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Biden boasts as one of his greatest legislative achievements passage of the 1994 Crime bill which locked up 10% of the Black adult male population of the United States.<ref name="nytimes.com"/><ref>http://www.prisonpolicy.org/research/incarceration_rates_growth_causes/</ref>  

Biden boasts as one of his greatest legislative achievements passage of the 1994 Crime bill which locked up 10% of the Black adult male population of the United States.<ref name="nytimes.com"/><ref>http://www.prisonpolicy.org/research/incarceration_rates_growth_causes/</ref>  

When [[President George H.W. Bush]] asked for a record increase in funding to fight the [[War on Drugs]], Biden told a TV interviewer {{Quotebox|"In a nutshell, the President's plan does not include enough police officers to catch the violent thugs, enough prosecutors to convict them, enough judges to sentence them or enough prison cells to put them away for a long time."<ref>http://articles.latimes.com/1989-09-06/news/mn-1646_1_drug-war</ref><ref>http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/first-step-act-skepticism.html</ref>}} [[File:1994 Superpredator Act.jpg|right|350px|thumb|The Superpredator Act of 1994. Feinstein, Kerry and Biden are clearly visible with President Clinton. The bill is known for its sentencing disparities which led to mass incarceration of Blacks.<ref>https://fair.org/home/senate-crime-bill-unscrutinized-by-the-press/</ref>]] Biden, [[Ted Kennedy]], and [[Strom Thurmond]] worked on proposals that raised maximum penalties, removed a directive requiring the US Sentencing Commission to take into account prison capacity, and created the cabinet-level “drug czar” position. In 1984, they passed the Comprehensive Crime Control Act, which, among other things, abolished [[parole]], imposed a less generous cap on “good time” sentence reductions, and allowed the Sentencing Commission to issue more punitive guidelines.  

When [[President George H.W. Bush]] asked for a record increase in funding to fight the [[War on Drugs]], Biden told a TV interviewer {{Quotebox|"In a nutshell, the President's plan does not include enough police officers to catch the violent thugs, enough prosecutors to convict them, enough judges to sentence them or enough prison cells to put them away for a long time."<ref>http://articles.latimes.com/1989-09-06/news/mn-1646_1_drug-war</ref><ref>http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/first-step-act-skepticism.html</ref>}} [[File:1994 Superpredator Act.jpg|left|350px|thumb|The Superpredator Act of 1994. Feinstein, Kerry and Biden are clearly visible with President Clinton. The bill is known for its sentencing disparities which led to mass incarceration of Blacks.<ref>https://fair.org/home/senate-crime-bill-unscrutinized-by-the-press/</ref>]] Biden, [[Ted Kennedy]], and [[Strom Thurmond]] worked on proposals that raised maximum penalties, removed a directive requiring the US Sentencing Commission to take into account prison capacity, and created the cabinet-level “drug czar” position. In 1984, they passed the Comprehensive Crime Control Act, which, among other things, abolished [[parole]], imposed a less generous cap on “good time” sentence reductions, and allowed the Sentencing Commission to issue more punitive guidelines.  

Biden bragged on the Senate floor that it was under his and Thurmond's leadership that Congress passed a law sending anyone caught with a rock of cocaine the size of a quarter to jail for a minimum of five years - the notoriously racist hundred-to-one sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine. In the same speech Biden took credit for [[civil asset forfeiture]] and seizure laws, and demanded to know why [[Papa Bush]] hadn't sentenced more drug dealers to life in prison or exercise the [[death penalty]] once Congress had given him that power.<ref name="c-span.org"/>  

Biden bragged on the Senate floor that it was under his and Thurmond's leadership that Congress passed a law sending anyone caught with a rock of cocaine the size of a quarter to jail for a minimum of five years - the notoriously racist hundred-to-one sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine. In the same speech Biden took credit for [[civil asset forfeiture]] and seizure laws, and demanded to know why [[Papa Bush]] hadn't sentenced more drug dealers to life in prison or exercise the [[death penalty]] once Congress had given him that power.<ref name="c-span.org"/>