Byron Dorgan: “Nearly half of the people incarcerated in this country are violent offenders, half are not. It seems to me we ought to…”

“Nearly half of the people incarcerated in this country are violent offenders, half are not. It seems to me we ought to be smarter in the way we incarcerate them, those half whom we know are violent. For those we know are violent, we should not be incentivizing them to move to the streets earlier. We ought to try to find ways to keep them in prison to the end of their term. Those who are nonviolent they have to be punished, serve their time. But they are not violent and are not a threat to people. Senator John Glenn used to talk about this in the Senate. He used to bring with him a model of a Quonset hut, apparently made in Ohio. He said: This is the kind of place I lived in during the Korean war. My wife and I lived in one of these huts various places around the world. It was Marine housing, among other things. He said, for nonviolent offenders, we could put up some barbed wire and build Quonset huts. It doesn't take a fortune to create incarceration compounds for nonviolent offenders. We don't have to put them in lockups that are massively secure, lockups that cost a fortune. Use those lockups for violent offenders; then give yourself enough space to keep violent offenders behind bars to the end of their term.”