This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, November 18th, 2015.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The Criminal Justice System needs an overhaul.

So says Ninth Circuit Federal judge Alex Kaczynski.

Following a debate on precisely what ought to change in the criminal justice system,

we spoke about a few of his ideas for changing criminal justice.

Well, we have more non-justing proportion of the population.

We have the biggest prison population of anybody in the world, bar none, including China, with 1.6 billion people.

And, you know, it's a, it's a, I think cost has something to do with it. I think the fact that we can afford it, but I don't think it's

that much more than Canada or England or Germany whose numbers are miniscule compared to ours. I don't think it's just a matter of being able to afford it.

Also, the cost of incarceration isn't just reflected by the cost, the cost of putting people away and maintaining them in prison.

They're all the years lost, that they could be working,

they're all the years lost, they could be with their families, they're all the years lost where they could be with their families, they're all the years

loss where they could be rehabilitating and reintegrated to society. You know, if you

serve two or three years in prison, you know, it's not a good thing but you can come

back and you're as the same person.

You spend 20 years in prison everything's changed.

Children are no longer children and our adults who don't know you.

Technology has changed. Job market or the skills you had are gone,

we're paying just tremendous societal price for maintaining that many people in prison for that long.

What is the purpose of a grand jury? for that long.

What is the purpose of a grand jury?

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