controversial 1994 crime law that Joe Biden helped write, explained". Vox. June 20, 2019. "Ten Economic Facts about Crime and Incarceration in the United States |19:15, 4 May 2020
Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. (/ˌrɒbɪˈnɛt ˈbaɪdən/;[1] born November 20, 1942) is an American politician who served as the 47th vice president of the United States from 2009 to 2017 and represented Delaware in the U.S. Senate from 1973 to 2009. A member of the Democratic Party, Biden is the presumptive Democratic nominee for president in the 2020 election. He unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 and in 2008.
Biden was raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and New Castle County, Delaware. He studied at the University of Delaware before receiving his law degree from Syracuse University.[2] He became a lawyer in 1969 and was elected to the New Castle County Council in 1970. He was elected to the U.S. Senate from Delaware in 1972 when he became the sixth-youngest senator in American history. Biden was reelected six times and was the fourth-most senior senator when he resigned to assume the vice presidency in 2009.[3]
As a senator, Biden was a longtime member and eventually chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. He opposed the Gulf War in 1991 but advocated for U.S. and NATO intervention in the Bosnian War in 1994 and 1995, expanding NATO in the 1990s, and the 1999 bombing of Serbia during the Kosovo War. He argued and voted for the resolution authorizing the Iraq War in 2002 but opposed the surge of U.S. troops in 2007. He has also served as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, dealing with issues related to drug policy, crime prevention, and civil liberties, as well as the contentious U.S. Supreme Court nominations of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. Biden led the efforts to pass the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and the Violence Against Women Act.
In 2008, Biden was the running mate of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. As vice president, he oversaw infrastructure spending to counteract the Great Recession and helped formulate U.S. policy toward Iraq through the withdrawal of U.S. troops in 2011. His negotiations with congressional Republicans helped the Obama administration pass legislation including the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010, which resolved a taxation deadlock; the Budget Control Act of 2011, which resolved that year's debt ceiling crisis; and the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, which addressed the impending fiscal cliff. Obama and Biden were reelected in 2012.
In October 2015, after months of speculation, Biden announced he would not seek the presidency in the 2016 election. In January 2017, Obama awarded Biden the Presidential Medal of Freedom with distinction.[4] After completing his second term as vice president, Biden joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was named the Benjamin Franklin Professor of Presidential Practice.[5] He announced his 2020 candidacy for president on April 25, 2019, joining a large field of Democratic candidates pursuing the party nomination.[6] Throughout 2019, he was widely regarded as the party's frontrunner. After briefly falling behind Bernie Sanders after poor showings in the first three state contests, Biden won the South Carolina primary decisively, and several center-left candidates dropped out of the race and endorsed him before Super Tuesday. Biden went on to win 18 of the next 26 contests. With the suspension Sanders' campaign on April 8, 2020, Biden became the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee for the presidential election.[7]
Prison and jail population
Total U.S. incarceration (prisons and jails) peaked in 2008. Total correctional population peaked in 2007.[5] If all prisoners are counted (including those juvenile, territorial, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) (immigration detention), Indian country, and military), then in 2008 the United States had around 24.7% of the world's 9.8 million prisoners.[6][7][8]
The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world, at 754 per 100,000 (as of 2009[update]).[9][10] As of December 31, 2010, the International Centre for Prison Studies (ICPS) at King's College London estimated 2,266,832 prisoners from a total population of 310.64 million as of this date (730 per 100,000 in 2010).[11]
This number comprises local jails with a nominal capacity of 866,782 inmates occupied at 86.4% (June 6, 2010), state prisons with a nominal capacity of approximately 1,140,500 occupied at approximately 115% (December 31, 2010), and federal prisons with a nominal capacity of 126,863 occupied at 136.0% (December 31, 2010). Of this number, 21.5% are pretrial detainees (December 31, 2010), 8.7% are female prisoners (December 31, 2010), 0.4% are juveniles (June 6, 2009), and 5.9% are foreign prisoners (June 30, 2007).[11]
The imprisonment rate varies widely by state; Louisiana surpasses this by about 100%, but Maine incarcerates at about a fifth this rate. A report released 28 February 2008, indicates that more than 1 in 100 adults in the United States are in prison.[12]
According to a U.S. Department of Justice report published in 2006, over 7.2 million people were at that time in prison, on probation, or on parole (released from prison with restrictions). That means roughly 1 in every 32 adult Americans are under some sort of criminal justice system control.[13][14]
Growth
