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Washington — The U.S. government plans to curb the “unsustainable” growth of its prison population by abandoning harsh mandatory sentences for drug offenders and releasing some elderly inmates.

Eric Holder, the Attorney General, said the United States could no longer afford US$80-billion a year, nor the “human and moral costs”, that come with holding the world’s largest number of prisoners.

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“Too many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long and for no good law enforcement reason,” Mr. Holder told a legal conference in San Francisco Monday.

We cannot simply prosecute or incarcerate our way to becoming a safer nation

“We cannot simply prosecute or incarcerate our way to becoming a safer nation.”

The roughly 2-million inmates in the U.S. represent a quarter of the world’s prisoners, although America makes up only 5% of the global population. Both Democrats and Republicans agree that the rate of incarceration, around six times higher than China’s, cannot be maintained.