Obama Talks to Inmates in Federal Prison

President Obama spoke Thursday to six inmates at a medium-security federal prison in El Reno, Oklahoma. He remarked afterward that good work was being done at the prison, but, like many others, it is overcrowded. Mandatory minimum prison sentences are a “huge driver” of overpopulation in prisons, he said, and society should reconsider whether nonviolent drug offenders should end up with sentences of more than 20 years. Obama this week commuted the sentences of 46 nonviolent offenders, almost all of whom were serving time for drug offenses.