A year after Biden declared April “Second Chance Month,” have his criminal justice reform efforts lived up to the expectations of black voters?

Before the 2020 presidential election, then-candidate Joe Biden campaigned on “strengthening and reforming” the criminal justice system. Perhaps the most publicized step he has taken to this point was his proclamation last year declaring April 2023 Second Chance Month, an attempt to provide a second probability for formerly incarcerated people.

“I believe in redemption, but with the hundreds of thousands of Americans released each year from state and federal prisons, or the nearly 80 million people with arrest or conviction records, that is not always easy to achieve.” President Biden’s proclamation was read.

“Three-quarters of formerly incarcerated people remain unemployed one year after release, and unemployment is a leading predictor of recidivism,” the statement also said. “We don’t give people a real second chance.”

Broad reform is very crucial in the criminal justice system to address racial disparities. Data show African Americans are incarcerated at five times the rate of white Americans. It is subsequently clear why, during the 2020 election season, Black voters expected elected officials to take lively steps to reform the criminal justice system and support decarceration.

In the first two years of Biden’s presidency, his criminal justice reform (and crime prevention) efforts have included: investing in community-led initiatives to reduce gun violence, appointing more Black and Latinx people as court judges federal and the appointment of 37 American lawyers, of whom 20 were black.

Many Black activists and other people who voted for Biden wanted to see more done to fulfill his campaign guarantees, so his administration’s support for last year’s Second Chance Month left many optimistic.

Now that Second Chance Month 2024 is upon us, let’s have a look back at what Biden’s initiative included and what impact it has – or hasn’t had – over the past year.

What is Second Chance Month and what has the Biden administration done?

While the White House has paid more attention to Second Chance Month in 2023, it is a movement that began with a national movement in 2017 led by the faith-based nonprofit Prison Fellowship (the initiative was recognized by the U.S. Senate this year). It goals to “raise awareness, break down barriers and unlock a second chance for the 1 in 3 people with a criminal record in America.”

Following the Biden administration’s declaration of Second Chance Month, a multi-year strategic plan for alternatives, rehabilitation and re-entry was released in late April. The plan is to “strengthen public safety by reducing unnecessary interactions between the criminal justice system so police officers can focus on fighting crime; supporting social rehabilitation while serving a prison sentence; and facilitating successful re-entry.” – we read in the statement.

Biden also participated in commuting the sentences of 31 Americans serving sentences for nonviolent drug crimes.

What has been the mood since then?

While last April’s efforts were hailed as a step in the right direction, the Biden administration has taken no motion toward making campaign guarantees for a progressive criminal justice system a reality, Vincent M. Southerland, faculty director of the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law at NYU School of Law, assured Atlanta Black Star.

Southerland noted that while the Biden administration has invested in mental health and community violence interventions, this has been achieved by allocating more resources to policing.

“History clearly shows that investments in law enforcement exacerbate inequities in the criminal justice system,” Southerland said. “This allows more people to have contact with police officers. This in turn leads to an increase in the number of people arrested, prosecuted, convicted, sentenced and imprisoned.”

A 2015 report from the nonprofit The Sentencing Project: “Black Lives Matter: Eliminating Racial Inequities in the Criminal Justice System”, outlines 4 key features of the criminal justice system that exacerbate underlying inequalities. One particularly found that criminal justice policies exacerbate socioeconomic inequalities by imposing additional consequences on individuals with criminal records and by diverting public spending.

Nearly a decade – and two presidencies later – the same problems with America’s criminal justice system remain.

“The slow pace is not surprising,” William J. Drummond, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s journalism school and writer of “Prison Truth: The Story of the San Quentin News,” told Atlanta Black Star. “Any policy changes have to go through a huge bureaucracy. Racial bias permeates the entire criminal justice system, at all levels. “Prison is a by-product of the inequalities that exist in society.”

Non-profit organization Prison Policy Initiativewho conducts research documenting the harms of mass criminalization, racial discrimination in housing, sentencing and policing, often explains why the data shows stark disparities in African American involvement in the justice system.

“Race and racial inequality are features, not bugs, of the criminal system,” Southerland added. “Executive action could reduce the influence of race on the application of criminal law. However, the diverse ways in which the criminal justice system works in practice mean that no single actor or arm of government can eliminate the racial harms caused by the system.

“Unfortunately, due in part to these dynamics, the Biden administration’s policies have failed to have an undue impact on the deep racial disparities that plague the criminal system.”

In fact, the Department of Justice under Biden has continued harmful past practices, including prosecuting the death penalty, contrary to then-candidate Biden’s campaign promise to end the federal death penalty.

Southerland added that if there’s one vibrant spot, it’s Attorney General Merrick Garland issuing a memorandum which, amongst other things, included guidelines for more proportionate sentencing and encouraged federal prosecutors to seek alternatives to imprisonment.

“These are steps in the right direction. Time will tell how rigorously these policy directives will be implemented.”

Election year politics

In February 2024, the White House stated that the United States was safer than before due to historic declines in crime. He attributed this to the three-part approach in his statement: “funding an effective and accountable police force; investing in intervention and prevention strategies; and keeping particularly dangerous weapons off our streets and out of dangerous hands.”

According to recent media reports, polls show former President Donald Trump gaining popularity amongst black voters on this year’s presidential election. Trump claimed the support was because Black people “embraced” his photo, knowing what it’s like to have criminal cases against them, something he himself experiences.

What more than likely represents the interests of Black voters when it comes to criminal justice reform this election season is printed in two recent polls: About 75 percent of Black voters imagine that mass incarceration causes many of the problems that lead to unsafe communities ; in addition they want federal and state governments to take motion on criminal justice reforms.