In 2015, Barack Obama became the first sitting president to visit a federal prison after touring and spending time with those incarcerated at the El Reno Federal Correctional Institute in Oklahoma. Two years later, he wrote a 56-page commentary in the Harvard Law Review about our country’s “flawed approach to criminal justice” — both during and after people have completed their sentences.
He concluded the article by writing: “How we treat those who have made mistakes speaks to who we are as a society and is a statement about our values — about our dedication to fairness, equality, and justice, and about how to protect our families and communities from harm, heal after loss and trauma, and lift back up those among us who have earned a chance at redemption.”
