President Bill Clinton (left) hugs Sen. Joe Biden on September 13, 1994, during a crime bill signing ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House.
Paul J. Richards/AFP via Getty Images
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Paul J. Richards/AFP via Getty Images
Thirty years ago this Friday, President Bill Clinton signed a bill that was considered the biggest federal intervention in crime and justice in a generation.
The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 spent money to put more police on the streets, impose tougher sentences, and provide federal funds to build more prisons.
In later years, many architects considered this a terrible mistake.
Nick Turner, head of the Vera Institute of Justice, said the conversation about public safety has changed a lot over the past few decades.
“Crime is lower. Perceptions of crime are lower. People are more skeptical of tough-on-crime responses,” Turner said.
Violent crime has continued to feature prominently in political attack ads this year. At this week’s presidential debate, former President Donald Trump The crimes highlighted which he blamed on immigrants.
But the excesses of the justice system were also mentioned, when Vice President Harris brought up the Central Park Five. Those young men were convicted, then exonerated, of a brutal attack on a jogger in New York City in 1989. They also took the stage at the Democratic National Convention this summer.
“The five exonerated men took the stage to acknowledge the devastating acts and harm that can be caused by an overly aggressive system,” Turner said.
“The Carrot and Stick Approach”
Despite all the talk about politicians being tough or soft on crime, the federal government’s role in criminal justice remains limited. State and local governments prosecute the vast majority of the nation’s crimes.
“Presidents have a rhetorical pulpit,” said Cully Stimson, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation. “I think presidents can and should spend some time talking about your right to public safety. And your right to public safety depends in large part on your community.”
Crime peaked in the early 1990s and then declined sharply over the next few decades, Stimson said.
“The carrot-and-stick approach has worked,” Stimson said. “It’s the way to reduce crime.”
The carrots are creating alternatives to incarceration like drug courts and veterans courts, and funding violence prevention programs.
The stick here, he said, is accountability.
“And accountability doesn’t mean going to jail,” he said. “In most cases, most people who commit crimes don’t go to jail, and they shouldn’t go to jail, but they do need to be held accountable.”
Judicial Changes Across the Country
Even Trump signed the First Step Act, a law that allowed thousands of people in prison to be released early in 2018. States have made even bigger changes to their justice systems in that era.
“I mean, when I tell my students that the United States is no longer the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world, they are often shocked,” said Udi Ofer, a professor at Princeton University.
Crime increased during the pandemic, then decreased.
Despite some backlash, state legislatures have passed laws that could do everything from expand parole rights to allow judges to reconsider long prison sentences, Ofer said.
“Bipartisan progress on criminal justice reform continues despite conventional wisdom and political discourse that suggests otherwise,” Ofer said.
He looked at dozens of polls this year and noticed one consistent thing.
“Americans want and deserve safety and that is incredibly important,” Ofer said. “At the same time, they also believe in fairness.”
