Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., promised Friday that Hillary Clinton won’t sign legislation like the 1994 crime bill that Bill Clinton has apologized for, and vowed his running mate won’t make the same mistakes as her husband.
The vice presidential candidate’s remarks came as he spoke with the hosts of “CBS This Morning” about the Democratic nominee and her proposals to tackle criminal justice reform.
“Your running mate has a very different idea of mass incarceration than her husband did when he was president,” host Charlie Rose began.
Kaine responded, “Well, a long time ago, sure. I think we have learned from painful experience that, as a nation, we are so far out of whack with the rest of the [world] in the way we use incarceration.”
“We have to dramatically change that and so Hillary and I both strongly support criminal justice reform which isn’t just about sentencing —” he added.
Rose interjected, “But recognizing mistakes that happened in the ’90s?”
“Yeah, she has acknowledged — look, the crime bill in ’94 it had consequences that went farther than we wanted,” the Virginia senator said. “We’ve got to roll that back, and I think there is some bipartisan interest in doing this now.”
Kaine’s comments came amid a larger discussion on law enforcement, criminal justice and America’s legacy of slavery.
“There are many who look at slavery and its legacy and say it’s a direct line to … conflict between communities, especially the black community, and law enforcement,” Rose said.
“There are connections there,” Kaine agreed. “There definitely are connections, but I’ll tell you: In a lot of communities, the police and community relationship, it gets it right.”
“We have to push communities to embrace what I call a community policing model where they try to deal with crime by building stronger ties, and then the other thing we have to do is … we have made police and sheriffs in many instances, sadly, the front line for mental health problems in the country, because we don’t treat mental health,” he said. “So many of the instances that become flash points, if you get to the bottom of it, there is a mental health issue. … you got to build better relations and have more mental healthcare.”
Bill Clinton agrees with Kaine’s estimation that the 1994 crime bill led to several “regrettable” consequences, namely, an increase in mass incarcerations.
“I signed a bill that made the problem worse,” Clinton said in 2015 before the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s annual meeting in Philadelphia. “And I want to admit it.”
The legislation that Clinton signed in 1994 included a so-called “three strikes” provision, which ruled that anyone convicted of a violent felony after two or more prior convictions would get a life sentence, CNN reported.
Clinton said he signed the bill because “we had had a roaring decade of rising crime” when he took office.
“We had gang warfare on the streets. We had little children being shot dead on the streets who were just innocent bystanders standing in the wrong place,” he said.
