A decade ago, Bernard Kerik was hailed by millions for his leadership of the New York Police Department. Now, after serving more than three years in federal prison, he says the criminal justice system needs major reforms to treat nonviolent offenders more fairly and prevent a complete implosion of the system.
Kerik served as commissioner of the NYPD from 2000 to 2001. In 2005, he was nominated to serve as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security by President George W. Bush. The selection was quickly withdrawn, but the process still led to Kerik's eventual imprisonment on federal convictions for tax fraud and making false statements. He served time at a minimum-security prison in Cumberland, Maryland. His story and his subsequent efforts to reform the system are the subject of Kerik's new book, "From Jailer to Jailed: My Journey from Correction and Police Commissioner to Inmate #84888-054."
Kerik's call for criminal justice reform centers on three primary issues: the treatment of prisoners inside the system, punishments for nonviolent offenders and how those convicts are sent back into society.
In the book, Kerik details how personnel ranging from corrections officers to rehabilitation experts not only enforced their incarceration and diminishing of freedoms but relished the opportunity to regularly demean and dehumanize inmates. He said he doesn't expect prison to be a comfortable experience, and he realizes many corrections officers are honorable people.
"For the most part, correction officers all over this country man the gates of our prisons and jails. They have a dangerous job. They have a stressful job. They are courageous in the work they do," Kerik said. "They go into many of these violent units without weapons of any kind, and they do a job nobody else would do."
Listen to the WND/Radio America interview with Bernard Kerik:
However, he said, there are more than a few bad apples who do a tremendous amount of damage.
"There are a bunch of them that are out there. They believe it's their job to punish you mentally and physically. That's illegal, and it goes against everything the system stands for," Kerik said.
So what's the solution?
"Training and accountability within the system is what makes the system right and makes it work and holds people accountable to the standards that are set," he said.
Kerik said he knows both the right way and the wrong way to run a prison. Prior to serving as police commissioner in New York City, he spent six years as commissioner of the Department of Correction. Among the facilities under his responsibility was Riker's Island, which had earned a reputation for one of the most violent detention facilities in the nation prior to his appointment.
"When I took over in 1995, we had 133,000 annual admissions. At the time I took over, we averaged 150 slashings and stabbings per month. When I left as police commissioner, we had one (per month)," he said.
Once Kerik arrived in federal prison, he became baffled at the number of people incarcerated for nonviolent crimes. In fact, all inmates at the minimum security facility were nonviolent offenders. In the book, Kerik says many were low-level drug offenders, but there were also people serving years in prison for exaggerating the amount of their mortgage, commercial fishermen who caught too many fish and even a man who sold a whale's tooth on eBay.
"All of these people could have paid an alternative price or punishment instead of being sent to prison," said Kerik, who believes prison is only grooming some nonviolent offenders for far worse crimes upon their release.
"We're taking thousands and thousands of nonviolent people, and we're sticking them in prison," he said. "We're turning many of these young guys into monsters. We're teaching them how to be real criminals. We're sucking all the societal values out of them, institutionalizing them and then sending them home."
Kerik said the system is also setting up white-collar criminals to be a lingering burden on society.
"We take people who were in the workforce, paying taxes, taking care of their families. We criminalize them," he said. "Then when they get out, they can't find a job. They can't go back to what they were doing. They can't work in any organization or company that's regulated by the government."
He added, "We're creating a second class of American citizen that is diminished by about 70-80 percent in constitutional and civil rights and work ability. It's just bizarre. It's absurd."
However, Kerik is quick to state that these concerns do not apply to hard-core violent offenders.
"I'll be the first one to say I've put a lot of people in prison. But they were bad guys, bad people who did really bad things," he said. "They have to be punished, and we have to keep society safe."
The final frustration for Kerik is that ex-convicts are forever branded as felons, making it very tough for them to find honest work after they leave prison.
"The premise that you do your time, you pay your debt to society is a falsehood," he said. "It's not reality at all. You never finish paying your debt to society. That conviction lasts with you until the day you die, and it has a collateral negative impact on you, your profession and your family forever."
According to Kerik, it's not just ex-cons and their families who suffer in the current system. He said all Americans do, because of the burden placed upon taxpayers.
"It is destroying us, not just from a societal perspective, but from an economic perspective," he said. "We are losing billions of dollars a year in tax income and economic spending over the reported cost of incarceration. There is this hidden cost far beyond the cost of incarceration that we are losing in our economy."
He believes nonviolent offenders should also receive a full restoration of constitutional rights upon completion of their sentences, a step he would not grant to violent offenders.
"The most violent people, committing murder or rape or are pedophiles, if you want to keep them in a diminished capacity I get it," Kerik said. "But for 60 percent of the people we're locking up, we're destroying them personally (and) professionally for the rest of their lives."
The former commissioner said he is pleased to see lawmakers from both parties working to address some of these perceived inequities. He specifically cited Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky.; Cory Booker, D-N.J.; John Cornyn, R-Texas; and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I, for advancing legislation.
But Kerik is aiming for help from a higher office.
"Going into the 2016 election, the next president of the United States – no matter what party they're from or who they are – criminal justice reform must be one of the top five domestic issues on their plate," he said. "As it stands right now, the entire system is going to implode. We can't sustain it economically."