WASHINGTON — Calling it an issue that America can’t afford to ignore, President Obama on Tuesday laid out an expansive vision for fixing the criminal justice system by focusing on communities, courtrooms and cellblocks. He announced a federal review of the use of solitary confinement and urged Congress to pass a sentencing reform bill by year’s end.

In a speech to the NAACP’s annual convention, Obama also called for voting rights to be restored to felons who have served their sentences, and said employers should “ban the box” asking job candidates about their past convictions. He said long mandatory minimum sentences now in place should be reduced – or discarded entirely.

“In far too many cases, the punishment simply doesn’t fit the crime,” Obama told a crowd of 3,300 in Philadelphia. Low-level drug dealers, for example, owe a debt to society, but not a life sentence or 20-year prison term, he said.

With his speech, Obama sought to put a spotlight on the need for new legislation as he mounted a weeklong push on criminal justice reform. A day earlier, he commuted the sentences of 46 nonviolent drug offenders – the most commutations a president has issued on a single day in at least four decades.

The assertive moves reflected a president eager to wield his executive power during his waning years in office to reduce harsh sentences, cut costs and correct disparities he said have disproportionately burdened minorities.

Obama acknowledged that many people in the U.S. need to be in prison – “murderers, predators, rapists, gang leaders” – yet he said that in too many instances, law enforcement is treating young black and Latino men differently than their white peers.

“The statistics cannot be ignored. We cannot close our eyes anymore,” he said.