This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, August 14th, 2013.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Attorney General Eric Holder indicates he's supportive of efforts to reduce mandatory minimum sentences

and will ask his prosecutors to avoid

triggering mandatory minimums. Why not ask the president to release or commute the

sentences of people caught in that system? Tim Lynch, director of the Cato Institute's project on criminal justice,

responds to Holder's recent speech.

Eric Holder has, I think, surprisingly, taken a what many are calling a pretty bold step here, talking about incarceration,

mandatory minimums, and that there needs to be some broad scale change to the

sort of policies with regard to incarceration.

What do you make of what he said and the approach that he took in sort of

de-emphasizing these mandatory sentences?

Well, I'm glad he has drawn some attention to the problem of over-incarceration in the United States.

People have heard the statistics in recent years. in the United States.

People have heard the statistics in recent years that the United States has 5% of the world's

population, but we have close to 25% of the world's prisoners. We do lock up a lot of people in this country and he also drew attention

to harsh mandatory minimum sentencing laws. So he deserves some credit for that.

I think it's his policy responses are not all that dramatic.

I think that's getting too much play in the press bold changes dramatic changes I think

all of that's being overdone because when you look at what he's actually proposed

he's just basically telling federal prosecutors to take a close

look at their charging decisions. Try to charge people for drug offenses under the laws where mandatory minimums don't apply,

...