Obama at the NAACP: Nibbling at the Margins

[Chip (OP)]

from LEAP, via Facebook

Obama at the NAACP: Nibbling at the Margins

President Obama in a July 14 address to the NAACP, followed by a visit to a federal prison in Oklahoma, called for criminal justice reform: "We should pass a sentencing reform bill through Congress this year."

While the speech as been hailed as a major step forward, it is only nibbling at the margins.

The fundamental problem isn't the sentencing. The real problem is defining the sale and usage of drugs as criminal acts. That underlying assumption went unchallenged in Obama's call for criminal justice reform.

The language of Obama's NAACP speech is telling:

"We've also locked up more and more nonviolent drug offenders than ever before, for longer than ever before. And that is the real reason our prison population is so high. In far too many cases, the punishment simply does not fit the crime. If you're a low-level drug dealer . . . you owe some debt to society."

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