nation, 2.2 million, more than any other country in the world that s outrageous and a scandal. and finally, congress is doing something about it. what they re doing in terms of the scale they re talking about, the vast majority of people behind bars in the u.s. are in state prisons. the federal prison is a small part of that. and the number of people that are going to be directly affected is small. what do you say to that? it s the end to mass incarceration, an epidemic that s been with us for almost 50 years. it s going to take more than a single act of legislation to wipe it away, but you have to start somewhere, and this is the first start dealing with overcriminalization in america. we re investing about $325 million over a five-year period of time to make sure that currently incarcerated individuals can get the
and betsy woodruff is back. i ve heard there s a moral argument and legal argument when applying terrorism charges against a specific individual. do you think terrorism charges are warranted in these cases and what kind of added sentence could that bring? the reality is we don t have a crime on the books of domestic terrorism. there s some good reasons for that involving the protection of civil liberties and avoiding overcriminalization. we do have statutes that let us achieve the same sort of sentence we would achieve under the statutes that address international terrorism. to that point, i wanted to actually share that fbi director chris wray, he s obviously confirmed a lot of what you were saying, that there is no statute, but at the same time, there is a growing threat of
we have a mass incarceration epidemic in america. when the war on drugs started in 1971, there were less than 350,000 people incarcerated in america. today 2.2 million disproportionately black. at least in the house with the first step act, we concluded that overcriminalization is not a democratic problem or republican problem, it s an american problem and we should work together and we should start by helping currently incars rited individuals provided with the resources and tools to successfully transform themselves back into society. people are trying to get people formerly incarcerated their right to vote back. how do we get to a vote that republicans will sign on to such that it can actually become law? we had strong bipartisan support at least for taking that first step related to prison reform and dealing with currently incarcerated individuals and facilitating
today we imprison approximately 2.2 million, a significant number of them nonviolent drug offenders. and so, mass incarceration and overcriminalization in our country, it s not a democratic problem or a republican problem, it is an american problem. that s why in the house, people on the left and on the right, progressives and conservatives, came together. and so, i expect that the senate will do the same thing. it is something important to address, and there is some support within the administration as well. harder to pin down where the attorney general is on this, but the president and his family, i know, feel, along with you, strongly about this. explain for our audience, because i do think this gets lost for some who aren t familiar with the discussion, the difference between prison reform, which is the legislation you passed, and sentencing reform, which deals more directly with what you just spoke about, which is mass incarceration and oversentencing. well, it s a great quest
but we ve got to stop people from going in the first place. we ve got to change the sentences. what do you say to those people? that s correct in terms of criminal justice reform. front end sentencing is necessary. reducing minimums. so we don t see these out of control sentences. prison reform has been a part oof that equation and my view was when we attempted to negotiate a bill that the obama administration supported in the last congress, there was some of our friends, allies, advocate, who were of the view that that o obama administration criminal justice reform bill didn t go far enough and said let s wait until hillary clinton is president. ah. how did that work out. my view was when you ve got tens of thousands of individuals who we know will be helped in a meaningful way, why not take a first step toward dealing with overcriminalization in america. that s what the house did in a