“I don’t think any of the candidates want or expect the summer of 2015 to be like the summer of 1968,” when race riots hit major American cities, said Rick Wilson, a longtime Republican political strategist who is not aligned with any campaign. 
 
 A number of people “crafted this tacit bargain in their heads,” he said, speaking of Mr. Obama’s election. “This is going to be the end of the ugly parts of racial division in American.” 
 
 For Mrs. Clinton, the topic carries particular weight. 
 
 Many criminal justice experts viewed her plea “to end the era of mass incarceration” as repudiation of the policies of policing and prison building associated with her husband’s administration and the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. That law created tougher penalties for drug offenders and devoted $30.2 billion to put more police officers on the street and build new prisons. 
 
 “When we talk about one and a half million missing African-American men, we’re talking about missing husbands, missing fathers, missing brothers,” Mrs. Clinton said. 
 
 Without naming Mrs. Clinton, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who is expected to declare his candidacy for the Democratic nomination, bemoaned the overly punitive legislation of the Clinton era. “There’s a lot of rethinking of that type of legislation,” he said in an interview. “If for no other reason just financially it makes more sense to provide jobs and education than building jails.” While elected officials had embraced the tough-on-crime approach decades before Mr. Clinton took office, the adult prison population after his signing of the law nearly doubled from the early 1990s to about 2.2 million prisoners today. 
 
 “What I read in Clinton’s speech is a repudiation of the notion that more prisons and more punishment equals more safety,” said Nicholas Turner, president and director of the Vera Institute of Justice. 
 
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 In her last presidential campaign, Mrs. Clinton echoed the approach of the Bill Clinton years with a call to expand police forces to help cities halve the homicide rate. But she largely ceded issues of racial equality to Mr. Obama, who inspired Democrats with his seminal speech on race relations after divisive remarks by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. 
 
 But on Wednesday Mrs. Clinton said it was “a time for honesty about race and justice in America,” and she displayed a personal connection to the issue. 
 
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 Mrs. Clinton had long planned to deliver remarks about urban policy and criminal justice at a forum hosted by former Mayor David N. Dinkins. But only after the situation in Baltimore flared did she focus those remarks on current events, according to a campaign aide. 
 
 In her remarks, Mrs. Clinton echoed her broader campaign theme of tackling income inequality. She said the protests in Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo., were indelibly linked to an economy that disproportionately favors the wealthy and she delivered a populist lament that prosperity should be measured by strengthening families and communities and not Wall Street’s measure of “the size of the bonuses handed out in downtown office buildings.” 
 
 Many of the 2016 contenders seemed either caught off guard or uncertain of how, or even whether, to respond to the situation in Baltimore. With few exceptions, the candidates first grappled with the city’s turmoil from the safe distance of written statements released by aides or brief postings on social media. 
 
 Reactions ranged from the personal to the doctrinaire, from compassionate to flippant. Former Gov. Martin O’Malley rushed back on Tuesday from paid speechmaking in Ireland to the West Baltimore neighborhood he once oversaw as mayor, seeming at once heartbroken and eager to project calm. 
 
 Amid drum circles and hovering helicopters, Mr. O’Malley spoke with city residents — some admiring, others not — at an intersection cater-corner to the burned-out CVS Pharmacy. “I think there’s a lot of good people in our city,” he said. “The longer arc of Baltimore, the longer arc of our history, is black and white people coming together to make a better life for themselves.” 
 
 Jeb Bush on Tuesday planted a foot in two angry worlds, demanding justice for Freddie Gray and the rule of law in riot-battered Baltimore. 
 
 “There has to be a commitment to the rule of law,” he said of the rioters, but he insisted on an investigation into Mr. Gray’s death “as quickly as possible so that people know that the system works for them. 
 
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 Ben Carson, a former neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital seeking the Republican nomination, evoked his own time as a Baltimore resident, and denounced “irresponsible individuals” and “uncontrolled agitators.” 
 
 And Rand Paul sounded oddly off-key, chuckling about the terror he has felt while traveling by train through Baltimore. “I’m glad it didn’t stop,” he said. 
 
 Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a likely Republican candidate, remained in the shelter of his cautious Twitter stream. “Our prayers for restoration of peace in Baltimore,” he posted on Twitter, without elaboration. ||||| Hillary Rodham Clinton might have preferred to use her first big policy announcement to discuss confronting stagnant middle-class wages, or runaway higher-education costs, or even big money in politics. Instead, she found herself Wednesday talking about body cameras on cops and lengthy prison terms. 
 
