called them criminals and single mothers and disadvantaged. He used all the racial code words of the Reagan and Nixon eras. Biden made it clear the police and sheriffs wanted this bill. Black Americans, the targets of the bill, were not asked about it, before it was written.
This Crime Bill sent hundreds of thousands of Black American men to jail, for non-violent drug crimes. It exploded jail and prison numbers. The cost, in public funds, was hundreds of billions of dollars.
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