President Barack Obama is practically sprinting victory laps during his final days in the White House, guiding groundbreaking legislature to fruition and shouting outOutKast on Twitter. Thanks to VICE and HBO, Obama will soon throw down another historical gauntlet by becoming the first sitting president to ever visit a federal prison facility.
According to a press release, Obama will join VICE founder Shane Smith to "tour the facility and meet with prisoners, prison staff, and law enforcement officials." The facility serving as the grounds for this historical HBO special is the El Reno federal prison in central Oklahoma. El Reno currently houses over 1,300 inmates.
"There's an emerging consensus in this country — on both the right and the left — that the way we treat criminal offenders is utterly broken and weakening our society in profound ways," says Smith — and he's right. Current statistics show that the United States currently accounts for 25% of the world's prison population, which — of course — is wholly disproportionate to its 5% share of the world's total population.
