Sen. Cory Booker (D., NJ) and New York City mayor Bill de Blasio slammed fellow presidential candidate Joe Biden for his support of 1994’s criminal justice reform bill.
Booker called the law “awful” and “shameful” in an interview with HuffPost.
“The incentives they put in that bill for people to raise mandatory minimums, for building prisons and jails ― from the time I was in law school to the time I was mayor of the city of Newark, we were building a new prison or jail every 10 days in America while the rest of our infrastructure crumbled ― overwhelmingly putting people in prison for nonviolent drug offenses that members of Congress and the Senate admit to breaking now. That bill was awful,” Booker said.
“We should all agree with the force of conviction: That bill was a mistake,” Booker continued. “Good people signed on to that bill. People make mistakes. But let’s hold them to that. That crime bill was shameful, what it did to black and brown communities like mine [and] low-income communities from Appalachia to rural Iowa. It was a bad bill.” – READ MORE