“Why this love affair in this country with lengthy incarceration, to our great embarrassment as a civilized nation?” he asked. He confessed to wanting to “scream out in frustration, sadness and anger” at being forced by Congress to impose mandatory sentences on many defendants. He said most criminals are “not evil incarnate” but rather act out of “weakness, need, sometimes desperation. So many...are without schooling, skills, hope or direction, and no term of years is going to change that.”
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