(PHOTO CREDIT: JEFF KRAVITZ/FILMMAGIC; ELISE AMENDOLA/AP/SHUTTERSTOCK)

Famous musician stands up for Falicity Huffman

On Friday, Felicity Huffman was sentenced to two weeks in federal prison for her role in the college admissions cheating scandal. Huffman pleaded guilty to paying a scammer $15,000 to rig her daughter’s SAT scores so she could get into a prestigious college. At the sentencing, Huffman cried and showed remorse, saying she knew her actions were wrong and declined to cheat again when her younger daughter was applying for college.

And not everyone agrees with the sentence. Singer John Legend slammed the prison time as “unnecessary.” Legend said he understands why people are upset that poor defendants often get prison time while rich people do not–but said that longer sentences for wealthy defendants are not the answer.

“I get why everyone gets mad when rich person X gets a short sentence and poor person of color Y gets a long one,” Legend wrote on Twitter. “The answer isn’t for X to get more; it’s for both of them to get less (or even none!!!) We should level down not up.”

Americans have become “desensitized” to mass incarceration, Legend said.

“Prisons and jails are not the answer to every bad thing everyone does, but we’ve come to use them to address nearly every societal ill,” Legend tweeted.