GOP Senator Says America, The World’s Leading Jailer, Doesn’t Put Enough People In Prison

Many lawmakers appear ready to begin unwinding the system that’s left millions of Americans rotting in prison and blocked those who do make it out from the economic opportunities they need to rejoin polite society. But one Republican lawmaker rejects the idea that America has a mass incarceration problem at all.

“The claim that too many criminals are being jailed, that there is over-incarceration, ignores an unfortunate fact,” Rep. Tom Cotton (R-AR) said Thursday at the right-wing Hudson Institute. “For the vast majority of crimes, a perpetrator is never identified or arrested, let alone prosecuted, convicted, and jailed.”

“If anything, we have an under-incarceration problem,” he said....
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/05/19/3779989/tom-cotton-underincarceration-problem/