What a Biden Presidency Means for Criminal Justice Reform
By Kevin Ring
After months (or really, years) of build up to this year’s presidential election, we finally have the results: Former Vice President Joe Biden has been elected and will take office in January. Now we have to ask ourselves what this means for the issues we care about.
At FAMM, those issues are sentencing and prison reform. Given President-elect Biden’s history and the passage of the First Step Act under President Trump, surely many are wondering what types of priority changes we might see under a new administration regarding criminal justice.
As a candidate, Joe Biden gave signals about his theories of criminal justice reform through his proposed agenda. He wants to reduce the country’s prison population — on the campaign trail he said that he could reduce it by more than half. The President-elect also spoke at length about eliminating racial disparities in the criminal justice system, pointing to the complete elimination of the crack and powder cocaine disparity as one immediate action that could be taken.
These goals are incredibly worthwhile, and if the new administration aggressively pursues them, we could be in a good position to make some serious change.
His campaign also provided some specific proposals for reform. As a candidate, Biden called for the immediate passage of Congressman Bobby Scott’s SAFE Justice Act, a bill that FAMM has supported for years. And at the final debate, Mr. Biden called for an end to mandatory minimums in front of a national audience.
Working to eliminate mandatory sentencing would have an incredible impact — according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, there are over 60,000 people in federal prison serving mandatory minimum sentences, including 10,000 who entered the system last year. Fighting for an end to these sentencing laws would go a long way towards making our criminal justice system more fair.
Passing serious criminal justice reform, though, can take time and a lot of hard work, particularly if the Senate is controlled by a different party than the president. While President-elect Biden’s administration can take major steps towards making these goals a reality, he can’t do it alone. However, there are many things that are within President-elect Biden’s power as soon as he takes office that could make a big difference.
Some of the most important steps President-elect Biden can take to show that he is serious about criminal justice reform are staffing decisions. For example, Mr. Biden should select an Attorney General who will support legislative and administrative reform of sentencing and prison conditions. The Attorney General can direct federal prosecutors to pursue mandatory minimum sentences less often, support compassionate release applications, and stop appealing First Step Act resentencing cases — and a good selection will do just that.
The president-elect should also select a Bureau of Prisons director who is committed to aggressive First Step Act implementation and who will protect the health of people in federal prisons by using home confinement transfer authority and supporting compassionate release requests. And, once he takes office, Mr. Biden should nominate new U.S. Sentencing Commissioners who will support his stated criminal justice reform goals.
Finally, as president, Mr. Biden will have sole discretion to grant clemency to anyone serving a federal sentence. If President-elect Biden is serious about his goals of reducing the prison population and making our criminal justice system more fair, he should ensure that his administration’s clemency review process is structured in a way that maximizes the number of applicants who are seriously considered. And then he should commit to aggressively using that power to shorten sentences.
I have only touched on some of the possible major reforms that we could see over the next four years. We will hopefully see a good start with the administration’s choices for Attorney General and Bureau of Prisons Director. In the meantime, it will be up to the American people to continue to express their deep desire for his administration to change the criminal justice system.
Kevin Ring is FAMM’s president.
