NBC News: In HBO Documentary 'The Sentence," Rudy Valdez shows family fallout from mandatory prison sentencing
…
“The Sentence” won the U.S. Documentary Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival this year, and Senators Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) hosted a screening of the film on Capitol Hill in July.
Valdez noted that people often say that the criminal justice system is broken. He disagrees. “The system is working the way it is designed to work. What we need to do is change it, to change how we incarcerate people and address the underlying problems that bring people to the criminal justice system.”
A January poll by the Justice Action Network found that 87 percent of voters strongly support replacing mandatory minimum prison sentences for non-violent offenders with a system that allows judges more discretion.