“These men and women were not hardened criminals”, he said in a video released by the White House Monday.
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The move was part of a broader ongoing effort by the administration to make the USA criminal justice system fairer.
President Barack Obama warned Monday of an increasing urgency for the U.S.to care for older Americans as millions of baby boomers head into their golden years.
Each of the 46 individuals whose sentences were commuted were imprisoned on drug-related charges.
“I’m commuting the sentences of 46 prisoners who were convicted many years or in some cases decades ago”. Most of those have been for federal prisoners incarcerated for drug offenses who were slapped with long sentences mandated under guidelines set during a drug-and-crime wave in the 1980s.
“I am granting your application because you have demonstrated the potential to turn your life around”, Obama wrote.
White House suggestion Neil Eggleston said within the testimony he hopes for Obama to really challenge extraneous commutations and pardons prior to end of his time period in January 2017.
In his speech to the summit, Obama also praised Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the “toughest” member of the high court, noting her popular nickname as “the notorious RBG”. While there, he will meet with law enforcement officials and inmates.
Obama has said he wants to use commutations to help address a prison system that is too costly and disproportionately locks up people of color.
Obama is focusing on sentencing reform this week, visting a federal prison in Oklahoma and speaking to the NAACP on Tuesday about sentencing disparities.
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But, the president warned Jerry Allen Bailey, who has served about nine yeas of a 30-year sentence related to crack, “It will not be easy, and you will confront many who doubt that people with criminal records can change”.
