In April of this year, the Obama administration announced it would “reformulate” clemency guidelines for federal prison offenders. As the Washington Post described it, “Justice Department Prepares for Clemency Requests from Thousands of Inmates.” The paper claimed that this “unprecedented campaign to free nonviolent offenders” would continue for two years and that DOJ would “reassign dozens of lawyers to its understaffed pardons office to handle the requests from inmates.”

Particularly affected would be drug offenders, characterized as unjustly imprisoned through the “failed drug war” and by harsh mandatory sentences. The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 reduced the crack/powder sentencing disparity to 18 to 1, rather than the previous 100 to 1 ratio.