And one reason these draconian provisions passed with such overwhelming support was because Biden engineered it so a vote against the crime bill was a vote against women. Tucked inside that 1994 crime bill was the Violence Against Women Act, a measure that meant $1.6 billion for rape crisis centers, the National Domestic Violence Hotline, battered women’s shelters, training law enforcement, and grants for police departments that created “pro-arrest programs.”
When VAWA is discussed in the press, it’s often discussed separately from its crime bill origins—cast as a victory for women and proof of Biden’s longstanding commitment to women’s rights. But this sectioning off of VAWA matters. It obscures the law from its origin as well as some of its consequences, and allows Biden and his supporters to present a selective, rosy narrative of a good man trying to do right by women. But there’s an alternative narrative of VAWA that is also part of Biden’s legacy: It bound vital supports for domestic violence victims to an endless expansion of the carceral state.
