Shane Smith Asks President Obama Is the American Justice System Racist

Vice Went To Prison With Obama. Now It's Going Deep Into Inmate Issues (The Huffington Post)

Vice co-founder and CEO Shane Smith put that question to President Barack Obama after running through the grim statistics of how federal mandatory minimum laws have disproportionately hurt poor and minority communities, with long prison sentences issued for nonviolent drug offenses. While 1 in 17 white men will spend time in prison, Smith noted, the rate is 1 in 3 for black men.

"I think the criminal justice system interacts with broader patterns of society in a way that results in injustice and unfairness," Obama told Smith during their July trip to El Reno Federal Prison in Oklahoma, the first time a sitting president has visited a federal penitentiary.

"The system, every study has shown, is biased somewhere institutionally in such a way where an African-American youth is more likely to be suspended from school than a white youth for engaging in the same disruptive behavior, more likely to be arrested, more likely to be charged, more likely to be prosecuted aggressively, more likely to get a stiffer sentence," Obama said.