The Federal Prison Population

I've met good men--yes, good men--in [federal] prison who made mistakes out of stupidity or ignorance, greed, or just bad judgment, but they did not need to be sent to prison to be punished; eighteen months for catching too many fish; two years for inflating income on a mortgage application; three months for selling a whale's tooth on eBay; fifteen years for a first-time nonviolent drug conspiracy in which no drugs were found or seized. There are thousands of people like these in our prisons today, costing American taxpayers billions of dollars when these individuals could be punished in smarter, alternative ways. [My book The GE Mound Case is about a man who went to federal prison for a year for selling an arrowhead across a state line.]

Bernard B. Kerik, former NYC police commissioner, who, in 2010 was sentenced to four years in prison for tax fraud and false statements