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Today, I spent a great deal of time reading old Senate transcripts of Joe Biden. I have a piece coming tomorrow. But here's an amazing passage about criminal rehabilitation he made during a committee hearing about busing in 1981:
"But sometimes even George Wallace is right about some things. One of the things that is happening in this country is that the American people have given up because we are not very innovative."
"Let me move off busing to make my point, and then I will end my part of it. Let us take the death penalty. Everybody wants the death penalty now. We are going to hang everybody. Do you know why they want the death penalty? "
"Because stupid sociologists and guys like people who sit up here in my job for years kept telling them: "We know how to rehabilitate." They do not have the slightest idea how to rehabilitate."
"Our entire criminal justice system is premised on the point that you sentence someone based upon the amount of time it will take to rehabilitate them."
"So the American people, because they are basically good, like most people in my opinion are, went along and said: "We'll buy that." And they bought it for 20 years. And it does not work. It flat out does not work. "
"And I get killed by my liberal constituency for saying it. I say: "Hey, let's forget about rehabilitation. We do not know how to do it. Say it. Boom. Tell them. Because if you don't, you know what is going to happen."
"...Eventually, ppl are going to get so frustrated btw liberal sociologists & politicians who say: "We must rehabilitate our fellowman; we must help them," and then they see Richard Speck come up for parole, even tho he did not get it, & they say: "My God, why should that be?"
"So, guess what? Now they only have one or two things to choose between. They choose between Strom Thurmond's view of "hang them" or continue business as usual."
This hearing, incidentally, had zero to do with the death penalty or rehabilitation or criminality.
