Obama: We need to do something about mass incarceration

The US criminal justice system needs to distinguish between young people who make mistakes and those who are truly dangerous, President Barack Obama said today.

He was speaking at the El Reno Federal Correctional Institution, a medium-security prison for male offenders in Oklahoma, in what was the first visit by a sitting US president to a federal prison.

Mr Obama said some of the young prisoners he met had made mistakes not that different from those he made in his youth.

He said the difference is that they did not have the resources and support “to survive those mistakes”.

He added that if some of the young people were given different opportunities, they could be thriving.

The President has argued forcefully this week for an alternative to the continued lengthy incarceration of people convicted of crimes he said did not fit the punishment.

He has called for the shortening of he sentences of nearly four dozen non-violent drug offenders as well as advocating the reduction, or outright elimination, of severe mandatory minimum sentences.

Mr Obama has said that overly harsh prison sentences, particularly for non-violent drug crimes, are to blame for doubling the prison population in the past two decades.

Half a million people were behind bars in 1980, a figure that has since quadrupled to its current total of more than 2.2 million inmates – the highest rate of incarceration in the world.

“Mass incarceration makes our country worse off, and we need to do something about it,” Mr Obama said in a recent speech.

Earlier this week, he commuted the sentences of 46 non-violent drug offenders, 14 of whom had been serving life in prison.

“If you’re a low-level drug dealer, or you violate your parole, you owe some debt to society. You have to be held accountable and make amends,” he said this week. “But you don’t owe 20 years. You don’t owe a life sentence. That’s disproportionate to the price that should be paid.”

Mr Obama said taxpayers are the ones left to pay the US$80bn annual cost of locking up people who otherwise could be in rehabilitative programs for less than the cost of incarceration.

Or they could be workers paying taxes, or be more involved in their children’s lives, or be role models and leaders in their communities.

The president has also called for the restoration of voting rights to offenders who have served their sentences, and said employers should “ban the box” that asks job applicants about their criminal histories.

Mr Obama has expressed hope that Congress will send him legislation to address the issue before he leaves office in 18 months, given the level of interest in the issue among Republican politicians and presidential candidates.

Republican Senator Rand Paul, a 2016 presidential contender, is pushing to restore voting rights to non-violent offenders who have served their sentences.

Another Republican hopeful, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, was giving a speech today calling for changes that in part would give non-violent drug offenders a better chance at rebuilding their lives.