Bill Clinton: 'We Cast Too Wide a Net' With Three-Strike Law
US President Bill Clinton speaks to supporters 03 May 1994 in Atlanta, Georgia. President Clinton urged Congress to pass a new global trade agreement this year and not delay it until after the congressional elections.
DAVID MURRAY/AFP/Getty ImagesFormer President Bill Clinton said Wednesday that a 1994 crime bill he signed contributed to the rates of incarceration that his wife has criticized in her run for the Democratic presidential nomination.
“The problem is the way it was written and implemented is we cast too wide a net and we had too many people in prison,” the former president said of the law, which established mandatory life sentences for those convicted of a third violent felony, in an interview with CNN. “And we wound up...putting so many people in prison that there wasn't enough money left to educate them, train them for new jobs, and increase the chances when they came out so they could live productive lives.”