In the last forty years, incarceration has increased with rates upwards of 500% despite crime rates decreasing nationally.[15] Between the years 2001 and 2012, crime rates (both property and violent crimes) have consistently declined at a rate of 22% after already falling an additional 30% in years prior between 1991 and 2001.[16] As of 2012, there are 710 people per every 100,000 U.S. residents in the United States that are imprisoned in either local jails, state prisons, federal prisons, and privately operated facilities.[16] This correlates to incarcerating a number close to almost a quarter of the prison population in the entire world.[17] Mass incarceration is an intervening variable to more incarceration.[18]
The Bureau of Justice Statistics has released a study which finds that, despite the total number of prisoners incarcerated for drug-related offenses increasing by 57,000 between 1997 and 2004, the proportion of drug offenders to total prisoners in State prison populations stayed steady at 21%. The percentage of Federal prisoners serving time for drug offenses declined from 63% in 1997 to 55% in that same period.[19] In the twenty-five years since the passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, the United States penal population rose from around 300,000 to more than two million.[20] Between 1986 and 1991, African-American women's incarceration in state prisons for drug offenses increased by 828 percent.[21]
In 2009, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that the growth rate of the state prison population had fallen to its lowest since 2006, but it still had a 0.2% growth-rate compared to the total U.S. prison population.[22] The California state prison system population fell in 2009, the first year that populations had fallen in 38 years.[23]
When looking at specific populations within the criminal justice system the growth rates are vastly different. In 1977, there were just slightly more than eleven thousand incarcerated women. By 2004, the number of women under state or federal prison had increased by 757 percent, to more than 111,000, and the percentage of women in prison has increased every year, at roughly double the rate of men, since 2000.[24] The rate of incarcerated women has expanded at about 4.6% annually between 1995 and 2005 with women now accounting for 7% of the population in state and federal prisons.
Comparison with other countries[edit]
Comparing some countries with similar percentages of immigrants, Germany has an incarceration rate of 76 per 100,000 population (as of 2014),[25] Italy is 85 per 100,000 (as of 2015),[26] and Saudi Arabia is 161 per 100,000 (as of 2013).[27] Comparing other countries with a zero tolerance policy for illegal drugs, the rate of Russia is 455 per 100,000 (as of 2015),[28] Kazakhstan is 275 per 100,000 (as of 2015),[29] Singapore is 220 per 100,000 (as of 2014),[30] and Sweden is 60 per 100,000 (as of 2014).[31]
Causes
A 2014 report by the National Research Council identified two main causes of the increase in the United States' incarceration rate over the previous 40 years: longer prison sentences and increases in the likelihood of imprisonment. The same report found that longer prison sentences were the main driver of increasing incarceration rates since 1990.[33]
Increased sentencing laws
Even though there are other countries that commit more inmates to prison annually, the fact that the United States keeps their prisoners longer causes the total rate to become higher. To give an example, the average burglary sentence in the United States is 16 months, compared to 5 months in Canada and 7 months in England.[34]
Looking at reasons for imprisonment will further clarify why the incarceration rate and length of sentences are so high. The practice of imposing longer prison sentences on repeat offenders is common in many countries but the three-strikes laws in the U.S. with mandatory 25 year imprisonment — implemented in many states in the 1990s — are statutes enacted by state governments in the United States which mandate state courts to impose harsher sentences on habitual offenders who are previously convicted of two prior serious criminal offenses and then commit a third.[citation needed]
The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 contributed to the mass incarceration.[35][36]
Economic and age contributions
Crime rates in low-income areas are much higher than in middle to high class areas. As a result, Incarceration rates in low-income areas are much higher than in wealthier areas due to these high crime rates.[37] When the incarcerated or criminal is a youth, there is a significant impact on the individual and rippling effects on entire communities. Social capital is lost when an individual is incarcerated. How much social capital is lost is hard to accurately estimate, however Aizer and Doyle found a strong positive correlation between lower income as an adult if an individual is incarcerated in their youth in comparison to those who are not incarcerated.[38] 63 percent to 66 percent of those involved in crimes are under the age of thirty.[37] People incarcerated at a younger age lose the capability to invest in themselves and in their communities. Their children and families become susceptible to financial burden preventing them from escaping low-income communities. This contributes to the recurring cycle of poverty that is positively correlated with incarceration.[39] Poverty rates have not been curbed despite steady economic growth. Poverty is not the sole dependent variable for increasing incarceration rates. Incarceration leads to more incarceration by putting families and communities at a dynamic social disadvantage.[40]
