What if Obama had talked about prisons?
It’s almost impossible to imagine, isn’t it?
Watching the State of the Union address is often an exercise in low expectations. When it comes to criminal justice reform, those expectations are absent entirely. We are not a country that talks about the millions of people living (and dying) behind bars.
For those of us who are labeled “single issue” folks, it’s generally pointless to wax predictable about what the president should and should not have said. But thinking about Obama’s speech, with its focus on domestic policy and the economy, I can’t help but feel that it was a wasted opportunity. If there was ever a moment to acknowledge the need for prison reform—as well as its viability—it could have been now.
