Senator Cory Booker is taking aim at Joe Biden again. Last month he called the former Vice President out for his comments that he worked with segregationists. Now he is criticizing Biden’s criminal justice proposals.
Biden played a key role in the 1994 crime bill, which Booker and others have blamed for a sharp increase in the number of Americans behind bars, many of them members of minority groups. His proposal, unveiled Tuesday, would go the other way, trying instead to keep people out of prison.
Biden’s plan includes reforming the juvenile justice system, eliminating discrepancies in sentencing between convictions related to powder and crack cocaine, scrapping mandatory minimum sentences and ending the death penalty. Parts of the plan shift away from his previous stances as a tough-on-crime Democrat in the 1990s, a record that has drawn attacks from fellow candidates and progressives.
Biden replied Wednesday saying Booker has his own flaws when it comes to criminal justice, “if he wants to go back and talk about records I’m happy to do that, but I’d rather talk about the future.”
