Obama Urges More Progress On Criminal Justice Reform

WASHINGTON, Jan 5, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 05th Jan, 2017 ) - The United States has "much work to be done" to reform the criminal justice system and humanize the prison system, President Barack Obama said Thursday in a Harvard Law Review article.

In the 56-page article, the president defends his government's actions during his eight-year term on a subject that was crucial for him before his arrival at the White House.

And he also a calls on President-elect Donald Trump -- who is not mentioned in the article -- to urgently pursue further reforms.

"We simply cannot afford to spend $80 billion annually on incarceration, to write off the seventy million Americans... with some form of criminal record, to release 600,000 inmates each year without a better program to reintegrate them into society, or to ignore the humanity of 2.2 million men and women currently in US jails and prisons," Obama wrote.