I found this news pretty surprising:

Philadelphia’s prisons hold on average more than 7,000 inmates each day – the highest incarceration rate of any major American city.

The powers that be want to cut it by more than a third, 34 percent to be exact, during the next three years.

Part of that will call for addressing racial bias in the justice system… “Folks cannot get what they need in the way of drug treatment, counseling, job training, social skill training behind bars,” said Mayor Jim Kenney.

The article goes on to quote judges who agree with this. It’s certainly good news. If so many people involved in the system agree that one-third of people in prison are there because of racial bias, are nonviolent, and don’t need to be there, and it can really be fixed so quickly, what took so long?