As New York City police commissioner, Bernard Kerik was ultimately responsible for the incarceration of many criminals.

Now that he has seen the prison system from the inside, having served three years behind bars, he has a new appraisal of the U.S. penal system: ‘insane.’

In his first interview since his release from prison, where he served time for tax evasion and lying to federal authorities, Kerik told NBC’s Matt Lauer on the Today show Friday: ‘No one in the history of our country has ever been in the system with my background.

‘You have to be on the other side of the bars. You have to see what it’s like to be a victim of the system. There’s no way to do that from the other side.

‘If the American people and members of Congress saw what I saw, there would be anger, there would be outrage, and there would be change, because nobody would stand for it.’

Kerik’s main beef is with mandatory minimum sentences. He served his time with non-violent inmates, many of them first-time offenders who received disproportionate sentences for their crimes.

Kerik handed Lauer a nickel during his interview to demonstrate the amount of cocaine that sends an offender to jail.

‘I […]