Drug sentencing laws
The "War on Drugs" is a policy that was initiated by Richard Nixon with the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 and vigorously pursued by Ronald Reagan.[41] By 2010, drug offenders in federal prison had increased to 500,000 per year, up from 41,000 in 1985. According to Michelle Alexander, drug related charges accounted for more than half the rise in state prisoners between 1985 and 2000. 31 million people have been arrested on drug related charges, approximately 1 in 10 Americans.[42][43] In contrast, John Pfaff of Fordham Law School has accused Alexander of exaggerating the influence of the War on Drugs on the rise in the United States' incarceration rate: according to him, the percent of state prisoners whose primary offense was drug-related peaked at 22% in 1990.[44] The Brookings Institution reconciles the differences between Alexander and Pfaff by explaining two ways to look at the prison population as it relates to drug crimes, concluding "The picture is clear: Drug crimes have been the predominant reason for new admissions into state and federal prisons in recent decades" and "rolling back the war on drugs would not, as Pfaff and Urban Institute scholars maintain, totally solve the problem of mass incarceration, but it could help a great deal, by reducing exposure to prison."[45]
After the passage of Reagan's Anti-Drug Abuse Act in 1986, incarceration for non-violent offenses dramatically increased. The Act imposed the same five-year mandatory sentence on those with convictions involving crack as on those possessing 100 times as much powder cocaine.[41][46] This had a disproportionate effect on low-level street dealers and users of crack, who were more commonly poor blacks, Latinos, the young, and women.[47]
Courts were given more discretion in sentencing by the Kimbrough v. United States (2007) decision, and the disparity was decreased to 18:1 by the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010.[48] As of 2006[update], 49.3% of state prisoners, or 656,000 individuals, were incarcerated for non-violent crimes. As of 2008[update], 90.7% of federal prisoners, or 165,457 individuals, were incarcerated for non-violent offenses.[6]
By 2003, 58% of all women in federal prison were convicted of drug offenses.[49] Black and Hispanic women in particular have been disproportionately affected by the War on Drugs. Since 1986, incarceration rates have risen by 400% for women of all races, while rates for Black women have risen by 800%.[50] Formerly incarcerated Black women are also most negatively impacted by the collateral legal consequences of conviction.[51]
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, "Even when women have minimal or no involvement in the drug trade, they are increasingly caught in the ever-widening net cast by current drug laws, through provisions of the criminal law such as those involving conspiracy, accomplice liability, and constructive possession that expand criminal liability to reach partners, relatives and bystanders."[52]
These new policies also disproportionately affect African-American women. According to Dorothy E. Roberts, the explanation is that poor women, who are disproportionately black, are more likely to be placed under constant supervision by the State in order to receive social services.[53] They are then more likely to be caught by officials who are instructed to look specifically for drug offenses. Roberts argues that the criminal justice system's creation of new crimes has a direct effect on the number of women, especially black women, who then become incarcerated.[citation needed]
Racialization
One of the first laws in the U.S. against drugs was the Opium Exclusion Act of 1909. It prohibited the smoking of opium, which was ingested but not smoked by a substantial portion of Caucasian housewives in America. It was smoked mainly by Asian American immigrants coming to build the railroads. These immigrants were targeted with anti-Asian sentiment, as many voters believed they were losing jobs to Asian immigrants.[citation needed]
Disproportional incarceration of black people
Currently, the U.S. is at its highest rate of imprisonment in history,[54] with young Black men experiencing the highest levels of incarceration. A 2004 study reported that the majority of people sentenced to prison in the United States are Black, and almost one-third of Black men in their twenties are either on parole, on probation, or in prison.[55] These disproportionate levels of imprisonment have made incarceration a normalized occurrence for African-American communities. This has caused a distrust from Black individuals towards aspects of the legal system such as police, courts, and heavy sentences.[55] In 2011, more than 580,000 Black men and women were in state or federal prison.[56] Black men and women are imprisoned at higher rates compared to all other age groups, with the highest rate being Black men aged 25 to 39. In 2001, almost 17% of Black men had previously been imprisoned in comparison to 2.6% of White men. By the end of 2002, of the two million inmates of the U.S. incarceration system, Black men surpassed the number of White men (586,700 to 436,800 respectively of inmates with sentences more than one year).[55] In the same year, there were also more Black women behind bars than White women (36,000 to 35,400). African-Americans are about eight times more likely to be imprisoned than Whites. The Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit organization, released in 1990 that almost one in four Black men in the U.S. between the ages of 20 and 29 were under some degree of control by the criminal justice system. In 1995, the organization announced that the rate had increased to one in three. In the same year, the non-profit stated that more than half of young Black men were then under criminal supervision in both D.C. and Baltimore. In addition, African-American women are the largest growing incarcerated population.[citation needed]
