President Obama Makes Historic Visit To Federal Prison

As part of a weeklong focus on inequities in the criminal justice system, the president will meet separately Thursday with law enforcement officials and nonviolent drug offenders who are paying their debt to society at the El Reno Federal Correctional Institution, a medium-security prison for male offenders near Oklahoma City.

The situation was tense, as Secret Service and prison guards worked to ensure the president’s safety while he strolled through Cell Block B. Many of them had stories like our next guest, Jason Hernandez, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole in 1998 for his role in a drug conspiracy, starting when he was only 15. Even the camera team had difficulty getting a decent shot in such a tiny space.

But a much more comprehensive program is needed to create a fairer and more rational system in America, and surprisingly enough a broadly based coalition of unlikely allies has come together to press for a solution.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Visiting with these six individuals, and I’ve said this before, when they describe their youth and their childhood, these are-these are young people who made mistakes that aren’t that different than the mistakes I made and the mistakes that a lot of you guys made. That’s what strikes me.

“We think it’s normal that so many young people end up in the criminal justice system“. In turn, they told him their tales.

He stepped into Cell 123 as he if was on the wrong end of a statistic – one of 2.2 million inmates and 1 in 35 African-American men in the entire country, a convict of a non-violent crime leading to $80 million, and part of a quarter of the world’s prison inhabitants. “The difference is they did not have the kinds of support structures, the second chances, the resources that would allow them to survive those mistakes”.

On Monday, the president commuted the sentences of 46 federal prisoners who had been incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses.

For the unprecedented visit, guards cleared prisoners from the building where Obama toured and spoke.

At a time when systematic and un-punished police violence, indefensible economic inequality along racial lines, and a broken criminal justice system are becoming increasingly unavoidable issues, the President’s call for attention to the way in which our prison and criminal justice system reflects our priorities and values is welcome. Mandatory minimum-sentencing guidelines from then would be altered under steps being considered in Congress for non-violent drug offenders.