Metro

Ex-NYPD Commissioner Kerik, out of jail, now a prisoner advocate

Three years behind bars has turned former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik into a champion of criminals’ rights.

Kerik, once a firm supporter of federal mandatory minimum sentences as a way to discourage criminal behavior, now believes it doesn’t work.

“These young men, they come into the prison system. First-time, nonviolent offenders. The system is supposed to help them, not destroy them,” he said on NBC’s “Today” show.

“No one in the history of the country has ever been in the system with my background, no one,” said Kerik, who was nominated for US Homeland Security chief when his career fell apart.

That gives him the proper perspective on prison reform, he said. “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, so to speak,” he said.

In his first interview since the end of his term for tax evasion and lying to federal authorities, Kerik handed host Matt Lauer a nickel, which he said weighed the same as the amount of ­cocaine that can send an ­offender to prison for a long stretch.

“I was with men sentenced to 10 years in prison for 5 grams of cocaine. That’s insane. That’s insane,” he said.