President Barack Obama meets with non-violent inmates in Oklahoma

President Barack Obama became the first sitting president to see the inside of a federal prison on Thursday in Oklahoma. The president met with non-violent inmates in Oklahoma on his quest to rally for criminal justice reform.

“These are young people who made mistakes that aren’t that different from mistakes that I made and that a lot of you guys made,” the president said, referencing his own adolescent drug use.

“The difference is they did not have the same support structures. The same resources that would allow them to survive those mistakes.”

Non-Violent Inmates visit

The visit caps a week of events aimed at rallying support for criminal justice reform. On Monday, President Obama commuted the sentences of 46 non-violent drug offenders, 14 of whom were serving life sentences. The following day, Obama detailed his vision for criminal justice reform in a speech before the NAACP’s annual convention.

“We keep more people behind bars than the top 35 European countries combined,” the president said at the convention, decrying the explosive growth of America’s prison population, which swelled from approximately 500,000 in 1980 to more than 2.2 million by 2015.