January 17, 2025
President Biden’s stance on drug offenders has come a great distance because the Eighties.
In his remaining days within the White Home, President Joe Biden has issued pardons for near 2,500 people with nonviolent drug prices, ABC Information stories.
The announcement was handed down simply three days earlier than the Trump-Vance administration takes over.
In an announcement, Biden stated these offenders had “serv[ed] disproportionately lengthy sentences in comparison with the sentences they’d obtain at this time underneath present regulation, coverage, and apply.”
On X, Biden known as the transfer an “necessary step towards righting historic wrongs and offering deserving people the chance to return to their communities after far an excessive amount of time behind bars.”
Biden has come a great distance from his unique stance in opposition to drug offenders. Within the Eighties, the then-senator supported laws that elevated penalties for drug customers. One regulation basically lengthened sentences for crack cocaine customers, typically seen as African-People compared to white individuals who had been labeled as powder cocaine customers.
Many years later, Congress has labored to reverse the damages these legal guidelines did by way of the Truthful Sentencing Act of 2010 and the First Step Act of 2018.
“As we speak’s clemency motion supplies reduction for people who acquired prolonged sentences based mostly on discredited distinctions between crack and powder cocaine, in addition to outdated sentencing enhancements for drug crimes,” Biden wrote.
A 2021 report from The Sentencing Undertaking revealed Black People are stationed in state prisons shut to 5 occasions the speed of white People, in line with CNN. Knowledge confirmed one in 81 Black adults—per 100,000 U.S. resident—was serving time in a state jail.
Senior analyst Ashley Nellis stated the eye-opening numbers solely elevate the narrative that “the felony justice system can’t be completed with out acknowledgment of its racist underpinnings.”
With only a few days remaining as commander-in-chief, Biden stated he’ll “proceed to assessment further commutations and pardons,” highlighting its historic context.
“With this motion, I’ve now issued extra particular person pardons and commutations than any president in U.S. historical past,” Biden stated.
Biden joined a listing of different presidents because the Ford administration, who’ve issued pardons to these deemed pointless to serve time behind bars. Biden’s former boss, Barack Obama, issued 1,700 commutations throughout his two-term bid, lowering lengthy sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.
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