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Obama to call for Justice System reform during NAACP address
U.S. President Barack Obama is pushing for bipartisan action to change the criminal justice system in ways that go far beyond the limited executive powers he has used to reduce harsh prison sentences for dozens of non-violent offenders.
In a speech to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP’s) annual convention in Philadelphia on Tuesday, Obama planned to call for legislative action to reduce unduly harsh sentences, eliminate disparities in the way justice is applied and lessen taxpayer costs to house prisoners.
“We are at a moment when some good people in both parties – Republicans and Democrats – and folks all across the country are coming together around ideas to make the system work smarter, make it work better,” Obama said Monday as he commuted the sentences of 46 drug offenders, 14 of whom had been sentenced to life.
“There is a lot more we can do to restore the sense of fairness at the heart of our justice system,” Obama added in a video released by the White House.
While some Republicans in Congress are showing new interest in criminal justice legislation, not all GOP legislators saw the president’s commutations as a positive step.
Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (Republican) of Wisconsin, a member of the House Judiciary Committee who has proposed bipartisan legislation, accused the president of issuing commutations as a politically motivated stunt.
“Commuting the sentences of a few drug offenders is a move designed to spur headlines, not meaningful reform,” Sensenbrenner said.
In the Senate, Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said in a statement he’s been working toward bipartisan agreement on broad legislation that could include reductions in mandatory minimum sentences “in certain situations.”
Since Congress enacted mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes in the 1980s, the federal prison population has grown from 24,000 to more than 214,000, according to Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a group seeking sentencing changes.
And the costs, Obama says, are over US$80 billion a year to incarcerate people who often “have only been engaged in nonviolent drug offenses.”
