On September 13, 1994, President Bill Clinton signed what is arguably the most significant piece of legislation from his tenure as president—the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, otherwise known as the 1994 Crime Bill. It was the largest crime legislation in the history of the United States, allocating billions of dollars to hire more cops and build more prisons.
And today, 30 years later, as our country reckons with the past decades of mass incarceration, the bill has received widespread backlash, blamed in part for the carceral system we have now. But was it to blame?
From the Vera Institute of Justice, this is The 30-Year Project, a four-part limited series hosted by writer and journalist Josie Duffy Rice looking at the impact the legislation had—and examining where mass incarceration is in America today. We tell the story of the 1994 Crime Bill by talking to advocates, academics, directly impacted people, and a few of the bill's original supporters. Plus, the series takes a deeper look at the real drivers of mass incarceration and lays out where we are, where we've been, and—most importantly—what comes next.