Washington (CNN) The White House and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie took turns lambasting each others' records on criminal justice Monday, as President Barack Obama traveled to Christie's state to promote new initiatives to rehabilitate former prison inmates. 
 
 Speaking on CNN's "New Day," Christie claimed his own policing reforms in the Garden State had led to falling murder rates, adding later Obama "has not supported law enforcement in this country." 
 
 Christie later said Obama was attempting to take credit for reforms he wasn't party to. 
 
 "All of these criminal justice reforms, none of them are his," Christie told reporters outside Camden, New Jersey, suggesting Obama was taking a "victory lap" at Integrity House, a drug rehabilitation center and halfway house in Newark the president stopped at Monday. 
 
 Speaking aboard Air Force One, White House press secretary Josh Earnest countered that Christie was simply seeking to elevate his standing in the 2016 GOP primary contest, where he's currently running near the back of a crowded field of candidates. 
 
 "Gov. Christie's comments in this regard have been particularly irresponsible, but not surprising for somebody whose poll numbers are close to an asterisk," Earnest said. "Clearly this is part of his strategy for turning that around. We'll see if it works." 
 
 In Newark, Obama made his latest push for criminal justice reform, which has become a key domestic priority for the White House. The new actions include "banning the box" requiring applicants to disclose their criminal background on job applications at federal agencies. 
 
 At Integrity House, Obama met with a former inmate and staff at the residential facility. Later he participated in a roundtable on prisoner re-entry into society at Rutgers University, where he addressed the hardships former inmates face when applying for jobs. 
 
 "That's bad not only for those individuals, but for our economy," he said. "It's bad for those communities that desperately need more role models who are gainfully employed. We've got to make sure Americans who have paid their debt to society can earn their second chance." 
 
 The White House Monday announced new actions to promote rehabilitation and reintegration, including $8 million in education grants from the Department of Education and tech training and jobs for individuals with a criminal record. 
 
 Obama is also calling on Congress to "ban the box" on federal job applications that requires job applicants to state if they have a criminal record. 
 
 "Each year, more than 600,000 individuals are released from state and federal prisons," the White House said in a statement. "Advancing policies and programs that enable these men and women to put their lives back on track and earn their second chance promotes not only justice and fairness, but also public safety." 
 
 The Federal Bureau of Prisons announced in October that they would grant early release to about 6,000 inmates between October 30 and November 2. 
 
 The prisoners have served an average of nine years and were due to be released in about 18 months, according to a Justice Department official. Many were already in half-way houses. 
 
 This is the latest push for criminal just reform from the Obama administration. In July, Obama became the first sitting president to visit a federal prison and met with six inmates. 
 
 Obama told NBC's Lester Holt in an exclusive interview clip airing Monday that he's proud of the work he's been able to do on behalf of racial injustice, but said it must continue under the next president. ||||| NEWARK -- President Obama, who has embraced the cause of overhauling the nation's criminal justice system, used New Jersey's largest city as the backdrop Monday to call attention to programs designed to successfully return ex-prisoners to society. 
 
 Obama, making his third trip to the Garden State in a year, visited a Newark facility that provides services to 2,400 people each year, including drug treatment and help with housing and jobs. He held a roundtable discussion at Rutgers-Newark's Center for Law and Justice before speaking at the campus. 
 
 "There are people across the board -- folks who work inside the criminal justice system, folks who are affected by the criminal justice system, who are saying, 'There's got to be a better way,'" Obama told a crowd of 226 at the university. 
 
 RELATED: Obama's Newark trip highlights Booker's criminal justice efforts 
 
 The president announced several steps along those lines, including naming Newark one of five new municipalities that will work with local colleges and employers to offer job training and placement for former prisoners. 
 
 He announced programs to help juveniles seal criminal records and to improve the chances of former prisoners to get government jobs, and grants to provide education and other help for ex-convicts returning to society. 
 
 "We need to make sure Americans who paid their debt to society can earn a second chance," Obama said. "We have seen people who are doing just that." 
 
 While Obama, a Democrat, was announcing his initiatives in Newark, Gov. Chris Christie -- a Republican presidential candidate -- was highlighting his own efforts to overhaul the criminal justice system in Camden, which the president visited in May to discuss its progress in improving relations between police and the communities they are sworn to protect. Obama's trip came after several deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police. 
 
