Obama, police chiefs to join in call to cut incarcerations

President Barack Obama meets with top police officials and legal experts Thursday in a push to end "unnecessary incarceration" in a country where overpopulated prisons house 2.2 million people.

 For years, the United States was of the mind that the longer offenders stayed behind bars, the less crime there would be. This led to the adoption in the 1980s and 1990s of tough mandatory minimum sentences that are now being widely criticized -- including by the president.

 "Democrats and Republicans were both responsible for wanting to look tough on the war on drugs and ramping up incarceration," Obama said in speech Wednesday in Charleston, West Virginia.

 "For a long time, treatment was seen as a second class citizen to interdiction and arrest and incarceration. That mindset needs to change. The good news is we are seeing that mindset changing and it is on a bipartisan basis," he said.

 Some of those due to meet with Obama at the White House Thursday afternoon are members of a new group that encompasses 130 top police chiefs, sheriffs, prosecutors and attorneys general from across the country.

 High-profile members of the group, which calls itself "Law Enforcement Leaders to Reduce Crime and Incarceration," include the chiefs of the Los Angeles, New York City and Washington police departments.