Clinton signs crime bill expanding punitive policies with racial impact

President Bill Clinton signs the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act on September 13, 1994. The law funds police hiring, expands federal death penalty provisions, encourages prison construction, and includes the Violence Against Women Act. The law is debated in later years because punitive criminal justice policies and mass incarceration disproportionately affected Black and Latino communities. Supporters at the time describe the law as a public-safety response to violent crime. Criminal justice policy became one of the major systems through which racial inequality was produced and contested in the late twentieth century.