Over the weekend, presidential aspirant Bernie Sanders released a comprehensive plan to reform the criminal justice system, and for once, the Sanders campaign is spot-on. To start, the Vermont senator has accurately identified the problem with our criminal justice system: over-incarceration, and an approach oriented toward punishment, not rehabilitation.
The plan states that “Today, the United States imprisons people at a higher rate than any other nation, in no small part due to extremely harsh sentencing policies.” Sanders says that, “We must move away from an overly-punitive approach to public safety and start focusing on how to safeguard our communities, prevent the conditions that lead to arrests, and rehabilitate people who have made mistakes.”
