WASHINGTON – U.S. President Barack Obama will use his final year in office to push for reforms to his country’s crowded prison system, aides say in previewing his final State of the Union speech, to be delivered Tuesday.

He’ll be identifying criminal-justice reform as an issue where lawmakers from different parties might co-operate and reduce incarceration rates that are the highest in the world.

It’s a rare potential point of agreement between the president and the Republican-controlled Congress, which has sought to obstruct or overturn major parts of his agenda such as health and immigration reform.

The focus of the U.S. capital is now shifting beyond Obama to the race to succeed him, as the first presidential nomination contests loom just weeks away.

But on Monday, a presidential spokesman listed legislative objectives the president plans to achieve in his final year. As expected, one is a vote to ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.

Another is reducing the sky-high imprisonment rate — which the president has previously described as particularly devastating to minority communities.

“There’s certainly a lot that we have to get done over the course of the next year. That includes criminal justice reform,” said Obama spokesman Josh Earnest, previewing the annual speech.

“We’ve seen that there is strong bipartisan support for criminal-justice reform on Capitol Hill — and the White House has worked hard to try to nurture the bipartisan agreement that will be required to pass that legislation.”

Talk of reform was echoed by the top-ranking figure in Congress, who’s not normally an Obama booster. House Speaker Paul Ryan expressed optimism that a bill could be introduced within six months.

He said he had consulted key conservatives in his caucus in a push to get a bill through before the capital becomes paralyzed by presidential politics.

“The silly season is going to kick in pretty fast,” Ryan said in an interview with Politico.

“I think criminal-justice reform is probably the biggest (issue) we can make a difference on.… There’s a real way forward on that.”

The U.S. has by far the highest incarceration rate of any developed country — triple that of the next-highest OECD country, Chile, and more than six times that of Canada.

But that rate has declined for the first time in years, amid a rare bipartisan push from conservatives and liberals in multiple states to bring down prison costs by reducing penalties for non-violent crimes.

Some politicians have also put the issue in moral terms, like Republican presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul, who has pushed for more lenient drug sentences.

So has Obama.

The president has already pardoned 184 convicts, more than any predecessor in decades; instructed federal prosecutors to avoid requesting maximum sentences; signed a bill that reduces the inequality of penalties for crack versus powder cocaine; and insisted that federal employers only ask about past convictions late in the job-interview process.

In a speech to the NAACP last year, Obama called for more lenient sentences; better job-training for inmates; and more investments in early-childhood education.

He described the impact of the tough-on-crime era on African-American and Latino communities.

“A growing body of research shows that people of colour are more likely to be stopped, frisked, questioned, charged, detained. African Americans are more likely to be arrested,” he said.

“Our nation is being robbed of men and women who could be workers and taxpayers, could be more actively involved in their children’s lives.”

He noted the skyrocketing imprisonment rates since 1980 — with the U.S. now claiming 25 per cent of the world’s prisoners, despite having just five per cent of its population.

“The good news,” he said, “and this is truly good news, is that good people of all political persuasions are starting to think we need to do something about this.”