title:  ‘Tehran Tom’ Cotton Says The U.S. Justice System Is ‘Anglo-American’ And We Don’t Jail Enough
text: The U.S. has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, thanks to an awful lot of really bad conservative policies from the 1970s and 1980s designed to make us look tough on crime. Mandatory minimum sentencing, imprisonment for crimes that don t really require it, and more, has not only put millions of Americans in prison, but has had a disproportionate affect on minorities. Is crime down from 30 years ago? Sure. But Senator  Tehran Tom  Cotton thinks we re actually  under-incarcerating. Seriously. You can t make this stuff up. He actually labors under the delusion that we aren t putting enough people in prison. Speaking to the Hudson Institute about a bipartisan crime reform bill currently before Congress, he actually said: First, the claim that too many criminals are being jailed, that there is over-incarceration, ignores an unfortunate fact: for the vast majority of crimes, a perpetrator is never identified or arrested, let alone prosecuted, convicted, and jailed. Law enforcement is able to arrest or identify a likely perpetrator for only 19 percent of property crimes and 47 percent of violent crimes. If anything, we have an under-incarceration problem. He slammed the pro-leniency crowd, and complained that just a tiny fraction of the federal prison population consisted of people incarcerated for something like drug possession. However, the Federal Bureau of Prisons says that nearly half their prison population is there for drug offenses, which are defined as use, sale, possession, or furnishing of illegal drugs. 16 percent of the state prison population is incarcerated for drug offenses.Cotton doesn t let pesky things like facts bother him, though. What s next? A three-year mandatory minimum sentence for unpaid parking tickets? Perhaps a five-year prison sentence for violating pet-limit laws? Who knows with this guy.Besides all of that, the U.S. has 5 percent of the world s population, and 25 percent of the world s prison population. 2.3 million people are in prison here, and nearly half of them are black.Any guesses as to what Tom Cotton thinks of that? He either hasn t noticed (unlikely), or he s got the racist idea in his head that there s something wrong with black people that makes them commit more crime (far more likely). Something else he said, about unjust sentences, could be interpreted that way: I don t discount the possibility of a manifestly unjust sentence, one so out of proportion to the crime that it shocks the conscience. But that s why the Anglo-American system of justice gives the pardon power to the executive.  [emphasis mine]Anglo-American system of justice? There s really nothing to say about that other than,  Wow, this man is racist. One question this brings up is how much he s getting paid by the private prison lobby to be this kind of a hardliner. Increasing mandatory minimum sentences and other nonsense to ensure high prison capacities is more at the behest of those people than it is a  tough on crime  policy.Cotton, who is the man behind the treasonous letter to Iran a year ago, seems to suffer from a delusion that he s actually studied the issue. His answer to crime is no answer at all   it ll make our societal ills worse. But that s what Cotton lives for. He lives for making things worse.Featured image by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images