Obama, in Oklahoma, takes reform message to the prison cell block
EL RENO, Okla. — They opened the door to Cell 123 and President Obama
stared inside. In the space of 9 feet by 10, he saw three bunks, a
toilet with no seat, a small sink, metal cabinets, a little wooden night
table with a dictionary and other books, and the life he might have
had.
As
it turns out, there is a fine line between president and prisoner. As
Mr. Obama became the first occupant of his high office to visit a
federal correctional facility, he said he could not help reflecting on
what might have been. After all, as a young man, he had smoked marijuana
and tried cocaine. But he did not end up with a prison term, let alone
one lasting decades.
“There but for the grace of God,” Mr. Obama said after his tour. “And that is something we all have to think about.”
Close to one in every 12 black men ages 25 to 54 are imprisoned, compared with one in 60 nonblack men in that age group.
Mr.
Obama came here to showcase a bid to overhaul America’s criminal
justice system in a way none of his predecessors have tried to do, at
least not in modern times. Where other presidents worked to make life
harder for criminals, Mr. Obama wants to make their conditions better.
With
18 months left in office, he has embarked on a new effort to reduce
sentences for nonviolent offenders; to make it easier for former
convicts to re-enter society; and to revamp prison life by easing
overcrowding, cracking down on inmate rape and limiting solitary
confinement.
What
was once politically unthinkable has become a bipartisan venture. Mr.
Obama is making common cause with Republicans and Democrats who have
come to the conclusion that the United States has given excessive
sentences to too many nonviolent offenders, at an enormous moral and
financial cost to the country. This week, Mr. Obama commuted the sentences of 46 such prisoners and gave a speech calling for legislation to overhaul the criminal justice system by the end of the year.
He
came to the El Reno Federal Correctional Institution on Thursday to get
a firsthand look at what he is focused on. Accompanied by aides,
correctional officials and a phalanx of Secret Service agents, he
crossed through multiple layers of metal gates and fences topped by
concertina wire to tour the prison and talk with some of the nonviolent
drug offenders he says should not be serving such long sentences.
The
prison was locked down for his visit. He was brought to Cell Block B,
which had been emptied for the occasion. Only security personnel were
outside on the carefully trimmed grass yards. The only inmates Mr. Obama
saw were six nonviolent drug offenders who were selected to have a
conversation with him recorded by the news organization Vice for a
documentary on the criminal justice system that will air on HBO in the
fall.
But
those six made an impression. “When they describe their youth and their
childhood, 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,” Mr. Obama told reporters afterward. “The difference is, they
did not have the kind of support structures, the second chances, the
resources that would allow them to survive those mistakes.”
He
added that “we have a tendency sometimes to take for granted or think
it’s normal” that so many young people have been locked up for drug
crimes. “It’s not normal,” he said. “It’s not what happens in other
countries. What is normal is teenagers doing stupid things. What is
normal is young people who make mistakes.”
If they had the same advantages he and others have had, Mr. Obama added, they “could be thriving in the way we are.”
1.5 Million Missing Black Men
Across the country, hundreds of thousands of black men are missing from everyday life.
Still,
he made a distinction between nonviolent drug offenders like those he
was introduced to here and other criminals guilty of crimes like murder,
rape and assault. “There are people who need to be in prison,” Mr.
Obama said. “I don’t have tolerance for violent criminals; many of them
may have made mistakes, but we need to keep our communities safe.”
More
than 2.2 million Americans are behind bars, and one study found that
the size of the state and federal prison population is seven times what
it was 40 years ago. Although the United States makes up less than 5
percent of the world’s population, it has more than 20 percent of its
prison population
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