President Obama made a pitch to fix the criminal justice system in his weekly address Saturday, calling on Congress to pass a bipartisan reform bill.

ADVERTISEMENT

“Good people from both sides of the aisle and across all sectors are coming together on this issue,” he said. “From businesses that are changing their hiring practices, to law enforcement that’s improving community policing, we’re seeing change. Now we need a Congress that’s willing to send a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill to my desk. This isn’t just about what makes economic and practical sense. It’s about making sure that we live up to our ideals as a nation.”

The president detailed the social and economic costs of the nation’s overcrowded prisons, noting that the inmate population is “disproportionately black and Latino.”

“Now, plenty of people should be behind bars,” he continued. “But the reason we have so many more people in prison than any other developed country is not because we have more criminals. It’s because we have criminal justice policies, including unfair sentencing laws, that need to be reformed.”

“We know that simply locking people up doesn’t make communities safer. It doesn’t deal with the conditions that lead people to criminal activity in the first place, or to return to prison later," he said.

Obama added that conditions like low wages and high school graduation rates lead to increases in crime.

“That’s why we’ve been working to make our criminal justice system smarter, fairer, less expensive, and more effective. This week, the Department of Justice will highlight how strong reentry programs can make communities safer. My administration will announce new actions that will build on the progress we’ve already made,” he said. 

“We’ll release more details about how we are taking steps to ensure that applicants with a criminal history have a fair shot to compete for a federal job. We’re issuing a new report that details the economic costs of our high rates of incarceration. And we’re calling on businesses to commit to hiring returning citizens who have earned a second chance.”