Prosecutors usually spend their energy putting criminals behind bars — not urging their release. But racial disparities in the system and the huge costs of locking up so many people are pushing some government officials to call for a new approach.
One of them is the woman who now runs day-to-day operations at the Justice Department. Sally Yates says she's hardly soft on crime: "I'm a career prosecutor."
Yates made her name prosecuting the man who bombed the Atlanta Olympics in 1996. The bomber, Eric Rudolph, appeared on the FBI's Most Wanted List. Eventually he went to prison — where he's serving four life sentences.
"I've been at this for 27 years now," Yates says. "I believe that it's really imperative that we do everything we can to keep our communities as safe as possible but to do that in a way that is just and fair."
[For more of this story, written by Carrie Johnson, go to http://www.npr.org/2015/06/01/...s-from-public-safety]
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