Tuesday, May 03, 2016

The Crime Bill


One of the big criticisms against Hillary Clinton is her support of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 - hereafter referred to as the Crime Bill.

I'm going to come right out now and say that I don't see the logic in holding it against her when Sanders voted for it. Yes, he made a speech against it, but then he voted for it and cast himself as tough on crime in later political races. That seems wrong, but I also find it stupid that people focus more on her support as a 16 year old girl for Goldwater than her not that much later support as an adult for McGovern.

As it is, there were reasons to be both for and against the Crime Bill, and they aren't all the reasons that are perceived today.

It was a response to increased shooting violence, often related to drugs and gangs, but it was also inspired by the Waco Siege and a 55 year old white entrepreneur opening fire at a law firm in San Francisco. It's understandable that people were afraid.

Here are some of the provisions:

Federal Assault Weapons Ban - this is where it came from, but it expired in 2004, and attempts to renew it lead us into a whole different kind of argument. Still, there are a lot of people who would support this now..

Driver's Privacy Protection Act - Set up rules for privacy with DMV records. Abortion opponents had been using driving license databases to track down providers and patients, but California had already started working on these laws after DMV record access allowed Rebecca Schaeffer's murderer to track her down.

Creation of state sex offender registries - when someone gets in trouble for not registering as a sex offender, that started with the Crime Bill.

Mandatory drug testing for those on federal supervised release - As drugs were seen to be a big part of the increase in crime, this would have been a pretty natural inclusion.

Violence Against Women Act - I do know advocates for women who find that VAWA does more harm than good, but as written it was supposed to help prevent and investigate violence against women, as well as increasing grants for battered women's shelters and creating a National Domestic Violence Hotline.

New federal offenses were added, some related to gang membership which may have been unconstitutional.

Community Oriented Policing Services were funded - I know why they thought this would help, and also that it didn't.

Three Strikes and you're out - I believe some states had been moving in this direction previously, but yes, this was a part of the Crime Bill, and a destructive one.

Federal Death Penalty Act - 60 new death penalty offenses were created.

Elimination of inmate education - Previously inmates could be eligible for Pell Grants and this was taken away.

Those last two shed some light. It has been well-established now that administration of the death penalty is racist, though it may not have been as well understood then. There was an attempt to include a provision to remove the death penalty if it could be shown to be racist, but I don't believe that made it into the final bill.

There was a lot of contention on the bill. It started out as bipartisan, but one of the big hoped for items was money for rehab programs, and it was argued against as "welfare for criminals". I know some people did end up having more funding for rehab programs, so they appear to have gotten part of that, but could the Pell Grants have been taken away as a bit of tit for tat? Surely that is part of the problem with omnibus bills, but that is how Congress works.

Also, many of those new death penalty crimes were offenses that would be strongly associated with gangs, like a drive-by shooting resulting in death, or a carjacking resulting in death.

The gangs were seen as a scourge (and members as "superpredators"), and there were reasons for that. Doing something made sense, but most of the improvements that have happened have not been seen as a result of the Crime Bill, and harmful results have been seen. I'm not sure all of that would have been obvious.

Anyway, we're going to delve into that a bit more tomorrow, but let's just note that disparate sentencing for crack versus other forms of cocaine was already there, as well as the introduction of drugs into the population, and racially biased policing - all already present.

Actually, that leads to one interesting provision that I didn't mention. The Crime Bill required the Department of Justice to issue an annual report on use of excessive force by law enforcement officers. I didn't mention it earlier not because I forgot about it, but because the reports were not issued.

Perhaps that should be revisited.

There are a lot of articles out there, but here are a few:




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