John Pfaff spoke with BBC World Service’s Newshour about President Obama’s effort to reform U.S. penal policy and the level of support he has in Congress.
“I think at the federal level he has a substantial amount of bipartisan support. I feel Democrats and Republicans on both sides seem fairly committed to wanting to rein in what we spend on prisons. I think where he’s weaker is that only 200,000 of our prisoners are in the federal system meaning 1.3 million are in state prisons and he has almost no control over what happens at the state level.”