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 "Mass incarceration makes our country worse off, and we need to do
something about it," Obama told about 3,000 people attending a
convention of the NAACP, the nation's oldest civil rights group.
The speech came on the same day as a major international deal aimed
at preventing Iran from building a nuclear weapon, a diplomatic feat
that will be part of Obama's legacy.
But on the domestic front, Obama, the first black U.S. president,
has been frustrated on efforts to reduce inequality.
Citing statistics about the disproportionate number of black and
Latino men in prison, Obama said incarceration costs had surged to
$80 billion a year as drug offenders were sentenced to harsher
sentences. He said 2.2 million people were in prison, up from
500,000 in 1980.
 "That is the real reason our prison population is so high. In far
too many cases, the punishment simply does not fit the crime," Obama
said.
Seizing on interest from what he has called "some unlikely
Republican legislators," Obama has made criminal justice reform
among his top priorities for his remaining 18 months as president.
He cited Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul, running for his
party's 2016 presidential nomination, and Republican Senator John
Cornyn of Texas, as two lawmakers who agreed on the need for
reforms.
Obama, who on Thursday will visit a federal prison in Oklahoma, the
first such trip by a sitting president, said the United States
should reduce long mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug
crimes, or "get rid of them entirely."
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Prison conditions should be addressed to reduce overcrowding, gang
activity and rape, he said. He added he had directed Attorney
General Loretta Lynch to review the overuse of solitary confinement.
Obama threw his support behind efforts to "ban the box" - a campaign
to remove questions about criminal records from job applications.
But he stopped short of pledging he would order federal agencies or
contractors to take that step.
"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.
(Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Peter Cooney)
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