For Many First-Time Voters, Criminal Justice is the №1 Issue
Criminal justice has long been a largely overlooked issue in the United States but in recent years it has catapulted to the forefront of American politics. The increased dialogue on the subject has been reflected in the rhetoric used by both major party candidates seeking the Presidency. In an election year plagued by the presence of a deadly virus that has completely transformed day-to-day life for most Americans, criminal justice has somehow managed to draw more attention from the public than ever before. The question is, why?
Anthony Pagan, a 19-year -old college student and first-time voter gave his thoughts on the issue.
“I think criminal justice is a way bigger issue right now than it was in the past more-so because of the way that social media shares around different injustices that we see in the world such as George Floyd’s murder, things of that nature,” Pagan said. “You see things way more because of social media being spread around.”
“Personally I think in the U.S. right now, we definitely need criminal justice reform, there’s a lot of people being wrongfully jailed for crimes that are very petty, and they get long sentences because of mandatory minimums,” Pagan said.
Earlier this year, the killing of Floyd, an unarmed black man, by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota sparked protests across the nation. Many of these protesters aligned themselves with the Black Lives Matter movement, and called for defunding the police, which the Brookings Institute defined as “reallocating or redirecting funding away from the police department to other government agencies funded by the local municipality. “ While the majority of these protests were peaceful, some of them also led to rioting and looting of local businesses, which has been heavily criticized by the President.
While both Presidential candidates have condemned rioting and looting, Trump has tried to shift the blame to Democrats. President Trump has made a great effort to frame himself as the “law and order” candidate, while slapping a “Radical Left” label on Democratic nominee Joe Biden, even going as far as aligning Biden with the riots in his campaign advertisements. The peculiar thing is, Donald Trump is more progressive on criminal justice than his rhetoric would suggest.
In 2018, Trump pardoned a woman named Alice Johnson, who was sentenced to life in prison for a nonviolent drug offense. Johnson, who was convicted of possession of and attempted possession of cocaine, served 22 years in prison before being pardoned. In addition to this, Trump also signed the “First Step Act” into law, which gives federal judges the discretion to disregard mandatory minimums for nonviolent drug offenders with no previous criminal activity. According to the congressional budget office, this will exempt about 2,000 people a year from mandatory minimum sentences.
Gio Olas, a 19-year-old construction worker and first timer voter gave his thoughts rebuking Trump’s criminal justice record.
“Pardoning Alice Johnson and supporting the First Step Act was a good start, it’s a good thing, I’ll give him credit for that but unfortunately his policies are still at the root of the problem. He’s still continuing the war on drugs, his attitude on police culture has not really changed a bit, there’s still mass incarceration going on so in the end, he hasn’t really done anything to help the problem that got people like Alice Johnson into the situation that they’re in.”
While the President is far from progressive, his actions regarding criminal justice are much more moderate than might be assumed based on his public rhetoric. In advertisements, Trump has often cast Biden as a “radical leftist,” when in reality, they are both fairly moderate.
Despite what Trump says, Biden does not support defunding police departments. In fact, Biden actually proposed increasing police funding in order to implement adequate reforms.
Unlike Trump, Biden has been a Washington political player for decades, and has built up a long record that can be looked over and scrutinized. The policy that has garnered the most criticism for the former vice president is the 1994 Crime Bill, which is seen by many as one of the largest contributors to America’s mass incarceration problem. Trump even attacked Biden for this during the first presidential debate.
Biden’s embrace of the “tough on crime” rhetoric of the 1990s certainly calls into question his ability to provide adequate criminal justice reform in 2020, but to understand how we got here, it is important to examine the political climate of that era. After presidents Nixon and Reagan, Republicans had successfully branded themselves the “tough on crime” party, leaving the Democratic Party with the misfortune of being perceived as “pro-crime.” This ultimately culminated in one of the most infamous moments in presidential debate history when during the 1988 Presidential Election, the staunchly anti-death-penalty Democratic nominee Michael Ducacis was asked a question that would end his campaign. This marked a fundamental turn in rhetoric for Democrats which led to the rise of “tough on crime” moderates like President Bill Clinton and then Senator Joe Biden.
Anthony Pagan gave his thoughts on Joe Biden’s criminal justice record:
“Joe Biden’s involvement in the 1994 Crime Bill definitely makes me less likely to vote for him, just because of the way that those prison quotas affected minorities, and lower class people. I can definitely identify with those people.”
Gio Olas also shared his opinion Joe Biden’s criminal justice record:
“I don’t think Joe Biden has gone far enough with his criminal justice policies. I don’t think he’s outlined in a progressive way, what exactly he’s going to do to fix this situation, to de-escalate all the violence. He’s really just a moderate trying to bring normalcy back by giving a lot of vague ideas, a lot of platitudes. I haven’t seen anything from him that really gives the specifics into what he’s actually going to do.”
He continued, “His involvement with the 1994 Crime Bill doesn’t make me less likely to vote for him because I’ve known this throughout the primaries. This is something I had to deal with once Bernie lost, and he was the nominee. It’s a pill that a lot of progressives had to swallow. Knowing this, we’ve hated this about him from the beginning, but in the end Trump’s policies and Trump’s culture on the issue is a backtrack and even though we don’t agree with Biden it is a very small step towards what we want in the end, but it was a step to what we are looking for in the end. I have to swallow the pill and vote for him.”
The contradictory nature of both of the candidate’s stances is a testament to how radically the conversation around criminal justice has shifted in the last few decades. We now have to ask ourselves some uncomfortable questions: Will Trump’s “tough on crime” rhetoric and portrayal of the fairly moderate Joe Biden as a radical lead to his own downfall, or will Biden’s past come back to haunt him and guarantee four more years of Donald Trump? In an election characterized by confusion and contradiction, it’s foolish to expect any different when it comes to criminal justice. While a bipartisan verdict on criminal justice remains is something we likely won’t see anytime soon, a verdict on the election is soon to come.
