Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice   CENTER ON JUVENILE AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE PRESS RELEASE
www.cjcj.org  
Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, 54 Dore Street, San Francisco, CA 94103Tel: (415) 621-5661 | Fax: (415) 621-5466

For Immediate Release: February 19, 2001

Too Little Too Late: President Clinton's Prison Legacy

[View the Report]

CONTACT: Daniel Macallair
E-mail: [dmacallair@cjcj.org]
Tel: (415) 621-5661 x310

 

Former President Clinton’s Prison Legacy Harsher than Republican Predecessors:

More Americans Were Imprisoned under President Clinton than Under Any Other US President

New Report Calls on President Bush to Fulfill Promises to End Crack/Powder Cocaine Sentencing Disparity, Spend $1 Billion on Drug Treatment Programs

Washington, DC, President’s Day–Former President Clinton’s prison legacy was more punitive than those of former Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush. combined, marking an historic shift toward more punitive crime policies in the Democratic Party. More state and federal prisoners were added to US prisons during President Clinton’s 8 years in office than during the term of any prior US president, and more federal inmates were added under Clinton than under Bush and Reagan, combined.

A new report entitled Too Little, Too Late: President Clinton’s Prison Legacy, finds that during former President Clinton’s first-term (1992-1996), 148,000 more state and federal prisoners were added than during President Reagan’s first term (1980-1984), and 34,000 more than were added during President George Bush’s four-year term (1988-1992). Conducted by the Justice Policy Institute (JPI), a criminal justice think-tank, the study also showed that the incarceration rate of African Americans continued to rise substantially under Clinton.

"President Clinton stole the show from the ‘tough-on-crime’ Republicans," said JPI President Vincent Schiraldi. "President Clinton was right to call for criminal justice reform in a recent Rolling Stone interview. He was wrong to do so little about it while he was in office."

The report recommended that President George W. Bush fulfill his recently articulated interest in "making sure the powder-cocaine and crack-cocaine penalties are the same" by abolishing federal crack/powder sentencing disparities this legislative session and "[making sure] our drug-prevention programs are effective" (CNN "Inside Politics", January 18, 2001). Pointing to New York and New Mexico’s Republican Governors efforts to ease the war on drugs in favor of increased drug treatment, the report also suggested that President Bush support state efforts to divert non-violent offenders from prison into treatment by fulfilling his campaign promise to provide an additional $1billion for treatment programs.

"When Clinton came into office, he had a ten-year incarceration boom to outshine," stated report co-author Lisa Feldman. "As the Governor with the nation’s largest prison population and the most executions, President Bush has no need to prove his conservative mettle. He has shown he can be tough on crime–now he has the opportunity to prove he can be smart on crime as well."

This report was funded by a generous grant from the Center on Crime, Communities and Culture.

This site and its contents © 2002 Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice