13th Page #5

because it was not tough enough

on the criminal.

In an environment

where everybody's doing the same thing,

everybody's competing

to be tough on crime,

you quickly all end up in the same space,

so it doesn't become a political advantage

unless you do something more.

We need more police on the street.

There is a crime bill which would

put more police on the street,

which was killed for this session

by a filibuster in the Senate,

mostly by Republican senators.

We'd consistently had,

"Squishy, soft liberal won't protect you.

Tough, conservative will protect you."

And we won that fight every time.

And by the late '80s, early '90s,

people like Bill Clinton

had begun to figure out

they had to be able to match us.

I will faithfully execute the Office

of President of the United States.

Bill Clinton is trying to figure out

how he can deal with a country

that's still basically Reagan's country,

but he's trying to govern as a Democrat.

Violent crime and the fear it provokes

are crippling our society.

Then some high-profile,

very horrendous crimes take place.

Residents pull together

in the search for 12-year-old Polly Klaas.

They are now coping with the discovery

of her body over the weekend.

Polly Klaas, abducted from

her bedroom at home and ultimately killed,

which led to the California

"three strikes and you're out" law.

When you commit a third violent crime,

you will be put away

and put away for good.

Three strikes and you are out.

A person's convicted

of their third felony,

essentially that person is mandated

to prison for the rest of their lives.

So many third-strike defendants

awaiting trial,

the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department

is forced to release 4,200

misdemeanor inmates every month

to make room for incoming

three-strike prisoners.

It's in line with many other policies

we've created,

particularly mandatory minimums.

"Mandatory sentencing." We said

we were no longer going to let judges

consider the circumstances around a crime.

We're just going to impose

a mandatory sentence.

And that's a difficult thing for judges

because they are trying

to dispense justice on a daily basis

and are unable to do so.

In many California communities,

all civil trials have been canceled

to catch up

with the criminal case workload.

We've taken discretion

away from judges,

arguably the most neutral party

in the court,

and given it over to prosecutors.

Ninety-five percent of elected prosecutors

throughout the United States are white.

Serious, violent criminals

serve at least 85% of their sentence.

We passed Truth in Sentencing

that kept people imprisoned

for 85% of their sentence.

Truth in Sentencing.

You're sentenced to an amount of time.

The public wants to be confident

that you're gonna do

just about every bit of that time.

We've done away with parole.

So, in the federal system, when you get

20 years or 30 years, that's what you got.

We had parole in this country

as a mechanism for getting people

out of jails and prisons

when it was clear that they were

no longer a threat to public safety.

Sharanda has spent the last 16 years

in prison, and she'll die there,

because she was sentenced

to life without parole.

Her only crime?

Transporting cocaine.

And when I say "only crime,"

I mean only crime.

She had no other arrests. None.

The judge was required...

required to send Sharanda away for life.

Longer sentences,

three strikes and you're out,

almost 60

new capital punishment offenses...

And then comes the Congress

with a proposal for a $30 billion

federal crime bill of 1994

that was heavily loaded towards

law enforcement incarceration.

I propose a 21st century crime bill

to deploy

the latest technologies and tactics

to make our communities even safer.

That omnibus crime bill was responsible

for a massive expansion

of the prison system.

And beyond that, it provided all kinds

of money and perverse incentives

for law enforcement

to do a lot of the things

that we nowadays consider to be abusive.

It will be used to build prisons to keep

100,000 violent criminals off the street.

Not only does he increase

funding to states to build prisons

to lock up as many people

involved in drug crimes,

but also to put

100,000 police officers on the street.

Crime has been a hot political issue

used too often to divide us.

What President Clinton did in 1994

is actually far more harmful

than his predecessors

because he actually built

that infrastructure that we see today,

the militarization all the way down

to small, rural police departments

that have SWAT teams.

And again we see

this kind of notching up

of the number of people who were

being arrested at every level

and this kind

of exploding prison population.

We are a nation

that professes freedom,

yet we have this mass incarceration,

this hyperincarceration,

uh, that is trawling into it,

grinding into it,

our most vulnerable citizenry,

and is overwhelmingly biased

towards people of color.

But I want to say

a few words about it.

Because I signed a bill

that made the problem worse.

And I want to admit it.

His 1994 crime bill, something

that he now admits was a mistake...

There were longer sentences.

And most of these people

are in prison under state law,

but the federal law set a trend.

And that was overdone.

We were wrong about that.

Well, I think it's important

that President Clinton, um, acknowledges

that things didn't turn out exactly

as he and all of us would've wished.

I'm happy that he realizes

the error of his ways.

I think he knew back then that

it wasn't good policy, I'll be honest.

Back then, there was an outcry

over the rising crime rate.

And people from all communities

were asking that action be taken.

Now, my husband said

at the NAACP last summer

that it solved some problems,

but it created other problems,

and I agree.

I'm glad to see that he is apologetic,

but I think he has to take responsibility

and accountability for that,

and so does Hillary,

because she supported it,

then and up until recently.

Bill Clinton faced off against

a group of Black Lives Matter protestors

protesting a 1994 crime bill

that they say led to a surge

in the imprisonment of black people.

I don't know how you would characterize

the gang leaders who got

13-year-old kids hopped up on crack

and sent 'em out onto the street

to murder other African American children.

Maybe you thought they were good citizens.

She didn't.

She didn't!

You are defending the people

who kill the lives you say matter.

Tell the truth.

We can't ignore the reality of force here.

The policies

that Bill Clinton put forward,

you know, mandatory minimums,

three strikes...

Those were a use of political force.

They forced millions of people,

who would not otherwise

be in prison today, into prison.

They forced families to be broken.

They forced children

to live without their parents.

That's what happened.

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