Sen. Elizabeth Warren called for the repealing of the 1994 crime bill, which played a controversial role in Joe Biden's Senate career. | Stephen Maturen/Getty Images 2020 elections Warren calls for repealing 1994 crime bill, decriminalizing school truancy Elizabeth Warren draws contrast with rivals Joe Biden, Kamala Harris in new criminal justice reform proposal.

Elizabeth Warren subtly distinguished herself from rivals Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on Tuesday as she laid out her plan for criminal justice reform.

In a lengthy, detailed plan posted on Medium, Warren called for the repeal of the 1994 crime bill — which Biden helped write as a senator — and for the federal government to push states and localities to decriminalize school truancy, in contrast to the stiffer penalties Harris championed during her career in California.


Warren’s larger argument echoes that of many of her rivals who are calling for decreasing incarceration levels and arguing that crime is better combated by investing in education, housing and other anti-poverty programs. Warren's campaign posted the plan just ahead of a "Criminal Justice Reform Roundtable" Tuesday morning in Minneapolis. It also comes just two days after Sen. Bernie Sanders unveiled his own criminal justice reform proposal.

While Warren does not name her rivals, the dueling positions signal potential future clashes with the former vice president and the California senator as the race ramps up in the next six months before the Iowa caucuses and all three candidates vie for the support of people of color.

“That punitive ‘tough on crime’ approach was wrong, it was a mistake, and it needs to be repealed,” Warren wrote of the ‘94 crime bill. She added that some sections ought to be kept such as provisions on domestic violence but “the bulk of the law must go.” Warren also supports parts of the original bill that have since expired and wouldn't be part of the repeal, such as the Violence Against Women Act and the ban on assault weapons.

The bill is a controversial part of Biden’s long career in the Senate and is a potential political liability as he fights to become the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer at a time when many of the party’s voters have rejected the approach to criminal justice that Biden once advocated.

Signed by then-president Bill Clinton, the bill was part of a series of criminal justice reforms in the 80s and 90s that dramatically increased the number of people in jail and disproportionately affected people of color. The legislation incentivized states to impose longer prison sentences, cut off Pell Grants for people in prison, and implemented the three-strikes law. Currently, the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and imprisons more than 2 million people.

In a recognition of how the party has changed, Biden’s team has highlighted the criminal justice efforts of the Obama administration and introduced a plan to reduce incarceration levels. He has also reversed his stances on some punitive measures like the death penalty, which he now opposes.

Biden’s moves have not tempered criticism from rivals who are also trying to knock him from his perch atop the polls. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Harris have already attacked Biden more explicitly over the legacy of the crime bill, with Booker calling Biden “an architect of mass incarceration.” But despite the bill’s impact on communities of color, Biden maintains the highest levels of support among black voters ahead of the primary contests next year.

Biden’s approach is similar, although a bit less organized, to how Bill and Hillary Clinton confronted the crime bill legacy during the 2016 primary. Hillary made criminal justice reform the subject of her first major policy address as a candidate. Just a few months later, Bill told the NAACP: “I signed a bill that made the problem worse...And I want to admit it.”

Beyond the ‘94 crime bill, Warren also calls to break what she calls the “school-to-prison” pipeline, pointing to police officers administering school discipline, zero-tolerance policies, and insufficient social services. “At least fourteen million students attend schools with a police officer but without a single counselor, social worker, psychologist, or nurse,” she writes.

As part of that effort, Warren writes that the federal government should pressure states and localities to decriminalize truancy and “instead increase the number of school mental health personnel and provide schools with resources to train teachers and administrators in positive behavioral interventions, trauma-informed alternative discipline practices, and implicit bias to limit suspensions, expulsions, and minor-infraction arrests.”

Truancy laws apply when children are habitually absent from school. The laws vary widely across the United States and the penalties include fines or even jail time for parents or children.

The issue has emerged in the 2020 primary in part because of Harris’ longtime focus on truancy in California and her support for increasing potential penalties. “I believe a child going without an education is tantamount to a crime. So, I decided I was going to start prosecuting parents for truancy,” she explained in 2010 as she was running for Attorney General. The clip later went viral on the left and attracted criticism from activists and influential writers such as Ta-Nehisi Coates.

In May, presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke called for decriminalizing truancy, arguing that “[s]tates like Texas have taken the first step by repealing laws that prosecute children for truancy, but the fines their parents face still loom large in a system that disproportionately targets black and brown students.”

A Huffington Post investigation earlier this year also found parents in several counties had been arrested, charged and sometimes imprisoned as a result of the reforms Harris supported. In April, Harris told Pod Save America that the prison sentences were “unintended consequences” and said that she wouldn’t support a similar reform as president.

“My regret is that I have now heard stories where, in some jurisdictions DAs have criminalized the parents,” she told the hosts. “And I regret that that has happened and and that the thought that anything that I did could have led to that because that certainly was not the intention.”

