WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – Obama said despite efforts to reform the system, including commuting sentences under old drug laws now considered biased, "much of our criminal justice system remains unfair."
"Thirty years ago, there were 500,000 people behind bars in America. Today, there are 2.2 million…Every year, we spend $80 billion to keep people locked up," Obama said in a weekly radio address.
About half of all US inmates are in jail on non-violent drug-related offenses, according to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics. The 440-percent increase in the US prison population since the 1980s is nearly four times that of the total population growth in the United States during the same period.
As part of the reform effort, the US leader lauded a bipartisan group of nine Senators who introduced legislation to cut mandatory jail sentences for many non-violent crimes earlier in October.
Obama outlined a plan to travel the country over the next weeks to highlight "some of the Americans who are doing their part to fix our criminal justice system," including a community battling drug abuse, law enforcement officials and former prisoners.
The US Bureau of Prisons is expected to release some 6,000 convicts to halfway houses and home confinement before being placed on supervised release between October 30 and November 2.
