During his Thursday broadcast of “The Lead,” CNN host Jake Tapper asked potential 2016 candidate Martin O’Malley if Hillary Clinton is “finding Jesus on her way to Des Moines” on criminal justice.
O’Malley told the CNN host that he actually has experience in making police departments “more transparent and more open” during his time as mayor and governor. O’Malley made the comments after Clinton’s speech to Columbia University on Wednesday on the aforementioned topics.
JAKE TAPPER: Hillary Clinton, who you will likely be running against sometime soon, gave a speech yesterday in which she talked about calling for body cameras for police and an end to the era of mass incarceration. You’ve been slightly critical of her for being a Johnny-come-lately on some issues, including drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants, on same-sex marriage being a human right, not a state-by-state issue. On this issue, when you look at her comments yesterday, and you look at Clinton record, and she was a big part of pushing for the Clinton crime bill, including three strikes you’re out, which a lot of critics say led to mass incarceration, do you have a similar criticism for her? Is she finding Jesus on her way to Des Moines?
MARTIN O’MALLEY: I spoke a couple of weeks ago to Al Sharpton’s group, National Action Network in New York, and made many of the same points about openness, transparency, the body cameras, differently than Secretary Clinton. I’ve actually had experience on the ground making police departments more transparent and more open. And we also, when I finished my term as governor, we had the lowest incarceration number in our state that we’ve had in 20 years. So I think over the years, we have to constantly be evolving in putting forth new iterations and figuring how to do policing in smarter ways, how to be smarter in criminal justice. Some of the things attempted in the ’80s or ’90s no longer serve us today. However, there are things that we can improve upon, like protecting the public from repeat violent offenders. In other words, there are people who deserve to be behind bars, and they are the repeat violent offenders, but there are those who need drug treatment, who need job training, and — which also, by the way, is a lot more cost effective, as we’ve found here.