Clinton’s comments come amid greater focus in the Democratic Party on criminal justice reform.
President Barack Obama addressed the NAACP’s convention on Tuesday, where he derided mass incarceration and outlined his plan to end the practice.
“Mass incarceration makes our country worse off and we need to do something about it,” Obama said.
What’s more, Hillary Clinton has made criminal justice reform a staple of her campaign.
“Keeping them behind bars does little to reduce crime, but it does a lot to tear apart families,” the former first lady said earlier this year in New York. “Our prisons and our jails are now our mental health institutions.”
Both Clintons, however, pushed hard for the 1994 crime bill.
“We will finally be able to say, loudly and clearly, that for repeat, violent, criminal offenders: three strikes and you’re out. We are tired of putting you back in through the revolving door,” Hillary Clinton said in 1994.
This is not the first time Bill Clinton has said he regretted his impact on mass incarceration.
In an interview with CNN earlier this year, the former President said the problem is the 1994 law “cast too wide a net and we had too many people in prison.”
“And we wound up … putting so many people in prison that there wasn’t enough money left to educate them, train them for new jobs and increase the chances when they came out so they could live productive lives,” he said.
Article Appeared @http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/15/politics/bill-clinton-1994-crime-bill/index.html