Re-Litigating the 1990s in Today's Context is Stupid

If I had to guess today, only a hand full of Democrats would vote for the 1994 Crime Bill if it were put forward today. Mandatory minimums, taking away education money for convicts, and industrializing prisons has not worked. If I had to guess, Bill Clinton would not sign the same bill today. As a party, we are moving towards rehabilitation in the criminal justice system, and realizing that the effects of the "get tough" era in criminal justice have left a generation of poor, no longer employable ex-convicts in our society with no real answer for what their lives mean now. We're moving towards de-criminalization of addiction, "banning the box" on employment applications to see if someone was a previously convicted felon, and ending mandatory minimum sentencing. We should move in this direction, and this is a good trend.

Re-litigating the 1994 Crime Bill in a 2016 context is stupid though. It's stupid because many of the people protesting it were too young in 1994 to understand what was happening then. In 1994, the "crack epidemic" was a recent thing. The violent crime rate in America was way higher than today. Many of our biggest cities had just elected "tough on crime" Mayors, many former prosecutors, and those cities were asking for more tools to "clean up" their streets. The conditions on the ground in 1994 were a lot different in 2016- the questions weren't about what will happen to those convicted, but what would come for everyone else. In 2016, we know that many of those fears were misguided. In 1994, they did not know that.

The world we lived in back then, real or imagined, wasn't the one we now occupy. We're at a different place now as a society, a much better place. This isn't to say that everything in the Crime Bill was bad either though. The Violence Against Women Act was a part of the Crime Bill, as was the Assault Weapon's Ban. While I'm sure this would stir a lot of debate, but I'm a supporter of the COPS Act that was in there, which hired more police officers- it provides good paying jobs and it supplies a great counter argument against the NRA's drivel about everyone needing to be armed. You can start a very lively debate by showing the drop in violent crimes since 1994, which some will argue was circumstantial, but it is a debate, nevertheless.

My main point is this- the protestors who want to shout at Bill and Hillary Clinton about the Crime Bill in 2016 (and ironically, less so Bernie, who actually voted for it) are trying to re-litigate something that we can't re-litigate 20 years after the fact. The entire context of the conversation has changed, and if you don't get that, you're pretty clueless. Quite clearly, people in 2016 can see the problem with industrialized prisons, and a criminal justice system that focuses on punishment. In 1994, those were not arguments that prevailed too often.

I'll make one final prediction in light of the other day's "incident" in Philadelphia- it will not hurt Hillary Clinton at all in Philadelphia, and it might even help her amongst African-American voters. While the campaign might want to sit Bill Clinton for a few days and make sure there aren't more incidents like that (which could make the issue a national conversation, which might not go as well), the incident itself isn't likely to cause Clinton much trouble. Older African-Americans in Philadelphia, who vote more often than younger folks (which is true across all demographics), have a history in that city of supporting some "tough on crime" politicians. I'd bet that they have a bit different perspective on the 1990s than the younger activists holding up signs calling Hillary Clinton a "killer" at that rally. Ultimately, the incident will either end up as a wash, or a slight positive for Clinton in the end.