‘Lock the S.O.B.s Up’: Joe Biden and the Era of Mass Incarceration

“The real problem with busing,” Mr. Biden said in 1975, “is you take people who aren’t racist, people who are good citizens, who believe in equal education and opportunity, and you stunt their children’s intellectual growth by busing them to an inferior school, and you’re going to fill them with hatred.”

From his first term, Mr. Biden made his focus clear: the environment, a balanced budget and, especially, crime — all issues that other Democrats were not addressing, said Ted Kaufman, one of Mr. Biden’s closest and longest-running advisers.

“He knew and said that the main victims of crime were in the African-American community, so he ran on saying we have to do something about getting tough on crime,” Mr. Kaufman said, adding that Mr. Biden had also stressed the need to protect defendants’ civil liberties.

That tough-on-crime stance, Mr. Kaufman said, was “a very popular position to take in the African-American community.” But in interviews with community leaders in Wilmington, not everyone agreed. Though they remembered Mr. Biden fondly and said he remained widely popular in the black community, several stressed that their focus had been on systemic problems like economic inequality and failing schools — not on getting more police officers and prisons.

“We thought job opportunities would reduce the number of people on the corners resorting to drugs and crimes,” said the Rev. Dr. Vincent Oliver, a Wilmington pastor and longtime civil-rights activist.

Added James M. Baker, a former Wilmington mayor, who is black, “We knew you couldn’t arrest your way out of the problem.”

But Mr. Biden’s newfound agenda did appeal to a different, and larger, segment of Delaware’s electorate: white voters. In Delaware, the southern portions of the state are often likened to the lands of the Old South; and at the same time, many northern white liberals had fled Wilmington and shared Mr. Biden’s opposition to busing. In 1978, Mr. Biden would cruise to re-election, winning by 17 points.