Clinton Links Police, Justice Reforms to Income Inequality

By David McCabe, The Hill

29 April 15

illary Clinton on Wednesday argued that turmoil in Baltimore and other cities is symptomatic of larger issues plaguing the criminal justice system.

In the first major policy address of her presidential campaign, the Democratic front-runner linked a series of officer-involved killings over the last year to inequality and argued for significant reforms to the courts and police.

Clinton decried the violence in Baltimore, arguing that those burning cars and buildings are disrespecting the family of Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old black man who died in the custody of Baltimore police.

But she quickly linked Gray's death to the police killings of three other black men — Walter Scott in South Carolina, Eric Garner in Staten Island, N.Y., and 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland — to make a point about inequality and race.

“We have to come to terms with some hard truths about race and justice in America,” Clinton said. “There is something profoundly wrong when African American men are still far more likely to be stopped and searched by police, charged with crimes, and sentenced to longer prison terms than are meted out to their white counterparts."

Income inequality is an issue members in both parties are increasingly paying attention to, but Clinton's speech on Wednesday sought to broaden the discussion to the way the courts and police treat minority communities, many of which are disproportionately poor.

It comes ahead of a presidential election cycle in which she will be seeking to retain the coalition of black, Hispanic and young voters who helped elect President Obama to two terms. "Let’s remember that everyone in every community benefits when there is respect for the law and when everyone in every community is respected by the law,” Clinton said in the speech at Columbia University in New York.

“Our goal must be truly inclusive and lasting prosperity that’s measured by how many families get ahead and stay ahead,” she added. "How many children climb out of poverty and stay out of prison. How many young people can go to college without breaking the bank.

"How many immigrants can start small businesses. How many parents can get good jobs that allow them to balance the demands of work and family. That’s how we should measure prosperity," she said.

Clinton proposed some ideas she said could help lower inequality — and that could appeal to black audiences. These proposals included implementing policy to improve the relationship between police officers and the people they serve, finding more fitting sentences for certain low-level crimes and bolstering the nation’s drug addiction and mental health treatment programs.

Clinton called for every police department in the country to adopt the use of officer-worn body cameras, which record the interactions between officers and community members.

“That will improve transparency and accountability,” she said. “It will protect good people on both sides of the lens.”

She also praised changes to the sentences for certain nonviolent drug crimes, made by a federal panel that sets one portion of federal sentencing guidelines, and said she looked forward to new Attorney General Loretta Lynch continuing the Obama administration’s work on sentencing reform.

“We need a true national debate about how to reduce our prison population while keeping our communities safe,” she said.

Clinton's speech is indicative of a larger shift in favor of criminal justice reform on both ends of the ideological spectrum. A bill changing mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug crimes is supported by both Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

Some presidential candidates in the Republican field — most notably Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) — seem poised to make criminal justice reform a part of their campaigns.

Clinton has a complicated past on the issue.

When she was running for president in 2007, Clinton said that crime policies championed in the 1990s by her husband and others had resulted in "an unacceptable increase in incarceration across the board." But some in the past have accused her of using "tough on crime" rhetoric when it was politically advantageous in the past.

On Wednesday she said that to truly address inequities in the justice system, it was necessary to look at broader economic issues.

“I don’t want the discussion of criminal justice to be siloed,” she said. “The conversation needs to be much broader, because that is a symptom, not a cause, of what ails us today.”

She linked America’s massive prison population, the largest in the world, directly to income inequality: “without the mass incarceration that we currently practice, millions fewer people would be living in poverty.”