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   XPost: bc.politics   
   From: chimps@mushmail.com   
      
   Transcript   
      
   JUDY WOODRUFF: 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.   
      
   JUDY WOODRUFF: One step toward a solution, according to Holder,   
   scale back mandatory minimum sentences for low-level nonviolent   
   drug offenses. There are almost 220,000 prisoners in federal   
   penitentiaries, now, 40 percent over capacity. Nearly half of   
   those inmates are serving time for drug-related crimes.   
      
   Holder plans to tell federal prosecutors to change the way they   
   handle those cases.   
      
   ERIC HOLDER: They now will be charged with offenses for which   
   the accompanying sentences are better suited to their individual   
   conduct, rather than excessive prison terms more appropriate for   
   violent criminals or drug kingpins.   
      
   JUDY WOODRUFF: The attorney general wants states to do likewise,   
   given that 225,000 people are serving time in state prisons for   
   drug crimes.   
      
   There is longstanding, bipartisan support for such reform. U.S.   
   Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois has introduced the Smarter   
   Sentencing Act, co-sponsored by fellow Democrat Patrick Leahy of   
   Vermont and Republican Mike Lee of Utah. Kentucky Republican   
   Rand Paul also has a measure to increase judicial discretion.   
      
   Durbin wrote the law that ended a longstanding disparity in drug   
   sentencing that hit minorities hardest. The president signed it   
   in 2010.   
      
   PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: A bipartisan bill to help right a   
   longstanding wrong by narrowing sentencing disparities between   
   those convicted of crack cocaine and powder cocaine. It's the   
   right thing to do.   
      
   (CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)   
      
   JUDY WOODRUFF: Today, Holder also cited the toll such harsh   
   sentences take on some American communities.   
      
   ERIC HOLDER: They -- and let's be honest -- some of the   
   enforcement priorities that we have set have had a destabilizing   
   effect on particularly -- particular communities, largely poor   
   and of color. And applied inappropriately, they are ultimately   
   counterproductive.   
      
   JUDY WOODRUFF: Holder added that programs to enable   
   compassionate release for older inmates and to send drug   
   offenders to rehab, not up the river, should help trim prison   
   populations.   
      
   To examine the arguments on each side of the issue, we turn to   
   Mary Price. She's vice president and general counsel of Families   
   Against Mandatory Minimums, an advocacy group. And William Otis,   
   he's adjunct professor at Georgetown Law School and former   
   special counsel to President George H.W. Bush.   
      
   Welcome to you both to the NewsHour.   
      
   Mary Price, let me start with you. You think these changes are a   
   good idea. Why?   
      
   MARY PRICE, Families Against Mandatory Minimums: Absolutely.   
      
   Our criminal justice system has become addicted to solving our   
   social and public safety problems with incarceration. Today,   
   Eric Holder said the department recognizes that and says that we   
   have to step away from using those kinds of policies. We can't   
   incarcerate our way to public safety, and, nor given the   
   inequities, as we pointed out, should we do that.   
      
   So I think, it's significant. What he's saying is that, with   
   more flexibility in sentencing, we can be actually safer, and I   
   think that that's very important and something that we   
   absolutely support.   
      
   JUDY WOODRUFF: So, your argument is that it makes -- is there   
   less crime, or...   
      
   MARY PRICE: Our argument is that we're locking up too many of   
   the wrong kind of people for too long for the wrong kinds of   
   crimes.   
      
   Certainly, I mean, people who we are afraid of, people who are   
   committing serious crimes, they ought to be incarcerated. We   
   need to be kept safe. But, as he pointed out, half of the people   
   that we're incarcerating are in federal prison for drug crimes,   
   and a significant proportion of them are nonviolent and low-   
   level offenders.   
      
   We cannot continue to spend the amount of our -- the amount of   
   our criminal justice dollars on locking up people while the   
   Department of Justice goes looking for money for real public   
   safety reforms.   
      
   JUDY WOODRUFF: William Otis, what's your take on these changes?   
      
   WILLIAM OTIS, former Special Counsel to President George H.W.   
   Bush: I think the attorney general is making some mistakes.   
      
   Your segment started out by pointing out that he said that our   
   criminal justice system is ineffective and unsustainable. It is   
   very costly. No one doubts that. Any major social program that   
   aims to increase public safety is going to be costly.   
      
   The attorney general saying that it's ineffective I think is   
   just not so and paints a misleading picture of what our criminal   
   justice system has done. It omits the fact that, far from being   
   the failure that he portrayed, our criminal justice system over   
   the last 20 years has reduced the crime rate by 50 percent.   
      
   That's not a picture of a failure. It's a picture of a success.   
   Now, it's true that...   
      
   JUDY WOODRUFF: And you're saying that's largely due to these   
   mandatory minimum sentences?   
      
   WILLIAM OTIS: It's due in significant part to the fact that we   
   are incarcerating more people and incarcerating them for longer.   
      
   Now, it's not due solely to that, of course. There are other   
   measures. Increasing hiring of police, more effective police   
   work, more effective private security measures also contribute   
   to that. But imprisonment has significantly helped bring about   
   this enormous drop in the crime rate.   
      
   JUDY WOODRUFF: Mary Price, what about that?   
      
   MARY PRICE: But if there were that kind of link, you would think   
   that when mandatory minimums and over-incarceration policies   
   were adopted, that crime would go down and that when they were   
   abandoned that crime would go up.   
      
   But, in fact, recently, the Pew Center on the States found that   
   of the 17 states that had reduced their reliance on over-   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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