"Non-violent criminals should not be imprisoned," says Lisa Wexler.

All of them? I ask her.

"All of them. The only people who should be locked up are the ones that we don't want on the streets, the ones who mug or murder or rape." She pauses. "Wow, that's quite a statement I'm making. As a lawyer, I'm already thinking about the exceptions to the rule, but I do think that should be the general rule."

Lisa hosts an award-winning talk radio show on 1400 WSTC/1350 WNLK every weekday. She has her hand in local politics, having served in Westport's town government in the late 1990s. The first-ever guest on her show was Gov. Jodi Rell, and she was the first to put Rep. Jim Himes on the radio before he even had the nomination in 2006. He is now a regular presence on her show, appearing about once a month. She has also just written a book with her mother and her sister Jill Zarin, star of Bravo's Real Housewives of New York City, called Secrets of a Jewish Mother, to be released in April. And she practices law part time, doing real estate, trust, estate and probate work.

This is her first public expression of her view on non-violent crimes, but probably not the last. I quiz her.

Do you know how many criminals America has in jail right now?

"About two million."

That's right! How many of them do you think are in prison for non-violence offences?

"Well, I'm curious to know what category is non-violent. Is it white collar crime. Is it embezzlement? What is non-violent?"

The Department of Justice says non-violent offenses involve neither harm, nor the threat of harm, to a victim.

"In that case, about 40 percent."

It was about 40 percent a few decades ago, but the ratio of non-violent criminals has now risen to 50 percent.

"Yeah, that makes sense because we've made so many more things crimes. I'll give you an example. If this health care reform bill passes, we will now have a new crime of not getting health insurance. That is now going to be defined as a crime. It wasn't a crime yesterday. It becomes a crime tomorrow. To me that's not what crime is. But burglary to me is jail, burglary to me is violent."

Because there is a threat of physical harm?

"That's right. I was having a discussion with some women this morning at the diner and I just came out with my statement about it. They didn't disagree. It isn't that there shouldn't be a consequence for a bad act, maybe restitution or community service, it is just that the consequence of incarceration doesn't seem to be a punishment that fits the crime. And that doesn't seem to be beneficial to us as a society."

So basically, if you had some possession of marijuana for personal use, there is no reason you should go to jail. Right?

"I'm not a pot smoker. I've never even smoked pot. I'm a total non-drug user, of any kind. Period. I'm the original pilgrim. That said, I think that it is not reasonable to incarcerate people for possession of drugs. It is reasonable to incarcerate people for violent crimes that they commit because they are a druggie, but not for possession of drugs."

Do you think it is the government's role to reduce drug use?

"I don't know if it's the government role. I think it's beneficial to society to reduce drug use. I think the saddest thing is that drug use is a pandemic. It's a huge social problem, but making it illegal has misdirected the limited resources we have. I don't think that this tactic has worked at all. I'm a pragmatist and I think that the government's war against drugs has done far more harm than good, just like the war against alcohol did. I see no distinction."

Right.

"And it doesn't mean that I think that juveniles should be allowed to use drugs, because I don't, just like I don't think juveniles should be allowed to get drunk, and certainly if you get behind the wheel drunk or drugged or in any way impaired then you should absolutely go to jail because you are a huge threat of imminent harm to other people."

And not just drugs. Fraud too, right?

"The question is what do you do with a guy like Bernie Madoff, who isn't a mugger, but he is a thief in a way of the grandest, tallest order. He is an enormous thief and thieves go to jail. But maybe a better punishment for him is to have to face his public all day long, and be poor. He definitely has to be poor."

What if they just hide what they steal?

"That's true. If people are going to be that strategic about accumulating that fraud, they are going to be very strategic about making sure that if they get caught they still live a very nice lifestyle. So maybe jail has to be a deterrent to that kind of a scale. But this is my point: My point is that there are so many things now that are crimes that didn't used to be crimes, and human nature hasn't changed that much. We are very draconian right now. For example, you lie on your mortgage application, it's a crime. What is that? It's a bad thing to do, but should it be a crime? I think we have diluted what it means to be a crime, but people still come out all of a sudden with a criminal sentence. Their lives are ruined. They can't rent an apartment. They can't get a job. If they have a felony conviction, even if it is for a relatively minor offense, their life is ruined. We haven't given them a leg up or a second chance. I'm no bleeding heart anything. When it comes to violent crime, particularly crimes of sexual assault or against children or defenseless animals, I can get very creative imagining all kinds of punishment I'd like to see inflicted. But there is something wrong with a justice system that imprisons more people per capita than any other society on earth."