Thank You Obama for Letting Prisoners Go Free and Kill Again
Obama Calls for Effort to Gear up a 'Broken System' of Criminal Justice
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Obama at North.A.A.C.P. Annual Convention
A day later on commuting the prison sentences of 46 nonviolent drug offenders, the president pushed for criminal justice reform.
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ane. President Barack Obama talking to attendees at the NAACP almanac convention 2. SOUNDBITE: (ENGLISH) President Barack Obama "Ane aspect of American life that remains particularly skewed by race and past wealth, a source of iniquity that has ripple effects on families and on communities and ultimatley on our nation, and that is our criminal justice organisation." iii. Cutaway 4. SOUNDBITE: (English language) President Barack Obama "What has changed though is that in recent years, the optics of more than Americans accept been opened to this truth. Partly because of cameras, partly considering of tragedy, partly because the statistics cannot be ignored, nosotros can't shut our eyes anymore." five. Cutaway half-dozen. SOUNDBITE: (ENGLISH) President Barack Obama "And the good news, and this is truly skillful news, is that good people of all political persuasions are starting to remember we demand to do something about this. So let's wait at the statistics, the United states of america is domicile to five percent of the world's population, but 25% of the world'due south prisoners. Our incarceration rate is four times higher than Cathay'south." 7. Cutaway viii. SOUNDBITE: (English language) President Barack Obama "Over the final few decades, we have also locked up more and more non-violent drug offenders than ever before for longer than always before. And that is the real reason our prison population is then high. In far as well many cases the penalisation but does not fit the crime." nine. Cutaway 10. SOUNDBITE: (English) President Barack Obama "Now they won't eliminate crime entirely, there is going to be crime. That is why the second place nosotros need to change is in the courtroom. For non-violent drug crimes, we need to lower long mandatory minimum sentences or get rid of them entirely. Give judges some discretion around non-trigger-happy crimes, then that potentially we tin steer a young person that has made a error in a better direction." 11. Cutaway 12. SOUNDBITE: (ENGLISH) President Barack Obama "Justice is non merely the absence of oppression, it is the presence of opportunity. Justice is giving every kid a shot at a great education, now matter what zip code they are born into. Justice is giving everyone willing to work hard the chance to get a good job, with skillful wages, no matter what their name is, what their pare colour is, where they live." xiii. Obama later speech
PHILADELPHIA — President Obama on Tuesday called for a sweeping bipartisan attempt to fix what he called "a broken system" of criminal justice that has locked upward too many Americans for too long, particularly a whole generation of immature black and Hispanic men.
In a long and at times passionate address to a convention of the Northward.A.A.C.P., Mr. Obama said the mass incarceration of the past 2 decades had gone as well far and left many communities devastated. He tied what he chosen the bias built into the organization to the racially charged upheaval in places like Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore.
"In recent years, the eyes of more Americans have been opened to this truth partly considering of cameras, partly because of tragedy, partly because the statistics cannot exist ignored," he said. "Nosotros can't close our eyes anymore. And the good news — and this is truly good news — is that good people of all political persuasions are starting to think we need to do something near this."
The president'due south spoken communication was intended to build on a movement for change that has crossed party lines. Republican and Democratic lawmakers have teamed upwards with the support of liberal and bourgeois advancement groups to suggest a multifariousness of measures to overhaul the system. In his spoken language, Mr. Obama singled out two Republicans who have been leading legislative efforts, Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and John Cornyn of Texas.
Mr. Obama's speech came a day subsequently he commuted the sentences of 46 nonviolent prisoners, bringing his total to 89, though still but a tiny fraction of those who have applied for clemency. On Thursday, Mr. Obama will go to Oklahoma to go the first sitting president to visit a federal prison house, where he will talk almost the need for more humane weather condition.
In issue, Mr. Obama used his address on Tuesday to put meat on the bones of his more thematic spoken communication on race at the funeral of the Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney, 1 of nine blackness churchgoers killed last calendar month in Charleston, S.C. While emphasizing that the police do heroic work and that many people deserve to be locked up, he outlined a serial of changes he said Congress should consider.
Amid other things, he said the country should focus more than resources on early childhood teaching to preclude young people from straying in the showtime place. He called for a sentencing overhaul pecker to be passed this twelvemonth that would reduce mandatory minimum sentences "or get rid of them entirely," favoring treatment or other alternatives for many drug offenders.
He called for better conditions for prisoners, saying, "They are also Americans." He deplored overcrowding. He said he had asked for a review of lone solitude, declaring that it was "not going to brand us safer" to concord an inmate lonely in a cell for 23 hours a day. And he condemned prison rape and said it should be treated more seriously. "We shouldn't exist making jokes about it in our popular culture," he said. "That's no joke."
He too said the country needed to go far easier for offenders to re-enter society after prison. He endorsed the effort to "ban the box," meaning the question many employers inquire applicants about past convictions, and he said those who serve their sentences "should exist able to vote."
In making his case, he noted that the United states has a far higher incarceration rate than China or Europe and that black and Hispanic men "are more likely to be stopped, frisked, questioned, charged, detained."
But he also made a fiscal argument. With the $lxxx billion spent on incarceration every year, he said, the The states could instead provide universal preschool for every 3- and iv-year-former, or double the salaries of every high school teacher in America.
Few if any other presidents take given a speech extolling the rights of prisoners and calling for lighter sentences, at least for nonviolent criminals. But with the convergence of the political left and right backside change, advocates said he clearly felt politically rubber to focus more than attention on these bug.
"There's no feeling that he'south virtually to touch a third rail," Sherrilyn Ifill, the president of the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defence force and Educational Fund, said in an interview. "I don't think he feels that way anymore."
Indeed, rather than criticizing Mr. Obama, Republicans on Tuesday made it clear that they shared some of the same concerns and had been working on bipartisan legislation to address them.
"Legislating takes a lot of hard piece of work," Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement. "Nosotros've had hours of meaningful discussions up to this bespeak, and those of united states of america in the room are committed to trying to reach an agreement that can gain wide bipartisan support."
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/15/us/politics/obama-calls-for-effort-to-fix-a-broken-system-of-criminal-justice.html
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