{"id":134265,"date":"2015-07-14T06:31:23","date_gmt":"2015-07-14T06:31:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=134265"},"modified":"2015-07-14T06:31:23","modified_gmt":"2015-07-14T06:31:23","slug":"obama-frees-dozens-of-drug-offenders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=134265","title":{"rendered":"Obama frees dozens of drug offenders"},"content":{"rendered":"
US President Barack Obama has commuted the prison sentences of 46 drug offenders as part of a renewed effort to reform the criminal justice system.<\/p>\n
In a video announcement, he said the prisoners were not “hardened criminals” and had been given sentences that “didn’t fit their crimes”.<\/p>\n
He said it was part of a wider effort to restore the sense of fairness in a “nation of second chances”.<\/p>\n
Mr Obama is due to unveil plans for criminal justice reforms on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The 46 prisoners, 14 of whom were serving life sentences, are scheduled to be released on 10 November.<\/p>\n
Most of them were jailed for crack cocaine offences, which once carried a sentence equivalent to someone caught with 100 times the same amount of powder cocaine.<\/p>\n
“These men and women were not hardened criminals. But the overwhelming majority had to be sentenced to at least 20 years,” Mr Obama said.<\/p>\n
“But I believe that at its heart, America’s a nation of second chances. And I believe these folks deserve their second chance.”<\/p>\n
‘Prove doubters wrong’<\/p>\n
In a letter to one of the prisoners, Mr Obama said he was granting the applications because “you have demonstrated the potential to turn your life around”.<\/p>\n
The letter ended: “I believe in your ability to prove the doubters wrong, and change your life for the better. So good luck, and Godspeed.”<\/p>\n
Mr Obama has now commuted the sentences of 89 prisoners, with most being non-violent drug offenders who applied for clemency under an initiative that began in April 2014.<\/p>\n
A commutation leaves the conviction in place, but ends the punishment.<\/p>\n<\/figure>\nSome of those to be freed<\/figure>\n
\n
Larry Darnell Belcher (Martinsville, Virginia) – Found guilty of intent to distribute cocaine and possession with intent to distribute marijuana. Sentenced to life imprisonment<\/strong> in 1997.<\/li>\n
John L Houston Brower (Carthage, North Carolina) – Found guilty of distributing crack cocaine. Sentenced to life imprisonment<\/strong> in 2002.<\/li>\n
Anthony Leon Carroll (Tampa, Florida) – Found guilty of possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine. Sentenced to 21 years<\/strong> in prison in 1999.<\/li>\n
Steven D Donovan (Oak Creek, Wisconsin)- Found guilty of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine; interstate travel to promote distribution of cocaine; possession with intent to distribute cocaine. Sentenced to life imprisonment<\/strong> in 1992.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/figure>\n
In a statement, White House counsel Neil Eggleston said Mr Obama is likely to issue more commutations before leaving office in 2017.<\/p>\n
But he added that “clemency alone will not fix decades of overly punitive sentencing policies”.<\/p>\n
President Obama is due to lay out his plans for criminal justice reform in a speech to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Philadelphia on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, he is expected to become the first sitting president to visit a federal prison when he goes to the El Reno Federal Correctional Institution outside of Oklahoma City.<\/p>\n
This week’s focus on criminal justice signals a renewed bid by Mr Obama’s administration to tackle what he sees as a lack of fairness in the system.<\/p>\n
The last significant changes came in 2013 when US Attorney General Eric Holder dropped mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenders.<\/p>\n<\/figure>\nFederal prisons in numbers<\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n
\n
Some 208,000 people are behind bars in federal prisons in the US<\/li>\n
Nearly 50% of them are there for drug offences<\/li>\n
About 37% of prisoners are black, while 34% are Hispanic<\/li>\n
The cost of incarceration in the US was $80bn (\u00a350bn) in 2010<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Prisons\/BBC<\/p>\n
US President Barack Obama has commuted the prison sentences of 46 drug offenders as part of a renewed effort to reform the criminal justice system. In a video announcement, he said the prisoners were not “hardened criminals” and had been given sentences that “didn’t fit their crimes”. He said it was part of a wider […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":134266,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-134265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=134265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/134266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=134265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=134265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=134265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"null\"](\"http:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/624\/media\/images\/76020000\/jpg\/_76020974_line976.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n![\"null\"](\"http:\/\/ichef-1.bbci.co.uk\/news\/624\/media\/images\/76020000\/jpg\/_76020974_line976.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n![\"null\"](\"http:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/624\/cpsprodpb\/CF2B\/production\/_84253035_gettyimages-103348518.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n