Just days after President Bush signed the Second Chance Act, the AP is reporting Senator and presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has her own plan to reduce the number of prisoners returning to jail. Some highlights:
States would compete for $1 billion in annual grants to combat recidivism. [The plan] would “promote tough but fair” changes to probation practices and to existing programs meant to steer non-violent drug offenders away from prison.
Clinton would pay for the $4 billion initiative with savings to be identified by a commission she will assign to “identify unnecessary and outdated corporate subsidies for elimination.”
Clinton’s plan would hire 100,000 new police officers “to address crime, through a modernized personnel grant program.” It would spend $250 million a year on “community-oriented prosecutors.”
It’s no secret the Clinton campaign is struggling, and perhaps she’s hoping she can win support from some of the more liberal Obama supporters. I like the idea of the program, but hate the fact that Clinton opposed retroactive crack sentencing guidelines but supports keeping non-violent offenders out of jail.
