Adding support to the movement for prison and sentencing reform, more than 130 police chiefs, prosecutors and sheriffs from across the country issued a statement last week saying what others have said — America has too many people in prison who don’t need to be there.

Police chiefs from New York, Chicago and Los Angeles were joined by officials from all levels of the criminal justice system from across the country to support efforts to reduce prison populations and lower the incarceration rate in the United States, which is much higher than in any other advanced western nation.

Prison and sentencing reform is a rare public policy issue with bipartisan support in Washington, D.C. and state capitals. The law enforcement officials speaking out last week did not say anything new, but they have credibility and cannot be seen as being soft on crime.

Not only is the group not soft on crime, it also is saying that sentencing and other reforms can reduce crime while also reducing incarceration rates.

The message from the law enforcement officials last week echoes the message from judicial activists — the tough on crime culture and “three strikes” laws that put people behind bars for many years for oftentimes minor offices, is simply not working.

Not only are the “lock ’em up and throw away the key” attitudes and mandated sentences not reducing crime or keeping people from recommitting crimes, the harsh and inflexible policies also destroy families — while costing taxpayers billions of dollars.

President Barack Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder have also spoken about the failure of mass incarceration to reduce crime and its tendency to create people more dangerous to society when they come out of prison than when they went in. Conservatives, too, have spoken out about the failure of long sentences to reduce crime as well as the high costs to taxpayers.

There is bipartisan support in Congress for sentencing reform and reducing prison populations. But the challenge extends beyond Washington — the federal prison population was about 225,000 in 2013, while state prisons held nearly 1.3 million. Reforms need to happen in state capitals, not just Washington.

In Pennsylvania, John Wetzel, secretary of the state Department of Corrections, has been talking about reform for several years.

Appointed by former Gov. Tom Corbett and retained by Gov. Tom Wolf, Wetzel has worked as a treatment counselor, a corrections officer and a county jail warden. He knows the system, having seen it from different perspectives, and he wants to see less incarceration and more treatment. Wetzel notes that 75 percent of the state’s prison population has some form of addiction while 25 percent of inmates have mental health issues.

Wetzel’s goal, explained in an article in the Harrisburg Patriot-News, is to provide more treatment for addiction and provide more support so people are better equipped to re-enter their communities and less likely to return to prison.

The human and financial costs of inflexible, tough-on-crime laws and mass incarceration cannot be ignored. The lives of those in prison for non-violent crimes are damaged and their families suffer too. State budgets are burdened by rapidly increasing prison costs, the direct result of mandatory sentencing laws.

In Pennsylvania, taxpayers spend about $2 billion on the state prison system that holds about 50,000 inmates.

Despite intense partisanship in Washington and Harrisburg, lawmakers in Congress and the state Legislature should use the bipartisan support for sentencing and prison reforms to act.