On Thursday, the White House posted a video to its account of President Obama interviewing The Wire creator David Simon. The video seems to be part of the White House’s push to reach more of the voting population through the Internet and other media.
The interview began with a bit of fanboying from the president, who said, “At the front end, I’ve gotta tell you, I’m a huge fan of The Wire. I think it’s one of the greatest, not just television shows, but pieces of art, in the last couple of decades.”
But the real crux of the conversation was the discussion of the War on Drugs and of prison reform.
Simon described his reporter’s eye view of the War on Drugs during the 1980s “at a time when people thought they could arrest their way out of a drug problem.”
Obama responded by saying that the push had caused a “reduction in violent crime in most big cities in America,” which is definitely a good thing, but that “a consequence of that was this massive trend towards incarceration, even toward non-violent drug offenders.”
He also described an “explosion” of incarceration rates that affects “disproportionately African-American people” and leaves many with conviction records that make them “functionally unemployable.”
But he went on to say that there was some “good news” on the topic of prison reform, namely “an increasing realization, on the left but also on the right, politically, that what we’re doing is counterproductive… We’re all responsible for finding a solution to this.”
Watch the entire video for yourself below.
