President Obama will become the first sitting president to visit a federal prison Thursday. The trip, part of Obama’s push for criminal justice reform, comes at a time when nearly half of all federal inmates are imprisoned on drug offenses.
As of July 9, there were 208,102 federal inmates. The population is more than 93 percent male, and a disproportionate number of inmates are black when compared with the country as a whole. The Department of Justice spends $6.5 billion annually to operate the federal prison system.
[ Obama tells NAACP that justice reform is long overdue ]
[ Obama to visit federal prison in Oklahoma on Thursday ]
