Presidential hopeful Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has attacked former President Bill Clinton for incarcerating large numbers of Black men.
“I’ll ask Hillary Clinton, ‘What have you done for criminal justice?’ Your husband passed all the laws that put a generation of Black men in prison.” Paul said in a May 18 story in Business Insider.
Paul is reaching out to minority communities to discuss issues surrounding reform of the criminal justice system.
In doing so, Paul said such effort makes him a stronger nominee against Hillary Clinton, the leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Both of the Clintons have distanced themselves from the tough-on-crime laws implemented during the Clinton administration.
In an April op-ed, former President Clinton discussed the anti-crime measures of the 1990s as an honest reaction to a very real and violent threat.
However, he suggested that some of those policies may have placed too much emphasis on incarceration.
Hillary Clinton has made criminal justice reform one of the important platforms of her campaign. In a speech in April, she passionately lambasted racial inequities prevalent in the justice system.
“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. There is something wrong when a third of all Black men face the prospect of prison during their lifetimes,” said the former first lady.
“We have allowed our criminal justice system to get out of balance, and these recent tragedies should galvanize us to come together as a nation to find our balance again.”
“She’s changing her tune because people like me have been speaking out against these injustices. I’ll also ask her what she’s going to do for poor people in Philadelphia. I have a specific plan that would dramatically lower the taxes for people who live in ZIP codes of poverty and high unemployment,” declared Paul.