 Unlike during Obama's December visit to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, Christie was not at the airport to welcome the president. 
 
 Obama's first step on his N.J. trip was Integrity House, a non-profit rehabilitation organization that works with drug-and alcohol-addicted criminals. Accompanied by Robin Shorter, director of the Women's Outpatient Programs and director of the Women's Halfway House, he met with three of the residents. 
 
 He then discussed criminal justice issues at Rutgers-Newark around a horseshoe-shaped table with some former prisoners and others involved in helping them return to society. 
 
 
 
 Rutgers-Newark's School of Criminal Justice hosts the New Jersey Scholarship and Transformative Education in Prisons program, which provides courses for prisoners and then helps them continue their education once released. The program works with the state Department of Corrections and State Parole Board. 
 
 In Newark, they are doing "extraordinary work," Obama said, singling out by name some of the people he met on his visit, both those who are trying to become productive members of society and those who are helping them do it. 
 
 Accompanying the president on his trip was Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who has made criminal justice a signature issue since being elected to the Senate. Booker, a former Newark mayor, helped broker a deal with Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and other senators of both parties on a compromise bill that reduces some mandatory sentences and provides certain federal inmates with job training, drug treatment and a chance to be released from prison early. 
 
 Obama endorsed that legislation. "This is an area where we have really seen some strong bipartisan work," he said. 
 
 Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JDSalant. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook. ||||| NEWARK — President Obama ordered federal agencies on Monday to stop asking most prospective employees about their criminal histories at the beginning of the application process, a change long sought by activists to help reintegrate former inmates into society. 
 
 During a trip to Newark, where he visited a residential drug treatment center, Mr. Obama said that America would be stronger if it found ways to move criminals emerging from prison into paying jobs, but that too many employers dismiss applicants out of hand if they are honest and check the box asking whether they have been convicted of a crime. 
 
 “It’s not too late,” Mr. Obama told an audience at the Newark campus of Rutgers University that included a few ex-offenders who had turned their lives around. “There are people who have gone through tough times, they’ve made mistakes, but with a little bit of help, they can get on the right path. And that’s what we have to invest in. That’s what we have to believe. That’s what we have to promote.” 
 
 Mr. Obama directed the federal Office of Personnel Management to delay inquiries into criminal history until later in the hiring process for most competitive federal jobs so applicants are not rejected before having a chance to make a positive impression. Most federal agencies have already taken this step, but officials said new rules would be published in the new year banning requests for criminal backgrounds until the most qualified applicants are sent to a hiring manager. Exceptions will be made for law enforcement, national security and other sensitive positions. ||||| President Barack Obama, alongside Ronald Warlick (L), a correctional officer, tours a cell block at the El Reno Federal Correctional Institution in El Reno, Oklahoma, July 16, 2015. | Getty I could have wound up in prison, Obama tells inmates A visit to a federal prison caps a week in which the president reached out personally to inmates and ex-cons and pressed for sentencing reform. 
 
 EL RENO, Okla. — Instead of the White House, but for the grace of God, Barack Obama could have landed in this sprawling prison compound in central Oklahoma. 
 
 That’s the introspective version of the message the president has stressed during a week of events pushing for criminal justice reform. Mandatory minimum sentences and other harsh drug laws are responsible for prison overcrowding and punishments that don’t fit the crime, he has said. 
 
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 Both publicly and privately, Obama acknowledges that his mischievous, sometimes marijuana-fueled adolescence in Hawaii might have brought about a very different adulthood had it taken place somewhere else. 
 
 “That’s what strikes me — there but for the grace of God,” he said, standing in the middle of Cell Block B, which houses a special drug rehab program. “And that is something that we all have to think about.” 
 
 Obama’s visit to a federal prison — the first by a sitting president — capped a week of efforts to swing the pendulum away from the “tough on crime” drug laws of the 1990s. It included the announcement that he commuted the sentences of 46 nonviolent drug offenders on Monday and a call to action — and Congress — at the NAACP convention in Philadelphia on Tuesday to change sentencing laws, better prepare prisoners to re-enter society and reform the juvenile justice system that starts the cycle of crime and prison for so many American youth — disproportionately black youth. 
 
 In a meeting with ex-cons on Tuesday and during a roundtable with inmates here on Thursday, Obama said he was struck by the fact that societal inequities mean that some misbehaving kids end up behind bars instead of in front of a principal’s desk. 
 
