One hundred twenty of the nation's top police chiefs and prosecutors are joining forces today to launch a new effort to cut the number of people in prison. The new coalition of heavyweights, called Law Enforcement Leaders to Reduce Crime & Incarceration, is based on one big idea: putting too many people behind bars doesn't keep the public safe.
"Our experience has been, and in some ways it's counter-intuitive, that you really can reduce crime and incarceration at the same time," said Ronal Serpas, co-chair of the group.
Serpas spent about 35 years in law enforcement, in jobs that took him from New Orleans to Washington state to Nashville. He told NPR he's come to believe the justice system should conserve resources to handle the most serious and violent offenders. But, Serpas said, in too many cases, that doesn't happen now.
"Our officers are losing all day long on arrest reports and at lockups dropping off prisoners — it's for low level offenders who pose no threat to the community, are posing very little to no threat for recidivism and overwhelmingly are just folks who have mental health or drug addiction problems that there's no place else for them to go," he said.
[For more of this story, written by Carrie Johnson, go to http://www.npr.org/sections/it...ut-prison-population]
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