Obama eases sentences of 46 prisoners

Obama eases sentences of 46 prisoners

  The President of the United States, Barack Obama, has commuted the prison sentences of 46 US citizens convicted of drug trafficking. This is the largest switching in a single day since the days of President Johnson.

 With our Washington correspondent, Jean-Louis Pourtet.

  Since coming to the White House, Barack Obama has always wanted to reform the penal system. In 2013, he passed a law reducing the disparities between the minimum sentences for trafficking in cocaine and crack cocaine trafficking that penalized excessively African Americans.

  By commuting the sentences of 46 prisoners, the president explained that the punishments were not adapted to the crimes alleged against them. "These men and women were not hardened criminals, but the vast majority of them have been sentenced to at least 20 years in prison, 14 to life imprisonment for drug trafficking without violence," Does -he argued.

  But the US president also warned that reinstating the society, they should "show responsibility and effort." Barack Obama will continue his campaign for judicial reform when will address the Annual Conference of the NAACP black organization in Philadelphia and again, Thursday, July 16, being the first US president to visit a federal prison, in Oklahoma.