Bill Clinton: “The Attorney General is reviewing that, and there is a commission, you know, that's supposed to make recommendations on…”

“The Attorney General is reviewing that, and there is a commission, you know, that's supposed to make recommendations on it. I have to tell you, all of you folks, that the Federal Government adopted these sentencing guidelines to get out of the feeling a lot of Americans had that the sentence a person got and the time a person did was totally arbitrary, that it varied so dramatically from judge to judge and State to State that it was hard to believe that justice was ever being done. And some people, it would seem, would do something terrible and not do any time at all. So we went to the sentencing guidelines. Most people who practice law and who deal with the sentencing guidelines now believe just what this gentleman said, that it requires people to serve too much time in prison for relevantly minor offenses and lets serious offenders off for doing too little time, costing the Federal taxpayers more. I don't think you should assume that nothing's going to be done on that. I'll be honest with you, the Members of Congress and the people in the Justice Department and everybody else is reluctant to touch them for fear that if you change anything, they will be excoriated by somebody saying, ``Well, here's one case, and this guy is doing one day less,'' and how terrible it is. Again, we live in an age where there are a lot of complicated problems that don't have simple answers, but those 30- second bullets that come screaming over the air waves like--seem to have a simple answer. But I think that we need to have a careful review of them and see if we can't reach a sense in the country that they could be modified in ways that would actually make the American people safer. We can't totally jail our way out of this crime problem, folks. Russia is the only country in the world with the same percentage of people behind bars as America has. South Africa has--is the only country in the world that has about half the percentage of people behind bars. No- body else is above 20 percent of percentage of people in prison that we have. So, I know a lot of people think that the courts are lenient and the prisons are weak. But the truth is, we send more people to jail and keep them longer there than any other country does. And I'm all for it if they're the right people, if they're the dangerous people that shouldn't be let out, that ought to be kept behind bars. But right now, prison expansion is normally the biggest item in every State government's budget today. In California, they're building more prisons and spending less on education, thereby ensuring they'll have to build more prisons and spend less on education--you see what I mean. So I agree it ought to be looked at. But to do it, we need people who are out here in the country who would foster a non-demagoguing debate about it, because every time the Justice Department even seeks to raise it, you have all of the things you can imagine being said about it. Health Care Reform [A participant praised Hillary Clinton's efforts on health care reform and asked if the President would continue to pursue it.]”