Earlier this summer, President Obama became the first sitting president to visit a federal prison. Reflecting on his conversation with six inmates, he said:
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... 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.
President Barack Obama walks in the Residential Drug Abuse Prevention Unit at El Reno Prison after making a statement to the press, in El Reno, Okla., July 16, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Unfortunately, "support structures" and "second chances" are severely lacking for many in America today, particularly in minority and low-income communities. The United States has the most prisoners of any developed country in the world, both in terms of raw numbers and by percentage of the population. More citizens are behind bars in the US than in Russia, Mexico, Iran, India and China.
Who makes up America's prison population? Often inmates are adults who endured terrible violence and trauma as children, such as witnessing a parent's murder. Astudy by The Sentencing Project found that juveniles who received sentences of life in prison reported witnessing violence in their homes 79% of the time, and more than half (54.1%) witnessed weekly violence in their neighborhoods.
[For more of this story, written by Monica Gray, go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...nswer_b_7978488.html]
Comments (0)