Former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik says he supports the end of "mass incarceration," which Hillary Clinton has vowed to tackle if she is elected president.
Kerik, author of the new book
"From Jailer to Jailed: My Journey from Correction and Police Commissioner to Inmate #84888-054," said that too often low-level criminals are locked up for shockingly long periods of time.
"Here's what she's focused on … there's the first-time nonviolent, low-level drug offenders – they're getting sentenced to 10, 15 years in prison. In the federal system, that's what they get," Kerik said Wednesday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
Newsmax TV.
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"In the state system it would be 60 days, it would be a misdemeanor, wouldn't be a felony. You don't destroy their life, you don't take them away from their community forever, and they don't have that conviction lying over their head for years."
Then there are the white-collar criminals, said Kerik, who served more than three years in federal prison as part of a plea in which he admitted to criminal conspiracy, tax fraud, and lying under oath.
"On the white-collar side, I will tell you I was with people, commercial fishermen that caught too many fish. A guy sold a whale's tooth on eBay," Kerik told Steve Malzberg.
"These are working people that paid taxes, took care of their families, took care of their kids, sent their kids to school, spent on the economy.
"We are locking up thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people in this country, mass warehousing people, that don't need prison to pay for their mistakes."
In a speech at Columbia University, Clinton said the nation needs to "end the era of mass incarceration . . . We need a true national debate about how to reduce our prison population while keeping our communities safe."
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