President Joe Biden has been especially active in his final days in office. This week, he gave his farewell address and spoke about the rising American oligarchy, as well as the tech industrial complex. He also spearheaded a long-awaited Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal, which was finalized this week. And now this: what will probably be his final sweep of pardons and commutations. President Biden got a lot of sh-t after Thanksgiving last year when he announced a full and unconditional pardon of his son Hunter Biden. Since then, people have been on “pardon watch” and Pres. Biden has given them a lot to talk about. In December, Biden did sweeping pardons of 1,500 people, mostly people with nonviolent drug-related convictions. He just did another round of commutations today – 2,500 people will have their sentences commuted.
President Biden announced on Friday that he would commute the sentences of nearly 2,500 inmates serving long prison terms for nonviolent drug offenses, the broadest commutation of individual sentences ever issued by a U.S. president.
The commutations are for offenders who received harsher sentences for drug crimes than they would under current practices, a move aimed at reversing longstanding criminal justice disparities, Mr. Biden said. Those disparities disproportionately affected Black people and fueled mass incarceration, many experts say.
“This action is an important step toward righting historic wrongs, correcting sentencing disparities and providing deserving individuals the opportunity to return to their families and communities after spending far too much time behind bars,” Mr. Biden said in a statement.
Mr. Biden said he would consider additional pardons, which wipe out convictions, and commutations, which leave the guilty verdict intact but reduce some or all of the punishment, in the coming days. Among others, Mr. Biden has been considering pre-emptive pardons for a number of former elected officials and other people his successor, President-elect Donald J. Trump, may target for political retribution.
Mr. Biden said his latest commutations would help those who received sentences based on now-discredited distinctions between crack and powder cocaine, or faced inflated charges for drug crimes. Mr. Biden said in his statement that he was following the lead of Congress, which over the past two decades has passed legislation to remedy decades-long disparities spurred by tough-on-crime laws, such as mandatory minimum sentences.
Good. I’m glad he’s doing this and I’m glad he’s been highlighting the issue of drug sentencing and the changes already being made at the state and federal level over mandatory-minimum drug sentencing. I hope he pardons or commutes every nonviolent drug offender, honestly. F–k it. As for the chatter about whether Pres. Biden will issue preemptive pardons to people in Trump’s crosshairs… I don’t know. I will be very curious to see if it happens and whether it would make a difference either way.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
