Obama’s speech at national convention of the NAACP, came just one day after he announced he was commuting the sentences of dozens of non-violent drug offenders, and he will soon become the first sitting USA president to visit a federal prison facility when he travels to the the El Reno Federal Correctional Institution outside of Oklahoma City.
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Fifty-eight-year-old Stephen Donovan, from the Milwaukee suburb of Oak Creek, could be transferred soon from a federal prison in Pekin, Illinois to a halfway house to begin reintegration. Depicting it as a bipartisan policy goal, he called on Congress this week to pass changes to sentencing laws by the end of the year.
Although this week will mark several positive steps to change the American justice system, it also commemorates a tragic event: Friday is the one-year anniversary of the death of Eric Garner, the unarmed 43-year-old Staten Island, NY, man whose death at the hands of a police officer inspired massive protests and helped spark the Black Lives Matter movement.
There is a difference between commutation of a sentence and presidential pardons. Had they been sentenced under current laws majority would have served their time and been released by now.
“Mass incarceration makes our country worse off and we need to do something about it”, Obama said.
Representative Jim Sensenbrenner 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.
In a broad, sometimes rousing speech, President Obama on Tuesday laid out an ambitious road map for re-imagining America’s criminal justice system, saying the present system is too often skewed by race and class, and not only costly to taxpayers, but to society as a whole. Obama’s remarks are scheduled for 3 p.m.
“I’m going to shine a spotlight on this issue, because while the people in our prisons have made mistakes – and sometimes big mistakes – they are also Americans”, Obama said.
When prisoners complete their sentences, they shouldn’t necessarily be forces to identify as criminals when they apply for jobs, Obama said.
He said there were glimmers of a possible deal between Republicans and Democrats on some reforms this year.
In a letter Obama sent to the 46 prisoners who were granted clemency, he wrote, “I am granting your application because you have demonstrated the potential to turn your life around”.
In what Collins called the “strangest bedfellows” of the reform movement, Obama and Holder have found de facto allies in Charles and David Koch, the energy billionaire brothers most famous for backing conservatives in major elections.
“We’re just at the beginning of this problem and we need to stay with it”, Obama said. “In far too many cases, the punishment simply does not fit the crime”, Obama said. The president touted educational investments in young people as the key to ending the public-school-to-prison pipeline.
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“The real question is whether this is the launch of a very serious effort to build redemption into our criminal justice system, or is this a campaign to burnish the president’s legacy”, said American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Anthony Romero. Gov. Chris Christie, S-I.M., deliberate to provide a speech Thursday within the troubled metropolis of Camden specializing in nonviolent drug offenders.
