’94 Crime Bill Anniversary: Cornerstone of Mass Incarceration
Today marks the 30th anniversary of President Bill Clinton’s signing of the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. Better known and often referred to as the 1994 (‘94) Crime Bill, this legislation is the largest crime bill in U.S. history.
Intended to make a statement and combat the reported growing crime rate across the country at that time, this federal bill authorized $30.2 billion over a six-year period that had significant implications on prisons, policing, and sentencing. The bill implemented policies such as the “three strikes” rule, where if an individual was convicted of committing certain felonies and had two prior felony convictions on their record (one of which must also be a serious felony), they were sentenced to mandatory life imprisonment without parole. It created harsher sentencing laws, and dozens of new federal offenses were added to the law books. The bill also enforced enhanced penalties for drug-related offenses.
The negative effects of the ‘94 Crime Bill on Black and Brown communities were seen almost immediately. In just five years following the bill’s passage, 74% of defendants with death penalty recommendations from federal prosecutors were people of color, with 44% of that number being Black people. Additionally, the prison population in the U.S. drastically increased by 500% from 1973 to 2022.
Though the Crime Bill was not the beginning of mass incarceration in the United States, it has certainly contributed to it. A plethora of research and evidence has made it abundantly clear that increased policing, higher incarceration rates, and the “tough on crime” approach are not effective tools in reducing community harms or ensuring community safety and have disproportionately impacted poor Black the US.
The lasting impacts of the ‘94 Crime Bill have not only had detrimental effects on the Black American community but also on Black immigrants living in the United States. Black immigrants were and continue to be subjected to the same over-policing, over-charging, and over-sentencing as Black Americans, with whom we share race and communities. The Crime Bill laid the foundation and gave space for immigration policies to be tethered to mass incarceration. Three billion dollars were appropriated and distributed in five years to implement key immigration initiatives such as strengthening border control, expediting deportation for undocumented individuals and those with criminal convictions (before this, deportations rarely took place in this manner), reforming the asylum-seeking process, developing a database to track immigrants’ legal status, and reimbursing states for the costs of incarcerating undocumented immigrants convicted of crimes.
The ‘94 Crime Bill continued the long and unbroken history of the criminalization of Black people, giving way for the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA-Immigration Act) of 1996. IIRIRA further solidified this criminalization by widening the scope of deportation to those who had contact with the criminal legal system. The Crime Bill expanded the carceral state, and the Immigration Act gave way for those who are criminalized to face detention and deportation.
The combination of the ‘94 Crime Bill and the ‘96 Immigration Act has criminalized the immigration system, and Black migrants disproportionately feel the effects of these policies. The dire consequences of these bills continue to influence the negative sentiment and policies today. The standard has been set for bills such as the Lankin Riley bill which is a draconian, anti-Black piece of legislation that prioritizes and glorifies the cruel and discriminatory criminalization of migrants that does not address the interpersonal harms and traumas we experience in our communities.
Being Black in America is dangerous. Navigating anti-Blackness in the criminal legal system and criminalization in the immigration system is the tragic reality for many Black migrants in the U.S.
We believe in the strength of unifying voices of Black people in the diaspora. We will continue to explore and dive into the criminalization of Blackness via the 1994 Crime Bill and 1996 Immigration Act with a forthcoming report, social media outreach, community education, and activations that will highlight the history, impact on our communities, and connection between these two pieces of legislation.