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Joe Biden, who leaves office next week, announced on Friday he was commuting the sentences of nearly 2,500 people convicted of non-violent drug offences, saying he had now issued more individual pardons and commutations than any predecessor.
The US president said in a statement that those benefiting from Friday’s action were “serving disproportionately long sentences compared to the sentences they would receive today under current law, policy and practice”.
The move provides clemency relief to individuals who were sentenced based on discredited distinctions between crack and powder cocaine, and outdated sentencing enhancements for drug crimes, according to the statement issued by the White House.
The unprecedented wave of commutations reflects a last-minute push by the Biden administration to remedy what critics have long described as systemic inequities in federal drug sentencing.
“Too often, our criminal justice reforms only apply to the law going forward, leaving behind the very people and injustices that moved us to change,” the FWD.us executive director, Zoë Towns, said in a statement.
It also marks one of the most significant mass clemency actions in US history, addressing the controversial crack-powder cocaine sentencing disparity that disproportionately affected communities of color – a policy partly shaped by Biden’s own 1994 crime bill and long criticized by reform advocates.
In December, Biden commuted the sentences for 37 of 40 federal inmates on death row, converting them to life in prison without parole, before Donald Trump’s return to the Oval Office on 20 January.
He also announced in the same month that he was pardoning 39 people convicted of non-violent crimes, and commuting the sentences of nearly 1,500 others who were serving long prison terms.
Biden has faced criticism for pardoning his son Hunter, who had pleaded guilty to tax violations and was convicted on firearms-related charges.
Defence attorneys and civil rights groups had ramped up efforts to highlight compelling cases and launched campaigns to help those they believed were wrongly convicted or were serving excessive terms for nonviolent offences.
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Presidents typically order a round of pardons toward the end of their time in office.
Trump has promised to grant clemency to at least some of his supporters who stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 in a failed attempt to block Congress from certifying Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Reuters contributed reporting
