The White House has just announced new protocols regarding the retrieval of hostages.

Noting that hostage-takers often operate in “unstable environments that challenge the ability of the United States Government and its partners and allies to operate effectively,” the White House Office of the Press Secretary released a statement, addressing changes that will be made to the nation's approach for retrieving hostages.

The first point of the policy states the United States “is committed to achieving the safe and rapid recovery of U.S. nationals taken hostage outside the United States,” and that the government “will work in a coordinated effort to leverage all instruments of national power to recover U.S. nationals held hostage abroad, unharmed.”

The policy fact sheet includes a number of changes, including the creation of a new bureaucratic body for the handling of hostage cases.

There are currently more than 30 Americans being held hostage overseas.

Speaking today about the more than 80 hostage cases that have occurred since 2001, President Barack Obama said he had listened to the complaints of the hostages' families that have sometimes been confronted with the threat of criminal charges based upon the notion that paying a ransom to get their loved ones back is a form of terrorist support.

As reported in NPR, the president said, "These families have suffered enough, and they should never feel ignored or victimized by their own government."

Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Republican from California, has voiced his opposition to the new policy, saying, "The money that we're going to be paying ISIS is going to be used to buy arms and to buy equipment to fight Americans and to fight the Iraqis," reported Fox News.

Many family members of U.S. hostages have been very critical of the previous policy.

A senior official speaking to the New York Times admits that there has been tremendous confusion about what the previous policy actually meant.

“We needed to clarify that even as we have a no-concessions policy, we do not abandon families during a horrific ordeal,” he said, adding that the prosecution threats that have been aimed at families “should never have happened.”