America has led the fight for human rights throughout the world.

I announce that the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Casey), the Senator from Iowa (Mr. Harkin), and the Senator from Missouri (Mrs. McCaskill) are necessarily absent.

I hope that that will lead to an honest evaluation of how we can continue to make for a safe prison system, one that is fair and humane, one that anticipates, as you said, that the vast majority of those inmates will one day be back on the…

It is a mistake, I know, but I am going to do it anyway, to take anecdotal evidence and try to turn it into some profound revelation.

African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of white Americans.

I am trying to zero in on a specific question. Do you believe that confinement, solitary confinement, 23 hours a day, five hours a week in which you are allowed to leave that box or something that size, do you believe based on your life…

I have read stories about federal inmates and inmates at State facilities in isolation who have clearly reached a point where they are self-destructive.

Solitary confinement makes our criminal justice system criminal.

When it is all over, let us write a record that we can be proud to tell our children about in terms of who we are and what we have done.

Today in the United States, more than 2.3 million people are imprisoned.

We do not have to cross that line, and we all kind of know where that line is.

We have a greater responsibility. As a profession, as a people, we should know what happens after the prisoner is taken away.

I want to commend you for being one of the few Senators who knows directly about which we speak, because you visit these places.

So let us look at the numbers.

If I had one request to my colleagues on this Judiciary Committee, it is to visit a prison.

There are prisoners who are in solitary confinement for decades in this country.

We also have an obligation to look in the mirror, to look at our own human rights record.

It strikes me that it raises a serious question.

We can have a just society and we can be humane in the process.

Increasing the use of high-security segregation is counterproductive, often causing violence inside facilities and contributing to recidivism after release.

I went to Tamms, a state facility in Illinois, where we have isolation, and they took me into what was--almost an incredible experience.

I am asking--let me be more specific.

I do not think this makes the situation any better. Some of them are stuck in a cell with somebody who is worse off than they are. It is a threat to them.

I have authored the Fair Sentencing Act, which finally reduced dramatically the disparity between crack and powder cocaine.

We want to make certain--or at least our policy is that those with serious mental illness will not be sent there in the first place.