Under president Clinton, the US prison population increased from 1.4 million to 2 million by the end of his second term.
According to Human Rights Watch, in 2000 the per capita prison population was 684 per 100,000 people. This is higher than incarceration rates in Libya, Iran, and even China. Wonderful! This was accomplished partly by expanding the inherently racist "War on (some) Drugs", which also saw the rise in insane forfeiture laws and an eroding of everyones rights in the name of fighting crime. Let's call it the "Clinton Prison Boom". Take a wild guess about how this affected the black community.
Next week, the Justice Policy Institute will release a study that shows that, despite all the legendary cruelty of President Reagan, far more people went to state and federal jails under Clinton than Reagan. In Reagan's eight years, 478,800 prisoners were added to America's jails. In Clinton's eight years, America's prison population increased by 673,000.
Under Clinton, the prison population shot up from 1.4 million to more than 2 million. Fearing being seen as soft on crime, Clinton did nothing to stop the racism of the so-called drug war. Clinton never fought seriously to eliminate the massive disparities in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine even though there was no medical evidence to support such disparities.
Clinton did nothing to stop local police departments from singling out nonviolent black nonusers of drugs, who are easier to snatch off street corners than off half-acre suburban lots. Even though African-Americans consume 13 percent of illegal drugs, roughly our share of the population, we made 74 percent of drug offenders sentenced sent to prison.
Under Clinton, the overall rate of African-Americans going to prison continued to soar. In the Reagan-Bush years, the rate grew from 1,156 prisoners per 100,000 black men to about 2,800 per 100,000. In the Clinton years, the rate grew to 3,620 prisoners per every 100,000 black men.
By the time the Clinton years were done, he had become such a sous chef in helping the Republicans cook the black goose, 14 percent of African-American men had lost the right to vote because of felony convictions. You could even argue that by going along with the recipes that Reagan and Bush set down, Clinton helped cooked his own vice president to a crisp.
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0216-01.htm"The whole network of incarceration (of African-American men) happened under this president and the last president. So it wasn't just George Bush. Bill Clinton -- I wish Hillary had hung around -- Bill Clinton built a lot of jails and passed the omnibus crime bill," Sharpton said shortly after Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) had addressed the same panel discussion, entitled "The Black Male: Endangered Species or Hope for the Future?"
Sharpton noted that African-American men make up 6 percent of the U.S. population but 44 percent of the nation's prison population.
"And just because Bill can sing "Amazing Grace" well doesn't mean the omnibus crime bill was not a bill that hurt our people," Sharpton told the several hundred people gathered at the Washington Convention Center.
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics.asp?Page=%5CPolitics%5Carchive%5C200507%5CPOL20050729c.htmlHey, guess what? People in prison don't count as unemployed or impoverished. Hooray! An economic miracle!
The 1990s were said to be a time when rising tides finally did lift all boats. Western warns that part of the reason, statistically speaking, is that many poor men have been thrown overboard—the government omits prisoners when calculating unemployment and poverty rates. Add them in, as Western does, and joblessness swells. For young black men it grows by more than a third. For young black dropouts, the jobless rate leaps from 41 percent to 65 percent. "Only by counting the penal population do we see that fully two out of three young black male dropouts were not working at the height of the 1990s economic expansion," Western warns. Count inmates and you also erase three quarters of the apparent progress in closing the wage gap between blacks and whites.
Western is not just tinkering with the numbers. He is rewriting one of the era's major story lines. "This is the first recovery in three decades where everybody got better at the same time," President Clinton said just before leaving office. "I just think that's so important." Punishment and Inequality in America shows that among one vital group of the poor, the opposite was true: as official unemployment hit record lows, joblessness among young black dropouts rose to record highs. The prison expansion reflected inequality. The prison expansion created inequality. The prison expansion hid inequality from view.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20056Mr. "I Didn't Inhale" didn't spare non-violent drug users, either... except five.
Like the endless quagmire of Vietnam left for Richard Nixon, President Clinton's drug war leaves a legacy of victims but no victory.
