Former Trump White House advisor Peter Navarro urged the United States on Tuesday to have a "smart on crime" conversation, and not be "soft on crime." 

Navarro was released from a Miami prison last week after serving a four month prison sentence for failing to comply with a Congressional subpoena. 

The former advisor said the country's court system currently imposes harsher sentences than necessary for minor crimes, like drug offenses, which stem from the War on Drugs.

"The standard that we want to have when we think about the criminal justice system, which I've been inside of now and I understand this better, there are bad people doing bad things, but there's good people doing bad things as well," Navarro said in an appearance on Real America's Voice.

"What we want to do when we send somebody to prison is we want to punish them with enough time that the punishment fits the crime. We want them to stay in that prison long enough to learn the lesson [and] not to come back ... The optimal sentence will be enough to punish and deter, but no more. And the problem we have right now in the prison system is that the sentences are wildly, wildly over," he added.

Navarro said that the longer people are in prison, the higher the chance that they will commit more crimes when they get out, because they have "fewer skills" and "get more angry."

The former advisor said the costs of housing inmates is also high, costing approximately $60,000 a year per inmate, but that placing people on house arrest or in halfway homes reduces the costs by roughly half. 

Navarro said part of this high price tag is because the prison system does not always let the inmates out on time, which means their housing is continuing to cost American taxpayers. 

"I don't take any objection to punishing these people. They did bad things. They need to get punished. But once, once they've done their time, you don't let them out on time," Navarro said. "They're not working. Their families suffer, and all of that is simply not right. It's a system. It's not working now, it's pretty abstract."

Navarro urged Congress to work on prison and criminal justice reform, and called on Bureau of Prisons Director Colette Peters to enforce the Trump administration's First Step Act that was passed in 2018. 

"That's her choice. Collette Peters, if she doesn't want to do that, she should resign. If she doesn't want to resign, then Congress should impeach her," the former advisor added. 

Misty Severi is an evening news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.