Biden's clemency order is a lesson in how little we've learned to expect
On Tuesday, the White House announced that President Joe Biden granted clemency to 75 non-violent drug offenders. That’s out of 18,295 clemency petitions. Still, criminal justice reform advocates are happy about it. No other recent president has commuted sentences this early in their first term, and before a midterm to boot, and in the midst of bipartisan agreement that you’ll be gunned down by a crazed, homeless shoplifter if you set foot in any American city.
Mark Osler, American legal scholar and law professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis, who had been concerned about the unprecedented build-up of petitions, is more hopeful after today.
“It's very encouraging that President Biden is willing to use the mechanisms of clemency at this point—earlier than his five immediate predecessors,” Osler told me.
‘The willingness to use clemency is now proven. Now we will see if this administration has the will to continue to use clemency regularly and with principle.”
And, of course, good for those 75 people and their families. The roster of their convictions might be summarized as, “Prosecutors are crazed assholes and you all have been paying taxes to keep grandmas in federal prison for selling a little meth for their shitty boyfriend 30 years ago.” As in, nonviolent drug offenders who have also aged out of committing crimes. Many were already at home because of the CARES Act, which allowed people at high risk for Covid-19 to serve out their sentences in home confinement.
In other words, in terms of real reform, this is the closest thing to nothing Biden could possibly do. Yet, look at how the New York Times presents the action:
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