The Pundits are Wrong: Bernie Can Cut our Prison Population in Half

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BY JOHN DANGER KELLY

Last night was the Democratic Debate where Hilary Clinton and Bernie Sanders fought over immigration, health care, foreign policy, Obama's record, and the criminal justice system. Both candidates agreed pretty easily that enormous change needs to happen within our criminal justice system and that police need to be accountable for the crimes they commit. However, Bernie was the only one who offered a concrete promise by guaranteeing at the end of his 1st term in office, the United States would not have the world's largest prison population. This promise fit in line with his bold ideas and promised to renew the commitment to seriously doing something about our criminal justice system.

In order to do this, Bernie Sanders would need to cut our prison population by 600,000 people. Currently the United States has 2.2 million prisoners in federal, state, and local prisons. China is currently at number 2 with 1.6 million prisoners. 600,000 prisoners is a massive amount of prisoners to be sure, but Bernie Sanders said it loud and clear, so there will be no backing away from this campaign promise if he is elected.

This morning pundits from many news stations this morning that his campaign promise is impossible with Leon Neyfakh at Slate calling the promise "absurd" and if Sanders wanted to free more than 500,000 prisoners " he would have to break them out himself." Not only is this pundit wrong, his claim of impossibility shows that he doesn't understand the situation.

The President of the United States has the ability to pardon prisoners unilaterally without anyone's approval. Not only could Sanders do this in a stagnated Congress, but he could do it while rallying up his base for another fight. However, Bernie's pardoning ability can only get him so far because as President he would only able to pardon federal prisoners. But, don't you worry Sandersistas because that isn't a insurmountable problem. In fact, it isn't even hard.

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http://nonprophetnews.com/social-justice/the-pundits-are-wrong-bernie-can-cut-our-prison-population-in-half/

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1. K&R.....

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2. Excellent points in the article

Not only is a massive prison population a problem for most states, but even the Supreme Court believes that it is inhumane and unconstitutional to be locking up citizens at the current rate. Between California and New York, there is 140,000 non-violent drug offenders that could be pardoned tomorrow, and the Governors of those states would be more inclined to do so if they had the political cover of the President leading the way.

There are currently 804,800 state prisoners that are serving sentences for non-violent drug crimes. Let that number sink in. That is a bigger population than Vermont, Wyoming, North Dakota, or Alaska and that is just non-violent drug offenders in state prisons. There are currently 18 democratic governors and they would be more inclined to follow the lead of the President to pardon these individuals, if the Executive was to act first and made it a central campaign promise. There is also reason to believe that Republican Governors might find some common ground on this too. The Supreme Court has ruled that over populations are unconstitutional and with more and more states legalizing marijuana, it makes sense politically as well. Don't believe me? Well Republican states with Republican Governors such as Arizona, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, North Dakota, and Alaska have all accepted Obamacare's Medicaid expansion. If they accepted that, then they maybe they wouldn't mind easing their prison populations either.