Terrance Coffie is an adjunct professor at New York University, a contributing author to “Race, Education, and Reintegrating Formerly Incarcerated Citizens,” and the founder of Educate Don’t Incarcerate.
Coffie has seen what happens to young Black and brown men trapped in the injustice of our criminal system. He also spent 19 years cycling in and out of prison before earning degrees in social work and turning my life around.
He wrote a column for USA Today calling for Joe Biden to fix the damage caused by his 1994 crime bill. The act – the act plays a hand in the severe over-incarceration of young Black and brown men who disproportionately populate the country’s juvenile and adult prisons.
Biden created and pushed the legislation through Congress calling it the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994.
Biden should use executive orders to eliminate the most damaging aspects. For example, he could change the rule that states that force offenders to serve 85 percent of their time before they are eligible for parole are rewarded.
Coffie says he met those most impacted by the crime bill, poor people from Black and brown communities who were released to the same environment with no access to employment or educational opportunities. This causes the e cycle of incarceration to continue.
He writes, “This is not an attack on the Biden administration. In spite of Biden’s crime bill mistake, I voted for him and Vice President Kamala Harris.”
He wrote: “I commend this administration for moving forward to end contracts with private prisons … I also commend Biden’s admission that the 1994 crime bill was a mistake.”
He says that people with records are still considered liabilities.
The bill is considered as a failure that has created more damage to Black and brown communities than nearly any other legislation in American history.
