ABOVE PHOTO: Former President Bill Clinton speaks during the NAACP’s 106th Annual National Convention, Wednesday, July 15, 2015, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
WASHINGTON — Former President Bill Clinton says the tough-on-crime overhaul he signed into law in the 1990s made the problem of longer prison sentences worse and he wants to “admit it.”
The former president says at the NAACP convention in Philadelphia that the bill came after a “roaring decade of rising crime.”
The law put 100,000 more police officers on the streets but also led to longer terms for prisoners. Clinton says there were a lot of people “who were essentially locked up who were minor actors for way too long.”
His comments come as his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, makes criminal justice reform part of her presidential campaign agenda.
Hillary Clinton said in April that she would push for an end to the “era of mass incarceration.”
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