Former Vice President Joe Biden spent decades in the Senate implementing many of the “tough on crime” policies increasingly criticized by the left, libertarians, and racial justice activists, especially in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests. But now Biden is running to dismantle much of that legacy with a sweeping, progressive criminal justice reform plan.
Biden’s plan was released before he became the Democratic nominee and before the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd triggered a national reckoning over race and policing. But the plan, which Biden’s team told me is still his core criminal justice platform, nonetheless addresses many of the concerns raised by protesters not just about police but the criminal justice system more broadly — in a serious effort by Biden to align his views with a shift in crime politics, particularly among Democrats, over the past three decades.
Most relevant to the Black Lives Matter protests, police reforms — boosting funds for federal efforts to incentivize police reforms at the local and state level while taking steps to hold local and state police more accountable for abuses—are in Biden’s plan.
It also includes many other ambitious goals: decriminalize marijuana, eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent crimes, end the death penalty, abolish private prisons, get rid of cash bail, and discourage the incarceration of children. It even seeks to end policies that Biden previously backed — most notably, a sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine offenses that contributed to racial disparities in federal incarceration. It’s largely aimed at reducing incarceration and fixing “the racial, gender, and income-based disparities in the system,” according to Biden’s campaign.