 The social unrest in Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore, unleashed by the deaths of African Americans and accusations of police abuse, has put the nation’s flawed criminal justice system at the center of the nascent presidential race. Candidates are in a scramble to draw up their visions for fixing it. 
 
 “We have to come to terms with some hard truths about race and justice in America,” Clinton said in a speech Wednesday in New York, where she announced a plan to equip every street cop with a body camera and roll back the country’s harsh sentencing laws. 
 
 It was not just the rioting in Baltimore that moved the criminal justice issue to the top of the agenda this week. As campaigns get underway, candidates find themselves repeatedly confronted with concerns from voters about drug abuse in their communities and what they see as a shortsighted law enforcement approach to dealing with it. 
 
 Criminal justice is politically tricky territory for any candidate, but particularly for Clinton. When she was first lady, playing a key role in advising the White House on policy, her husband imposed some of the nation’s toughest sentencing laws. As Clinton talked Wednesday about the increase in incarcerations over the last 20 to 30 years, she left unmentioned how Bill Clinton’s administration contributed to that trend. 
 
 Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican running for president himself, quickly pointed that out. He accused Clinton of “an attempt to undo some of Bill Clinton’s work — the same work she cheerfully supported as first lady.” 
 
 But what was even more notable about his response to Clinton’s plan was that he did not accuse her of misguided liberalism that would lead to a surge of dangerous criminals on the street, a charge Republicans have often leveled against reform proposals in the past. 
 
 Paul instead accused Clinton of stealing his ideas. The senator is taking a lead on bipartisan sentencing reform on Capitol Hill, pushing for the kind of changes that Clinton mapped out Wednesday. 
 
 The libertarian is not alone. As governors, Republicans Jeb Bush and Rick Perry were at the forefront of their states’ efforts to shift nonviolent offenders out of prison cells and into drug treatment programs. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), perhaps the most conservative candidate in the race, has been railing against “over-criminalization” and “harsh mandatory minimum sentences.” 
 
 “There has been a seismic shift in criminal justice politics,” said Inimai M. Chettiar, a program director at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. “People who once based their campaigns on being the most punitive are now basing their campaigns on having the best ideas to reduce mass incarceration.” 
 
 The steep drop in crime rates over the last several years, Chettiar said, “has allowed people to think about these issues more rationally.” The events in Baltimore and Ferguson have moved that evolution in thinking into the campaign spotlight. 
 
 In a book of essays the Brennan Center released Tuesday, several of the candidates and likely candidates lay out plans to change the system. Wisconsin’s Republican Gov. Scott Walker stood out for supporting existing penalties and suggesting that maybe some should be toughened. 
 
 Others argue for more humane treatment of offenders. Perry boasts that criminal justice in Texas is “no longer driven solely by fear, but by a commitment to true justice and compassion for those shackled by the chains of addiction.” 
 
 New Jersey’s Republican Gov. Chris Christie advocates treating drug offenders instead of locking them up. 
 
 Paul writes, “The escalation of the militarization of America’s police force has become increasingly alarming.” 
 
 And Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) laments “the overreaching criminal laws and overstretched prison resources we have today.” 
 
 Republican governors took the lead in sentencing reform as they sought ways to gain control of spending. The mandatory minimum prison terms enacted in the 1980s and 1990s began to suck up alarming amounts of taxpayer dollars, forcing Republican administrations to cut other programs. 
 
 Several prominent conservatives have since rallied around sentencing reform, including the Koch brothers — billionaires who finance right-wing causes and candidates — and former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich. The effort has been embodied in a think tank that conservatives organized in 2010 called Right on Crime, which pushes lawmakers to find alternative punishments for nonviolent offenders. 
 
 “Prisons were starting to break the bank in many of these states,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, an advocacy group. “But there is also a growing sense of moral revulsion on the human level, and the Christian level, at the results of these policies. It is dawning on people, even Republicans, who say they believe in freedom but who are living in the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world.” 
 
 Whether the issue of injustice in the way punishment is meted out stays at the forefront of the campaign remains to be seen. Voters demand that it be dealt with during times like this week’s rioting in Baltimore, but their interest tends to wane quickly, polls show. 
 
 Clinton gave advocates hope that won’t be the case this time: On Wednesday she linked the issue to the country’s economic challenges, which will be at the core of her campaign. 
 
 “These challenges are all woven together,” she said. “And they all must be tackled together.” 
 
 evan.halper@latimes.com 
 
 Twitter: @evanhalper ||||| Hillary Clinton will propose providing body cameras to every police department in the country and, even more important, call for an end to the "era of mass incarceration," explicitly rejecting a pillar of Bill Clinton's legacy. 
 
