President Barack Obama, alongside Ronald Warlick (L), a correctional officer, tours a cell block at the El Reno Federal Correctional Institution in El Reno, Oklahoma, July 16, 2015. I could have wound up in prison, Obama tells inmates A visit to a federal prison caps a week in which the president reached out personally to inmates and ex-cons and pressed for sentencing reform.

EL RENO, Okla. — Instead of the White House, but for the grace of God, Barack Obama could have landed in this sprawling prison compound in central Oklahoma.

That’s the introspective version of the message the president has stressed during a week of events pushing for criminal justice reform. Mandatory minimum sentences and other harsh drug laws are responsible for prison overcrowding and punishments that don’t fit the crime, he has said.


Both publicly and privately, Obama acknowledges that his mischievous, sometimes marijuana-fueled adolescence in Hawaii might have brought about a very different adulthood had it taken place somewhere else.

“That’s what strikes me — there but for the grace of God,” he said, standing in the middle of Cell Block B, which houses a special drug rehab program. “And that is something that we all have to think about.”

Obama’s visit to a federal prison — the first by a sitting president — capped a week of efforts to swing the pendulum away from the “tough on crime” drug laws of the 1990s. It included the announcement that he commuted the sentences of 46 nonviolent drug offenders on Monday and a call to action — and Congress — at the NAACP convention in Philadelphia on Tuesday to change sentencing laws, better prepare prisoners to re-enter society and reform the juvenile justice system that starts the cycle of crime and prison for so many American youth — disproportionately black youth.

In a meeting with ex-cons on Tuesday and during a roundtable with inmates here on Thursday, Obama said he was struck by the fact that societal inequities mean that some misbehaving kids end up behind bars instead of in front of a principal’s desk.

“When they describe their youth, these are young people who made mistakes that aren’t that different from the mistakes I made, and the mistakes that a lot of you guys made,” Obama said after talking to six nonviolent drug offenders. “The difference is that they did not have the kind of support structures, the second chances, the resources that would allow them to survive those mistakes.”

Obama has only rarely shared with the public how he views flashpoint moments through his own racial identity. One occurred when the death of a black teenager at the hands of a self-appointed neighborhood watchman in Florida ignited a bitter national debate on guns and racism; Obama observed, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” On another occasion he added: “Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.”

This week, in some inmates condemned to a cycle of poverty and prison, Obama made it clear that he also sees himself.

In recent months, a coalition from across the political spectrum has emerged in favor of moving away from mandatory sentences that have bloated prisons with minor offenders, and that made it difficult for them to get a job and return to society upon release. The 2.3 million people currently imprisoned is a five-fold increase over 30 years ago, and an estimated one-third of all Americans have a criminal record. Republicans and Democrats in Congress are approaching a compromise on criminal justice reform, spurred in part by racial unrest sparked by police violence in places like Baltimore and Ferguson, Missouri.

Obama’s focus on criminal justice reform this week wound up being interrupted by other news, including the conclusion of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. And the novel prison tour, with its photos of the president examining cells in a cavernous block, was overshadowed on cable television by Thursday’s shootings of Marines in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

But the week’s efforts did provide an opportunity for the president to face, in an intimate way, people whose lives turned out the way his might have, under worse circumstances.

“It was good to put a name and a face to a lot of the stories that we hear,” said White House spokesman Eric Schultz, speaking to reporters after the president’s prison tour. “These are the stories that move him, in addition to the sort of macro political science that suggests the need for reform.”

On Tuesday, before his NAACP speech, Obama met with El Sawyer, 37, and three other former prisoners who’ve turned their lives around since their release.

In contrast to the other offenders Obama has highlighted this week, Sawyer did commit a violent crime. He started dealing drugs when he was 12, and after dozens of arrests and juvenile lockup, he started an eight-year sentence at 17 for shooting a man in a drug turf dispute.

But unlike almost everyone else Sawyer meets, he said in an interview, Obama did not act wary or nervous around him, nor did he lecture or sound “matter of fact.”

Sawyer recalled the president telling him that they weren’t so different: “The only difference was the environment I grew up in.”

“There was people that was around him that literally would check him, because he couldn’t disrespect them or step out of line,” said Sawyer, who now works on films to help other people returning from jail, with funding from the Department of Justice.

Obama also showed an unusual level of personal empathy in the letters he wrote to the inmates whose sentences he commuted earlier in the week.

“It will not be easy, and you will confront many who doubt that people with criminal records can change. Perhaps even you are unsure how you will adjust to your new circumstances,” he wrote, concluding : “I believe in your ability to prove the doubters wrong.”

Sawyer said Obama’s visit to the prison was an important gesture, signaling that inmates and ex-cons “are still Americans.”