U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who has been hailed by prison reformers for his support for reducing federal mandatory minimum sentences, has conceded “mistakes” in his office that caused unattributed writing by others on the sentencing issue to appear in his own work, says the New York Times. Paul said he was installing safeguards to prevent such breaches from happening again. The website BuzzFeed reported that an article Paul wrote for The Washington Times in September on mandatory minimum terms appeared to have copied language from an essay in the magazine The Week. The magazine said, “America now jails a higher percentage of its citizens than any other country, including China and Iran, at the staggering cost of $80 billion a year.” Six days later, Paul wrote that, “America now jails a higher percentage of its citizens than any other country, including China and Iran, at the staggering cost of $80 billion a year.” The Washington Times yesterday canceled Paul's column by mutual agreement.