Source: White House / Flickr
President Obama commuted the prison sentences of 58 federal inmates yesterday (May 5th), among them 18 who’d been given life sentences, bringing to 306 the number of people granted clemency by Obama, almost all of them for drug crimes, and the administration has said the pace of commutations will increase as the end of Obama’s presidency nears.
It’s part of a broader effort to overhaul the criminal justice system and ease punishments for nonviolent drug convicts. The president said in a statement yesterday,
“It just doesn’t make sense to require a nonviolent drug offender to serve 20 years, or in some cases, life, in prison. An excessive punishment like that doesn’t fit the crime. It’s not serving taxpayers, and it’s not making us safer.”
I have a feeling that we’re going to see more of these from POTUS.