 “When they describe their youth, these are young people who made mistakes that aren’t that different from the mistakes I made, and the mistakes that a lot of you guys made,” Obama said after talking to six nonviolent drug offenders. “The difference is that they did not have the kind of support structures, the second chances, the resources that would allow them to survive those mistakes.” 
 
 Obama has only rarely shared with the public how he views flashpoint moments through his own racial identity. One occurred when the death of a black teenager at the hands of a self-appointed neighborhood watchman in Florida ignited a bitter national debate on guns and racism; Obama observed, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” On another occasion he added: “Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.” 
 
 This week, in some inmates condemned to a cycle of poverty and prison, Obama made it clear that he also sees himself. 
 
 In recent months, a coalition from across the political spectrum has emerged in favor of moving away from mandatory sentences that have bloated prisons with minor offenders, and that made it difficult for them to get a job and return to society upon release. The 2.3 million people currently imprisoned is a five-fold increase over 30 years ago, and an estimated one-third of all Americans have a criminal record. Republicans and Democrats in Congress are approaching a compromise on criminal justice reform, spurred in part by racial unrest sparked by police violence in places like Baltimore and Ferguson, Missouri. 
 
 Obama’s focus on criminal justice reform this week wound up being interrupted by other news, including the conclusion of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. And the novel prison tour, with its photos of the president examining cells in a cavernous block, was overshadowed on cable television by Thursday’s shootings of Marines in Chattanooga, Tennessee. 
 
 But the week’s efforts did provide an opportunity for the president to face, in an intimate way, people whose lives turned out the way his might have, under worse circumstances. 
 
 “It was good to put a name and a face to a lot of the stories that we hear,” said White House spokesman Eric Schultz, speaking to reporters after the president’s prison tour. “These are the stories that move him, in addition to the sort of macro political science that suggests the need for reform.” 
 
 On Tuesday, before his NAACP speech, Obama met with El Sawyer, 37, and three other former prisoners who’ve turned their lives around since their release. 
 
 In contrast to the other offenders Obama has highlighted this week, Sawyer did commit a violent crime. He started dealing drugs when he was 12, and after dozens of arrests and juvenile lockup, he started an eight-year sentence at 17 for shooting a man in a drug turf dispute. 
 
 But unlike almost everyone else Sawyer meets, he said in an interview, Obama did not act wary or nervous around him, nor did he lecture or sound “matter of fact.” 
 
 Sawyer recalled the president telling him that they weren’t so different: “The only difference was the environment I grew up in.” 
 
 “There was people that was around him that literally would check him, because he couldn’t disrespect them or step out of line,” said Sawyer, who now works on films to help other people returning from jail, with funding from the Department of Justice. 
 
 Obama also showed an unusual level of personal empathy in the letters he wrote to the inmates whose sentences he commuted earlier in the week. 
 
 “It will not be easy, and you will confront many who doubt that people with criminal records can change. Perhaps even you are unsure how you will adjust to your new circumstances,” he wrote, concluding : “I believe in your ability to prove the doubters wrong.” 
 
 Sawyer said Obama’s visit to the prison was an important gesture, signaling that inmates and ex-cons “are still Americans.”
– President Obama visited New Jersey today to promote his new efforts to help prisoners re-integrate into society, the Star-Ledger reports. Visiting a facility that helps former inmates and joining a roundtable on the topic at Rutgers University, the president made his case. "There are people across the board—folks who work inside the criminal justice system, folks who are affected by the criminal justice system, who are saying, "There's got to be a better way,'" he told 226 people in attendance at Rutgers. Among his plans, which the New York Times calls "relatively modest": Job applicants with the federal government won't have to reveal their criminal history right away—so they can make an impression first. Obama has also called on Congress to "ban the box" that requires applicants to disclose any past criminal conviction. New education grants and tech training programs will be made available to help former prisoners, the White House said today. A new "National Clean Slate Clearinghouse" will allow certain released prisoners to seal or wipe clean their records. Residents of public housing under the age of 25 will be given the same chance. Obama's visit sparked partisan rancor between Gov. Chris Christie and the White House, CNN reports. Christie accused Obama of piggybacking on criminal-justice reforms that aren't his, and White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest called Christie's remarks "particularly irresponsible, but not surprising for somebody whose poll numbers are close to an asterisk."