Attorney General Eric Holder announced plans to get rid of severe mandatory sentences for low-level drug offenders, telling the American Bar Association that "widespread incarceration at the federal, state and local levels is both ineffective and unsustainable."
"We must face the reality that, as it stands, our system is, in too many ways, broken," he said, adding that that "we need to ensure that incarceration is used to punish, to deter and to rehabilitate — not merely to warehouse and to forget."
The Daily Circuit will get reaction to the speech from Mike Freeman, Hennepin County attorney.