President Biden used his clemency powers Wednesday to order the early release of five people imprisoned for dealing crack cocaine in recognition of Second Chance Month — while making no headway on fulfilling a campaign promise to release “everyone” in prison for marijuana offenses.
“America is a Nation founded on the promise of second chances. During Second Chance Month, we reaffirm our commitment to rehabilitation and reentry for people returning to their communities post incarceration,” the 81-year-old president said in a statement.
“We also recommit to building a criminal justice system that lives up to those ideals and ensures that everyone receives equal justice under law. That is why today I am announcing steps I am taking to make this promise a reality.”
Biden, who wrote or cosponsored some of the nation’s harshest federal drug laws in the 1980s and ’90s, said that he chose to issue commutations to the five crack offenders because they would have been given more lenient sentences today — continuing a long-running effort dating to the Obama administration to identify and retroactively reduce such sentences.
It’s unclear why Biden chose to free none of the estimated 2,700 federal marijuana-dealing inmates, as he promised to do at a Democratic primary debate in 2019.
