Skip to content

Thursday, Jun. 11, 2020

Did Joe Biden say that nothing is going to fundamentally change in regard to criminal justice reform?

Miriam Himelstein, Gigafact
no

Former Vice President Joe Biden has not said that nothing would fundamentally change with regard to criminal justice reform. Biden's campaign has outlined a plan to reform the U.S. criminal justice system, backing a number of specific ideas and endorsing a bill proposed by Virginia Congressman Bobby Scott.

He has said that "[n]othing would fundamentally change" at a fundraiser in June of 2019, when he was speaking to donors about economic policy measures. In context, the statement was meant to reassure wealthy donors that reforms to reduce income inequality would not significantly impact their living standards, despite the potential increase in tax burdens.

Sources

About fact briefs

Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

See all fact briefs

Between 2020 and 2022, under close editorial supervision, Gigafact contracted a group of freelance writers and editors to test the concepts for fact briefs and provide inputs to our software development process. We call this effort Gigafact Foundry. Over the course of these two years, Gigafact Foundry writers published over 1500 fact briefs in response to claims they found online. Their important work forms the basis of Gigafact formats and editorial guidelines, and is available to the public on Gigafact.org. Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of relevant information to be found, not all fact briefs produced by Gigafact Foundry reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date and need to be looked at with fresh eyes, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.

Learn More

Latest Fact Briefs

Be a Friend of facts

Help us fund more great fact briefs like this one.