Pubdate: Fri, 17 Jul 2015
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2015 The New York Times Company
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Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Peter Baker

PRESIDENT VISITS FEDERAL PRISON

EL RENO, Okla. - They opened the door to Cell 123, and President 
Obama stared inside. In the space of 9 feet by 10 feet, he saw three 
bunks, a toilet with no seat, a night table with books, a small sink, 
prison clothes on a hook, some metal cabinets and the life he might have had.

In becoming the first occupant of his high office to visit a federal 
correctional facility, Mr. Obama could not help reflecting on what 
might have been. After all, as a young man, he smoked marijuana and 
tried cocaine. But he did not end up with a prison term lasting 
decades like some of the men who have occupied Cell 123.

As it turns out, Mr. Obama noted, there is a fine line between 
president and prisoner. "There but for the grace of God," he said 
somberly after his tour. "And that, I think, is something that we all 
have to think about."

In visiting the El Reno prison, Mr. Obama went where no president 
ever had before, both literally and perhaps even figuratively, hoping 
to build support for a bipartisan overhaul of America's criminal 
justice system. While his predecessors worked to toughen life for 
criminals, Mr. Obama wants to make their conditions better.

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 many nonviolent offenders at an enormous 
moral and financial cost. This week, Mr. Obama commuted the sentences 
of 46 such prisoners and gave a speech calling for legislation 
revamping sentencing rules by the end of the year.

He came to the Federal Correctional Institution El Reno, about 30 
miles west of Oklahoma City, for a firsthand look at what he is 
focused on. Accompanied by aides, correctional officials and a 
phalanx of Secret Service agents, Mr. Obama passed through multiple 
layers of metal gates and fences topped by concertina wire gleaming 
in the Oklahoma sun to enter the facility and talk with some of the 
nonviolent drug offenders who he argues should not be serving such 
long sentences.

El Reno, a medium-security prison with a minimum-security satellite 
camp that together house 1,300 men, was locked down for the visit. 
The campus of two-story brick buildings separated by neatly trimmed 
grass remained eerily silent and empty, with no one in sight other 
than a few security officers peering through binoculars from a 
rooftop. Rather than bursting at the seams, it had the antiseptic 
feel of an abandoned military base, except for the cattle being 
raised on the property.

The president was brought to Cell Block B, which had been emptied for 
the occasion, its usual occupants moved to other buildings. The only 
inmates Mr. Obama saw during his visit were six nonviolent drug 
offenders who were selected to have a 45-minute conversation with him 
at a round table. It was recorded for a Vice documentary on criminal 
justice to be shown on HBO in the fall.

The six seemed to make an impression. "When they describe their youth 
and their childhood, 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," Mr. Obama said afterward. "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."

He added that "we have a tendency sometimes to almost take for 
granted or think it's normal" that so many young people have been 
locked up. "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 making mistakes."

Mr. Obama had the benefit of a largely comfortable upbringing and 
attended a premier Honolulu prep school before going on to Ivy League 
universities. If those now in prison for drug crimes had those 
advantages, he said, they "could be thriving the way we are."

Still, he made a distinction between them and criminals guilty of 
crimes like murder, rape and assault. "There are people who need to 
be in prison, and I don't have tolerance for violent criminals," Mr. 
Obama said. "Many of them may have made mistakes, but we need to keep 
our communities safe."

Opened in 1934, the El Reno prison has held its share of murderers, 
rapists, thieves and Mafia figures. At one point, it was home to 
Timothy J. McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, who was later executed. 
But today, its population is made up largely of drug offenders, and 
its most famous resident is probably Kwame Kilpatrick, the former 
Detroit mayor, who was convicted of corruption.

Over the years, the prison has had its own dairy and metal factory. 
Mr. Obama called it an "outstanding institution" with job training, 
drug counseling and other programs, but noted that it had suffered 
from overcrowding. As many as three inmates have been kept in each of 
the tiny cells he saw.

"Three whole-grown men in a 9-by-10 cell," Mr. Obama said with a tone 
of astonishment. Lately, the situation has improved enough to get it 
down to two per cell. But, he said, "overcrowding like that is 
something that has to be addressed."

Hands in his pockets, he was escorted into the residential drug abuse 
prevention unit by Charles E. Samuels Jr., the director of the Bureau 
of Prisons, and Ronald Warlick, a corrections officer. On the walls 
were phone numbers for Crime Stoppers and sexual assault hotlines, as 
well as signs with words like "Change," "Commitment," "Honesty" and 
"Accountability."

Advocates said no president had ever highlighted the conditions of 
prisoners so personally. "They're out of sight and out of mind," 
Cornell William Brooks, the president of the N.A.A.C.P., said in an 
interview. "To have a president say by his actions, by his speech, by 
his example, 'You're in sight and in mind of the American public and 
of this democracy,' it's critically important."

But Mr. Obama is not the only one these days. Republicans have been 
working with their Democratic counterparts to draft legislation 
addressing such concerns. Speaker John A. Boehner said Thursday that 
he would bring bipartisan criminal justice legislation to the House floor.

"Absolutely," he told reporters in Washington. "I have long believed 
that there needed to be reform of our criminal justice system."

Despite the growing consensus, others seem worried. "Victims' rights 
must be at the core of all reforms, and the conversation needs to 
move beyond de-incarceration," said Mai Fernandez, executive director 
of the National Center for Victims of Crime.

"Victims' rights must be at the core of all reforms, and the 
conversation needs to move beyond de-incarceration," Ms. Fernandez said.

For Mr. Obama, the what-ifs were hard to avoid Thursday. As a 
teenager in Hawaii, Mr. Obama "smoked reefer" and snorted "maybe a 
little blow when you could afford it," but "not smack," as he later 
put it in "Dreams From My Father," his memoir. "Junkie. Pothead. 
That's where I'd been headed: the final, fatal role of the young 
would-be black man."

This was no casual experiment. As David Maraniss reported in his 
biography, Mr. Obama and his friends were so enthusiastic about their 
marijuana that they called their group the Choom Gang. Unlike the men 
he met on Thursday, however, Mr. Obama escaped that life and 
ultimately ended up at Harvard Law School, the Senate and now the White House.

He, too, has security around the clock. But they work for him.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom