President Obama has upped his use of executive power to grant clemency and pardons to thousands of federal prisoners, rushing to get them done before President-elect Trump takes office and possibly grinds things to a halt.
Through his clemency initiative, which he launched in 2014, Obama has commuted the sentences of 1,176 individuals. He has also granted an additional 148 pardons.
Neither Trump nor his transition team have said how his administration will address Obama’s clemency initiative. But based on how he campaigned as the “law and order” candidate, it is expected to be a completely different justice system.
Trump has spoken extensively of how he wants to change the nation’s crime policies, both when gave his “law and order” speech in August and when he released his 100-day action plan in October.
“I am going to support more police in our communities, appoint the best prosecutors and judges in the country, pursue strong enforcement of federal laws, and I am going to break up the gangs, the cartels and criminal syndicates terrorizing our neighborhoods,” Trump said in August. “To every lawbreaker hurting innocent people in this country, I say: Your free reign will soon come crashing to an end.”
In that same month during a rally in Florida, Trump criticized Obama’s clemency program, saying: “Some of these people are bad dudes. These are people out walking the streets. Sleep tight, folks.”
Trump has also criticized politicians such as Gov. Terry McAuliffe, D-Va., who restored the voting rights of ex-felons. And he spoke of his support of private prisons, calling the federal prison system “a disaster” during a town hall meeting in March. In August, the Justice Department announced it would phase out the use of private prisons.
One possible tell of criminal justice under Trump would be Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, whom he nominated to be attorney general. For example, Sessions earlier this year helped block broader bipartisan drug sentencing reform in the Senate.
One criminal justice reform and clemency advocate is optimistic Trump could keep Obama’s initiative alive.
“We shouldn’t discount Trump’s ability to do good regarding clemency,” Mark Osler, a law professor at the University St. Thomas, told the Washington Examiner. “The current process is terrible — a broken business model. It goes through seven sequential levels of review and four federal buildings. A businessman can’t help but see the problem in that.”
Osler joined a handful of clemency advocates in writing a letter to Obama in June asking him to fulfill more clemency requests before leaving office.
“In order to fully address the problems caused by mandatory sentencing two initiatives will need to take place,” Mark Mauer, executive director of the Sentence Project, told the Examiner. “First, the new Congress should take up the sentencing reform legislation that has gained bipartisan support and enact policies that can scale back the impact of mandatory sentencing,” he said. “Second, the incoming president should continue to use the clemency powers that come with the office. Clemency is neither a liberal nor conservative issue, but rather a means by which the executive can remedy injustices that have taken place in the sentencing process.”
Kevin Ring, vice president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, said the same thing of Trump: “We are optimistically viewing him as a blank slate.”
It is rare that Obama’s use of executive power to do something has for the most part been met with positive reviews — but his clemency initiative has been.
Ring explained those inmates who have been released are not violent cases.
“These are drug offenses with sentences that far exceed the severity of their crime,” Ring explained. “That the president can do this [grant clemency] and there’s not much outcry,” should give people pause as to “what kind of people we are sending away.”
