AMERICA - Eric Holder on U.S. Prison System

About time this issue is faced, but note that prison has NEVER been about rehabilitation.

"Holder Calls for New Approach to Prosecuting Low-Level Drug Crimes" PBS Newshour 8/12/2013

Excerpt

JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour):  The nation's chief law enforcement officer said today it's time to scale back tough prison terms for low-level drug crimes.  He announced he's changing the way federal prosecutors go after small-fry offenders.

The United States is home to just five percent of all the people on Earth, but accounts for more than a quarter of the world's prison population, more than 2.2 million people.

ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER:  Too many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long, and for no truly good law enforcement reason.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Today, in San Francisco, the U.S. Attorney General said that number must come down.  Eric Holder addressed the American Bar Association's annual meeting.

ERIC HOLDER:  Although incarceration has a significant role to play in our justice system, widespread incarceration at the federal, state, and local levels is both ineffective and unsustainable.  It imposes a significant economic burden totaling $80 billion in 2010 alone.  And it comes with human and moral costs that are impossible to calculate.

As a nation, we are coldly efficient in our incarceration efforts.  And with an outsized, unnecessarily large prison population, we need to ensure that incarceration is used to punish, to deter, and to rehabilitate, but not merely to warehouse and to forget.