Obama’s Tragic Let ’em Out Fantasy

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The Wall Street Journal : Obama’s Tragic Let ’em Out Fantasy The president leads the charge to cut the prison population, but mass incarceration isn’t the problem. Rising crime is.

By

HEATHER MAC DONALD

 

 

Oct. 23, 2015 6:25 p.m. ET

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President Obama paid a media-saturated visit in July to a federal penitentiary in Oklahoma. The cell blocks that he toured had been evacuated in anticipation of his arrival, but after talking to six prescreened inmates he drew some conclusions about the path to prison. “These are young people who made mistakes that aren’t that different than the mistakes I made and the mistakes that a lot of you guys made,” the president told the waiting journalists. The implication was that anyone who had smoked marijuana and tried cocaine (as Mr. Obama had) could land in a place like the El Reno Federal Correctional Institution.