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Friday 17 Jul 2015 - 13:25 Makkah mean time-1-10-1436
El Reno Correctional Institution, Oklahoma (AFP image)
Oklahoma (IINA) – Barack Obama on Thursday became the first sitting US president to visit a prison after his arrival in El Reno Federal Correctional Institution in Oklahoma State, in the South Central region of the United States.
The visit aimed to highlight the loopholes in one of the most expensive and overcrowded correctional system in the world, and to place Obama ahead of his counterparts in China and Russia.
Nearly a quarter of the world's prison population is concentrated in American jails. However, the United States accounts for less than five percent of the world's population.
Obama wants to cut the number of people imprisoned, curb use of solitary confinement and end mandatory minimum sentences.
"There's a long history of inequity in the criminal justice system in America, we cannot continue to turn a blind eye" Obama said this week.
"Our criminal justice system isn't as smart as it should be," he said, after commuting the sentences of 46 non-violent drug offenders.
There are now 2.2 million men and women who are serving time in jails and prisons in the United States, which means that America has more inmates than that of the top 35 European countries combined.
Black and Latino Americans represent 60 percent of the prison population while around 30 percent of prisoners are white.
The US prison system has seen an explosion in costs. At $80 billion, the budget for prisons represents a third of the Department of Justice's annual spending.
AB/IINA
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