White House Weekly Address: Building a Fairer and More Effective Criminal Justice System, April 23, 2016

Washington, DC–(ENEWSPF)–April 23, 2016

Hello, everybody.  Today, there are some 2.2 million people behind bars in America.  Millions more are on parole or probation.  All told, we spend 80 billion taxpayer dollars each year to keep people locked up.  Many are serving unnecessarily long sentences for non-violent crimes. Almost 60 percent have mental health problems.  Almost 70 percent were regular drug users.  And as a whole, our prison population is disproportionately black and Latino.

Now,…