Clinton got a splash of publicity for his token release of four women and a man from prison -- a grand total of five out of America's 400,000 nonviolent drug convicts.
In June, the international group Human Rights Watch issued a major study finding that America's war on drugs has been waged overwhelmingly against black people.
The group said that five times as many white people as black people use drugs but black men are sent to state prisons at 13 times the rate of white men. Hispanics are also jailed in hugely disproportionate numbers.
http://www.commondreams.org/views/071800-105.htmObviously, this a fluke of some kind. A terrible oversight, and it was probably all Gore's fault. I'm sure Hillary had nothing to do with it during her time as Co-President and would like to reverse this horrendous trend-- oh wait...
Clinton campaign assails Obama for advocating against federal mandatory minimumsHowever, as now revealed by this ABC News piece discussing Hillary Clinton's efforts to bounce back from her defeat in Iowa, the Clinton campaign team is suggesting that Barack Obama's opposition to federal mandatory minimum sentences makes him too liberal for the Democratic Party's nomination:
Sen. Hillary Clinton went on the counterattack today, one day after a stinging defeat in the Iowa caucuses to Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. She said New Hampshire voters need to take a hard look at Obama, suggesting that they shouldn't just buy into his message of "hope" without analyzing his policies....
While the senator was vague, her campaign pointed out to ABC News examples of Obama's liberal positions, including his 2004 statement to abolish mandatory minimum sentences for federal crimes.
This story further confirms my concern that Senator Clinton is not just willing, but apparently quite eager, to use the old "soft-on-crime" scare strategy in an effort to swing voters her way. Such a strategy is extraordinarily disappointing on the merits and telling coming from Senator Clinton now. Moreover, I cannot help but suggest that there is a sniff of racism in the Clinton camp's now repeated efforts to adopt a classic "Willie Horton" tactic in the hope of scaring (mostly white) voters away from a (non-white) candidate because of fear of (mostly minority) offenders subject to extreme prison terms under the old crack guidelines and federal mandatory minimums.
http://sentencing.typepad.com/sentencing_law_and_policy/2008/01/clinton-aides-a.htmlThe American Civil Liberties Union Washington Legislative Office, a non-partisan organization, believes Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) was mistaken when she called ending mandatory minimum sentences a controversial position. The organization urges all candidates, from all parties, to oppose mandatory minimum sentencing and support legislation to close the sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine. The policy of mandatory minimum sentencing has led to thousands of people serving longer jail sentences and has contributed to the unfair sentencing disparities between federal crack and powder cocaine offenses that disproportionately affect people of color.
http://sentencing.typepad.com/sentencing_law_and_policy/2008/01/aclu-urging-can.htmlBut don't worry, in reality she is against mandatory sentencing as well. She's just not above bashing another candidate as "liberal" for opposing them.
SEN. CLINTON: In order to tackle this problem, we have to do all of these things.
Number one, we do have to go after racial profiling. I’ve supported legislation to try to tackle that.
Number two, we have to go after mandatory minimums. You know, mandatory sentences for certain violent crimes may be appropriate, but it has been too widely used. And it is using now a discriminatory impact.
Three, we need diversion, like drug courts. Non-violent offenders should not be serving hard time in our prisons. They need to be diverted from our prison system.
We need to make sure that we do deal with the distinction between crack and powder cocaine. And ultimately we need an attorney general and a system of justice that truly does treat people equally, and that has not happened under this administration.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/28/us/politics/29transcript.html?_r=2&pagewanted=11&bl&ei=5087%0A&en=854f8e2a84e9cef0&ex=1183348800&oref=sloginAwesome! Non-violent drug users shouldn't be serving time in prison, I agree! Most sane people agree. Great! So equalizing crack and powder cocaine sentencing, which she supports and would help reduce our insane prison population, should be applied retroactively, right?
Unfortunately, Hillary Clinton in Iowa yesterday said she has problems with making the reduction in crack-powder cocaine penalties, minimal as they are, retroactive.
“In principle I have problems with retroactivity," she said. "It’s something a lot of communities will be concerned about as well."
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/12/3/123415/803Hey, at least she's taking a "principled" stand.
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