Article from Reason by Christian Britschgi.

Former vice president and current presidential candidate Joe Biden has a new criminal justice reform plan. It aims to remedy many injustices caused by policies backed by…Joe Biden.

“Equality, equity, justice—these ideas form the American creed. We have never lived up to it and we haven’t always gotten it right, but we’ve never stopped trying,” said Biden in a video released today. “The public is ready. They’re ready. They’ve had enough.”

Today I released my plan to reform our criminal justice system.

Equality, equity, justice—these ideas form the American creed. We have never lived up to it and we haven’t always gotten it right, but we’ve never stopped trying. Learn more about my plan at https://t.co/fsdoT58qYL pic.twitter.com/qAJoFa5CqN

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 23, 2019

The most striking thing about Biden’s proposals is how much they are a rejection of the candidate’s own legacy. As former Reason criminal justice reporter Radley Balko once put it, “The martial/incarceral state has had no greater friend in Washington over the last 35 years than Joe Biden.”

When he was a senator from Delaware, Biden was one of the original co-sponsors on the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. That law imposed mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders and created the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine, two policies Biden now says should be eliminated completely.

In 1991, Joe Biden boasted of expanding the death penalty for major drug dealers and widening asset forfeiture, as well as restricting judges' discretion in sentencing. "The government can take everything you own, from your car to your house to your bank account!" pic.twitter.com/juKJhEQ8Ep

— Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) April 3, 2019

Read the entire article at Reason.