Within the January 2025 concern of Cause, we’re giving efficiency critiques of Joe Biden’s presidency. Click on right here to learn the opposite entries.
To win the Democratic primaries 4 years in the past, Joe Biden needed to take a left activate prison justice, providing voters a smorgasbord of reforms to a carceral system he had helped construct over his a long time as a tough-on-crime senator. As Biden’s presidency sputters to an finish, the White Home has made strides on a few of these objectives however didn’t ship on many others.
Biden’s voluminous 2020 prison justice platform (now scrubbed from his web site) advocated eliminating obligatory minimal sentences, money bail, and the federal loss of life penalty. It known as for ending the “school-to-prison pipeline” and closely investing in psychological well being counselors at colleges and in juvenile justice packages that present options to incarceration. Biden additionally promised to make use of the Justice Division to research systemic misconduct by police departments, and he vowed to make use of his clemency powers to free “people dealing with unduly lengthy sentences for sure non-violent and drug crimes.”
Biden’s platform was nonetheless moderated by his previous drug-warrior tendencies. For example, it known as just for decriminalizing marijuana quite than legalizing it, and it insisted on diverting people to drug courts and involuntary therapy. Nonetheless, The Marshall Undertaking, a prison justice information outlet, called it “probably the most progressive prison justice platform of any main occasion candidate in generations.”
Prison justice advocates had been dismayed, then, when Biden’s belated moves on marijuana didn’t basically alter the drug’s unlawful standing or the lingering injustices of drug convictions, resembling boundaries to employment, housing, and civil rights. Biden’s son Hunter fell awry of these very legal guidelines when he was convicted in June of mendacity on a federal gun-purchase type by claiming he was not hooked on or utilizing unlawful medicine. The Biden administration has actually defended the federal ban on gun possession by unlawful drug customers in opposition to authorized challenges from medical marijuana advocates.
A few of the Biden marketing campaign’s most formidable proposals, resembling repealing obligatory minimums, would have required new legal guidelines to be handed, which isn’t the White Home’s job—and apparently not Congress’ anymore both.
However on different pledges, the Biden administration has unilaterally reversed course. Regardless of Biden’s pledge to finish the federal loss of life penalty, Justice Division attorneys have sought the death penalty within the instances of defendants accused of mass shootings in Pittsburgh and Buffalo.
The Biden administration has adopted by means of on a few of its guarantees, although. The Justice Division has as soon as once more, after a four-year lull through the Trump administration, revived investigations into systemic constitutional abuses by rotten police departments, exposing unlawful ways in Phoenix, Minneapolis, and Louisville. Biden additionally appointed a reform-minded director to the Bureau of Prisons, which has been racked by sexual assault scandals and widespread corruption.
Biden didn’t ship on his loftiest guarantees, and what he did accomplish might be simply reversed by the subsequent occupant of the Oval Workplace. A lot of his objectives at the start of the time period had been commendable, however he lacked initiative, was simply sidetracked, and didn’t work as much as his potential.
Prison justice coverage efficiency assessment: incomplete assignments and lacking homework
This text initially appeared in print below the headline “Unfinished Enterprise on Prison Justice.”
