Former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik told Matt Lauer on TODAY on Friday that the three years he spent behind bars definitively changed his thought process regarding federal mandatory sentencing guidelines. Kerik was sent to prison after he plead guilty in November 2009 to tax evasion and lying to the White House. During the interview, Kerik said criminals shouldn’t be penalized beyond what’s necessary and that long-term prison sentences for small amounts of drugs doesn't help the inmates or society. “Anybody that thinks that you can take these young black men out of Baltimore and D.C., give them a ten-year sentence for five grams of cocaine, and then believe that they're going to return to society a better person ten years from now, when you give them no life improvement skills, when you give them no real rehabilitation?” he said. “That is not benefiting society.”
