Current Events –
Prison Gets Obama Visit
President Obama made history when he became the first U.S. President to visit a U.S. prison.
Current Events
In an unprecedented visit with nonviolent drug offenders at the medium-security El Reno federal prison in Oklahoma, President Obama filmed a special for HBO’s “Vice” documentary program, which aired this past Sunday night. The presentation highlighted how the United States has too long ignored the effect of high incarceration rates on minority and poor communities.
“As a society we seem to be OK with certain communities being locked in this cycle where kids are being raised around drug crime. They naturally gravitate toward drug crime,” Mr. Obama told 6 inmates during his visit. “They then get involved in the criminal justice system, and it just churns, and everybody thinks that’s normal.”
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, more than 1.5 million Americans were in state or federal prisons at the end of 2013. Interestingly, African-Americans comprised abut a third of those prisoners, despite being 15% of the U.S. population.
Making criminal justice reform a top priority of his final years in office, Mr. Obama said the U.S. justice system “tilts in a direction that is unjust,” especially for nonviolent drug offenses.
“This is an area where the statistics are so skewed, you have to question whether we have become numb to the cost that it has on these communities,” he added.
Upon his arrival, the president shook hands with each of the prisoners and asked them to relax and “just pretend the cameras aren’t here.”
Noting that no sitting U.S. president had ever visited a federal prison, Mr. Obama listened intently as the inmates talked about how they ended up in prison, the impact of incarceration on their families and their hopes for life after their sentences were completed. The president related, noting that he could have been one of them.
“When [the prisoners] describe their youth and their childhood, these are young people who made mistakes that aren’t that different than the mistakes I made,” Mr. Obama told the press following the taping.
This incredible presentation is a must-see, as it has provided proof-positive of what the “War on Drugs” and mandatory minimum sentencing has done to thousands of families and communities across the U.S.
Check your local listings for the dates and times HBO will air encore presentations of “Vice.”
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