Former President Bill Clinton on Thursday disavowed a tough crime law that he signed in 1994, saying it made the problem of mass incarceration worse.
“I signed a bill that made the problem worse, and I want to admit it,” Clinton said at the NAACP’s convention in Philadelphia, a day after President Obama highlighted criminal justice reform there.
While the package he signed placed 100,000 additional police officers on the streets and banned certain assault weapons, it also contained provisions critics say warped prison sentencing standards.
Among those was a federal provision mandating life sentences for those convicted of three violent felonies or drug trafficking crimes — the “three strikes rule” — and a provision allowing those as young as 13 to be tried as adults.
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