 Hillary Clinton's remarks in New York later today come against the backdrop of authorities trying to regain control of riot-torn Baltimore — a matter Clinton plans to address — and at a time when 2016 presidential candidates in both parties are rethinking the wisdom of long prison sentences. 
 
 Clinton's position on mass incarceration is at once a stunning condemnation of one of the most clear-cut policy failures of Bill Clinton's presidency, a flashing sign of how that policy failure has fundamentally altered the national political landscape on criminal justice issues, and a relatively pedestrian prescription for a Democrat, given where some Republicans stand on sentencing reform. 
 
 In 1994, Bill Clinton's crime bill prescribed putting 100,000 more police on American streets, authorized billions of dollars for prison construction, forced states to impose harsher sentences on violent offenders to be eligible for prison-construction grants, and deprived federal inmates of access to college courses. It also banned assault weapons for a decade. 
 
 Two years later, Clinton campaigned aggressively on the law, which liberals in his own party, particularly minorities, warned would have negative unintended consequences. The Democratic Party's platform in 1996 included a long run about Clinton's crime bill, praising him for taking a tough stand on sentencing: "We believe that people who break the law should be punished, and people who commit violent crimes should be punished severely. President Clinton made three-strikes-you're-out the law of the land, to ensure that the most dangerous criminals go to jail for life, with no chance of parole." 
 
 Twenty years ago, harsh sentences were political gold for a Democratic president seeking to show his toughness in a reelection campaign. Now Republican presidential candidates, including Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky, are calling for the repeal of mandatory minimum sentences. And Hillary Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, knows ending mass incarceration is high on the priority list for many in her own party and outside it. 
 
 Since that 1996 election, the prevailing wisdom on Bill Clinton's approach — and his position on it — has changed. An analysis by the Pew Charitable Trusts shows that incarceration rates and crime rates can drop at the same time. 
 
 In the foreword to a new series of essays put together by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, Bill Clinton preempted Hillary's remarks by two days. 
 
 "The drop in violence and crime in America has been an extraordinary national achievement. But plainly, our nation has too many people in prison and for too long — we have overshot the mark," he wrote, echoing a sentiment he expressed last fall. "We acted to address a genuine national crisis. But much has changed since then. It’s time to take a clear-eyed look at what worked, what didn’t, and what produced unintended, long-lasting consequences." 
 
 In his view, he writes, putting more cops on the street worked. 
 
 But that's a big part of the reason for the growth in incarceration, the authors of a National Research Council of the National Academies study concluded. 
 
 "The increase in the use of imprisonment as a response to crime reflects a clear policy choice," they wrote. "In the 1980s and 1990s, state and federal legislators passed and governors and presidents signed laws intended to ensure that more of those convicted would be imprisoned and that prison terms for many offenses would be longer than in earlier periods. No other inference can be drawn from the enactment of hundreds of laws mandating lengthier prison terms." 
 
 Today, Hillary Clinton will talk about the "need to reform our criminal justice system by changing the way we approach punishment and prison, including reforms to probation and drug diversions, increasing support for mental health and drug treatment, and pursuing alternative punishments for low-level offenders, especially young people," a Clinton aide said. 
 
 She'll speak at the David N. Dinkins Leadership and Public Policy Forum at Columbia University, and she will also endorse expanding the use of body cameras by police departments, according to the aide. 
 
 The body cameras may well be the headline. But the 180-degree turn in the politics of mass incarceration, and in the Clintons' approach to criminal justice, is the story.
– The Baltimore riots and their underlying issues have officially become part of the 2016 race. Hillary Clinton today delivered a major speech in New York in which the takeaway sentiment is her call to end the "era of mass incarceration." As the Los Angeles Times reports, Clinton says it's time for a fundamental overhaul of sentencing, especially for nonviolent offenders. She wants less jail time for them and more treatment and rehab programs, and she thinks other alternative ideas should be investigated for young offenders in particular. She also called for police to wear body cameras in what the New York Times describes as an "unusually impassioned speech." “From Ferguson to Staten Island to Baltimore, the patterns have become unmistakable and undeniable,” said Clinton. “Not only as a mother and grandmother, but as a citizen, a human being, my heart breaks for these young men and their families. We have to come to terms with some hard truths about race and justice in America.” At Vox, Jonathan Allen notes that Bill Clinton put into place a massive crime bill in 1994 that resulted in more cops on the street and more prisons. His wife's rejection of mass incarceration, then, is "a stunning condemnation of one of the most clear-cut policy failures of Bill Clinton's presidency."