Barack Obama became the first sitting US president to visit a federal prison on Thursday, amid a push to reform America’s expensive and overcrowded correctional system.
Obama arrived at El Reno Federal Correctional Institution in Oklahoma, where he is to meet officials and inmates and speak about proposed reforms.
Nearly a quarter of the world’s prison population is concentrated in American jails. The United States accounts for less than five per cent of the world’s population.
Obama wants to cut the number of people incarcerated, as well as curbing the use of solitary confinement and ending mandatory minimum sentences.
