Political Quotes

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the prison system that the Federal Government is operating, which has been growing exponentially over the last decade, will have gobbled up-- by the time we pass this bill--about a fourth of the DOJ's budget. This is like the Pac-Man arcade game that keeps eating money. Now, there are very interesting things going on in the land. There are Democrats and Republicans. There are the most conservative people in our country and the most liberal who are saying things that are fascinating, like we need to stop incarcerating so many people, that America really should not be the leading nation in the world in the percentage of people that we put in jail and that maybe we need to rethink part of what we are doing. We have the problem of having very violent criminals we don't seem to have enough prison space for because we are locking up nonviolent people for things that we should probably find some way to have diversions for. We have had multiple amendments today for diversion programs. You might not want to call them that, but that is what they are--drug courts, veterans courts. These are vehicles by which to divert people from the prison system because we know something about the prison system.…”