Vox: Joe Biden's controversial criminal justice record, explained

If Vice President Joe Biden became the next president, he could be tasked with fixing a problem he helped create: mass incarceration.

Over the past few months, criminal and racial justice reformers have become more ingrained in presidential campaigns, tasking Democrats with turning back the tough-on-crime policies that ratcheted up mass incarceration and the war on drugs. Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O'Malley have all been forced to address these issues on the campaign trail — in large part due to Black Lives Matter activists threatening or actually taking control of the candidates' speaking events.

But Biden, who seems to be getting closer to entering the presidential race, ushered in many of the laws that created these problems — at least on the federal level — in the first place. During the 1980s and '90s, Biden sponsored laws that, for example, enacted federal mandatory minimum sentences for drug trafficking and increased funding for US prisons.

Biden now acknowledges his support for some of these laws was a mistake, particularly provisions that led to a huge disparity in crack and powder cocaine sentences. And supporters argue that Biden's record is much more nuanced than his critics would suggest, filled with what the vice president saw as compromises to get otherwise good ideas — such as the Violence Against Women Act — passed.


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[link:http://www.vox.com/2015/8/26/9208983/joe-biden-black-lives-matter|