The War on Drugs plays a role in the disproportionate amount of incarcerated African-Americans.[55] Despite a general decline in crime, the massive increase in new inmates due to drug offenses ensured historically high incarceration rates during the 1990s and beyond, with New York City serving as an example. Drug-related arrests continued to increase in the city despite a near 50% drop in felony crimes. While White individuals have a higher rate of drug use[citation needed], 60% of people imprisoned for drug charges in 1998 were Black. Drug crimes constituted 27% of the increase in the number of Black state prisoners in the 1990s, while Whites experienced a 14% increase. The rise in African-American imprisonment as a result of newer drug crimes has been justified for its alleged societal benefits. Law officials and advocates of these policies argue that targeting underserved, primarily inner-city neighborhoods is appropriate because these areas see the more harmful and violent effects of drug use. These same individuals further point to the negative effects drug distribution has on these areas to support the inequity in how crimes involving, for example, powdered cocaine can be treated with less severity than crack cocaine. This ideology results in a greater number of arrests of poor, inner-city Black individuals.[citation needed]
A significant contributing factor to these figures are the racially and economically segregated neighborhoods that account for the majority of the Black prison population. These neighborhoods are normally impoverished and possess a high minority population. For example, as many as one in eight adult males who inhabit these urban areas is sent to prison each year, and one in four of these men is in prison on any given day. A 1992 study revealed that 72% of all New York State’s prisoners came from only 7 of New York City’s 55 community board districts. Many recently-released individuals return to the area they lived in prior to incarceration. Also in New York City, rates of incarceration stayed the same or grew in 1996 in neighborhoods that had the highest rates in 1990. Additionally, in these same neighborhoods, there was a stronger police presence and parole surveillance despite a period of a general decline in crime.[citation needed]
Finding employment post-release is a significant struggle for African-Americans.[54] American sociologist Devah Pager performed a study to prove this. She assembled pairs of fake job seekers to find jobs with résumés that portrayed the applicant had a criminal record. The findings indicated that the presence of a criminal record reduced callbacks by approximately 50%. This was more common for African-Americans than for Whites.[citation needed]
Prison privatization[edit]
In the 1980s, the rising number of people incarcerated as a result of the War on Drugs and the wave of privatization that occurred under the Reagan Administration saw the emergence of the for-profit prison industry. Prior to the 1980s, private prisons did not exist in the US.[57][58][59]
In a 2011 report by the ACLU, it is claimed that the rise of the for-profit prison industry is a "major contributor" to "mass incarceration," along with bloated state budgets.[60] Louisiana, for example, has the highest rate of incarceration in the world with the majority of its prisoners being housed in privatized, for-profit facilities. Such institutions could face bankruptcy without a steady influx of prisoners.[61] A 2013 Bloomberg report states that in the past decade the number of inmates in for-profit prisons throughout the U.S. rose 44 percent.[62]
Corporations who operate prisons, such as the Corrections Corporation of America and The GEO Group, spend significant amounts of money lobbying the federal government along with state governments.[60] The two aforementioned companies, the largest in the industry, have been contributors to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which seeks to expand the privatization of corrections and lobbies for policies that would increase incarceration, such as three-strike laws and "truth-in-sentencing" legislation.[63][64][65][66][67][68] Prison companies also sign contracts with states that guarantee at least 90 percent of prison beds be filled. If these "lockup quotas" aren't met, the state must reimburse the prison company for the unused beds. Prison companies use the profits to expand and put pressure on lawmakers to incarcerate a certain number of people.[69][70] This influence on the government by the private prison industry has been referred to as the Prison–industrial complex.[65]
The industry is well aware of what reduced crime rates could mean to their bottom line. This from the CCA's SEC report in 2010:
Our growth … depends on a number of factors we cannot control, including crime rates … [R]eductions in crime rates … could lead to reductions in arrests, convictions and sentences requiring incarceration at correctional facilities.[60]
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