At a time when we have more people in jail than any other country on earth, it is imperative that we reform all elements of a very broken criminal justice system.

Last Thursday, New Hampshire took a major step forward in that regard by becoming the 21st state to abolish the death penalty, thanks to decades of hard work on the part of activists and abolitionist legislators. The state legislature overrode a veto by Gov. Chris Sununu and passed HB 455, which replaces the death penalty with life imprisonment without the possibility of parole in instances of capital murder.

This is good news for a state that has a long history of championing the rights of the individual. And there is no greater affront to the rights of the individual than state sponsored murder. Capital punishment, which has long been abolished in most industrialized countries, is the most barbaric part of our broken and inequitable criminal justice system that is focused more on vengeance than on preventing crime.

Perhaps no one in the Granite State has done more to end capital punishment than Rep. Renny Cushing, who has been leading that effort for twenty years. I congratulate him for his hard work.

But we should not stop there. It is time to end the death penalty in every state in America, as part of a wholesale reform of our entire criminal justice system.

Criminal justice reform has been one of my major national priorities since I was first elected to Congress. It is my view that not only should we end capital punishment nationally, but we must begin focussing on the root causes of crime - which has a lot to do with poverty, lack of education, inequality and institutional racism. We should not be spending $80 billion a year to lock up fellow Americans. Instead, we should be investing in our young people in education and job training, not more jails and incarceration.

The death penalty is among the most egregious examples of the immorality and ineffectiveness of so many of those �tough on crime� policies.

Not only is capital punishment barbaric, it does not deter crime -- in fact, states that do not have the death penalty have had lower murder rates than those that do. And those death-penalty states are spending huge sums on the arduous process of prosecuting capital punishment cases, even when that money could be put to far better use. Further, study after study shows that, over the years, more than a few Americans have been executed, or placed on death row, despite being innocent of the capital crimes they were charged with.

Even more troubling is the fact that the death penalty is racist and overwhelmingly impacts lower income people. Today, a handful of counties and states are responsible for the vast majority of executions in this country. Black men are significantly more likely to be executed than white men. 55% of death row inmates are people of color.

Further, because they have no money, many inmates on death row received inadequate legal counsel during their trials. In states like Alabama and Texas, which have some of the highest execution rates in the country, public defenders are underfunded and understaffed. Court-appointed lawyers are often paid a pittance.

These trends and dynamics are emblematic of the larger problems plaguing our broken criminal justice system. In my view, among other reforms, we need to end minimum sentencing, and give judges more discretion on a case by case basis. We need to end the incredibly destructive "war on drugs," and move to the legalization of marijuana. We need to end private prisons and detention centers. We need to end the absurdity of hundreds of thousands of people being in jail today for the "crime" of being poor and not able to afford cash bail or pay off a traffic ticket.

The time is long overdue for real criminal justice reform in this country, and I congratulate the New Hampshire legislature for helping us move that cause forward. In the coming months and years I am confident that all Americans, progressives, moderates and conservatives, will come together to create a modern and effective criminal justice system that we can all be proud of.

Sen Bernie Sanders of Vermont is a candidate for president.