REFORMED COP SIMILAR TO REFORMED DRUNK

While serving three years in prison at a Club Fed, former NY police commissioner Bernard Kerik had an epiphany and is now a champion for prison reform

Bernard Kerik had a long and distinguished law enforcement career. He was head of NYPD during the 9/11 attacks. President George W. Bush nominated him to be Homeland Security Secretary. But then his exemplary life began to unravel. He withdrew himself for consideration as HS Secretary, saying that he had employed a nanny who was an illegal immigrant.

It turns out that was just the tip of an iceberg. Kerik had a long string of extra-marital affairs. A Mafia-connected construction company did $255,000 worth of free renovations on his Bronx apartment. He failed to report more than $500,000 in income. To secure the HS nomination, he lied to the White House. In 2009, Kerik pled guilty to eight federal felony counts and received a four-year prison sentence. He entered prison in May 2010 and was released this past May to serve the remaining year of his term at his $1.2 million home in New Jersey.

While in the Cumberland, Md. Club Fed, Kerik had an epiphany. It suddenly occurred to him that our prison system victimizes lawbreakers. Like a reformed drunk, the former hard-nosed law-and-order police administrator is now a reformed cop.

During an interview with Matt Lauer of NBC Today, Kerik was highly critical of federal sentencing guidelines, claiming they “annihilate” the chances of prisoners returning to a productive life. “The system is supposed to help them, not destroy them,” he said.

“I think the system is flawed,” said Kerik. “I think the system is supposed to punish. It’s not supposed to annihilate personally, professionally, financially. It’s not supposed to destroy families. The punishment must fit the crime. I was in prison with commercial fishermen that caught too many fish that spent three years in prison. Their licenses were removed. They’re not going to be able to work in that industry for the rest of their lives. That’s a life sentence.”

Kerik also mentioned a former Marine who was sent to prison for three years because he sold some night-vision goggles on eBay that belonged to Uncle Sam. “For the rest of his life he’s going to be a convicted felon. He can’t do anything else publicly for his country. It’s just horrible.”

Kerik gave Lauer a nickel and said, "I had no idea that for five grams of cocaine -- which is what that nickel weighs, five grams -- you could be sentenced to 10 years in prison. I was with men sentenced to 10 years in prison for five grams of cocaine. That's insane." He talked about young black men from the streets of Baltimore and Washington being sentenced to prison for minor non-violent drug offenses and wondered how they were “going to return to society a better person 10 years from now, when you give them no life improvement skills, when you give them no rehabilitation. That is not benefiting society.”

All I am going to say is that, just like a reformed drunk, there’s nothing like a reformed cop.