President Barack Obama on Thursday became the first sitting U.S. president to enter a federal prison, doing so as part of a push to reform harsh penalties for nonviolent offenders.
Obama spoke for about eight minutes at a medium-security facility in El Reno, Oklahoma, after visiting with six inmates convicted of nonviolent drug crimes.
"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,” said Obama, who has freely admitted using marijuana and cocaine in his youth.
“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,” he said, according to a White House pool report.
"We have a tendency sometimes to take for granted or think it's normal that so many young people end up in our criminal justice system,” he said. “It's not normal, it's not what happens in other countries. What is normal is teenagers doing stupid things. ... And we've got to be able to distinguish between dangerous individuals who need to be incapacitated and incarcerated versus young people who ... given different opportunities, a different vision of life, [could thrive].”
During his historic drop-in, Obama toured a 9-foot-by-10-foot cell that houses three inmates and noted the prison has “enormous overcrowding issues.” Footage of his prison tour and an interview with journalist Shane Smith will be broadcast on an upcoming episode of the HBO show “Vice.”
The United States has more prisoners than any other country in the world and is believed to also have the highest per capita incarceration rate. In 2014, the federal prison population declined for the first time in 34 years. There were 213,901 federal inmates in November. About 2 million more were in state or local custody.
“My goal is that we start seeing some improvements at the federal level and we're then able to see states across the country pick up the baton,” Obama said, according to the pool report.
The president has been on a tear this week advocating for criminal justice reform, commuting the sentences of 46 people convicted of drug crimes Monday and asking Congress to pass legislation rescinding mandatory minimum sentences that tie the hands of judges.
On Tuesday, Obama urged better conditions in prisons at the NAACPconvention in Philadelphia, specifically denouncing overcrowding, gang activity and rape.
"If you're a low-level drug dealer, or you violate your parole, you owe some debt to society," he said during that speech. "But you don't owe 20 years. You don't owe a life sentence. That's disproportionate to the price that should be paid."
On Wednesday, the president praised senators at a press conference -- including Republicans Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah -- for sponsoring legislation that would reduce sentences.
Obama has long pushed to roll back the so-called war on drugs and harsh treatment of crack cocaine offenses, legacies of Presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.
Citing prosecutorial discretion, the Obama administration has allowed states to regulate retail recreational marijuana stores despite federal law’s ban on marijuana possession, and in 2010 he signed legislation narrowing the gap in penalties for crack and powder cocaine.
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