Sentence Commutations

To date the president has commuted the sentences of 562 federal prisoners and has stated that he’s not finished yet. While this has been alarming to many readers, there is a certain merit in his actions. Noteworthy is the fact that he has commuted more sentences that the past none presidents combined.

There are some specific criteria used for consideration such as applicants prioritized for release must be "without significant ties to large-scale criminal organizations, gangs or cartels," "have demonstrated good conduct in prison" and "have served at least 10 years of their prison sentence," among other criteria. They also must be serving a sentence that likely would be lower today if they were to be convicted of the same offense.

To date I have not found a breakdown by race, crime, age, etc. that would tell us more about these people that have been released. It would be interesting to see such demographics, if for no other reason than to verify the simplicity of selection.

Normally I would be opposed to such an action, but events over the past decade have shown a disproportionate number of persons sentenced where there was an overwhelming lack of evidence. We have seen quite a few death row prisoners released thanks to DNA evidence, but just as astounding is the number of states that REQUIRE the individual to sign off on a guarantee then will not file suite against the offending state legal system. Has to make you wonder just exactly why. It also makes me of the opinion that no prosecutor should ever be immune from prosecution, particularly since one of the pillars of our legal system clearly stated “better 100 guilty men go unpunished, than one innocent man be wrongly punished”.

The US Prison systems started going toward privatization in the 1980’s with a promise of lower costs, but this has not been the case, in fact there are a number of legal actions against private prisons that claim the internal workings promote prisoner misconduct in order to extend prisoner sentences for greater profitability for the prison. There have been many different approaches to improving human rights as well as prison conditions, but to date the general public has been inclined towards tougher laws, longer prisoner sentences, and less leniency.

The US is #2 in the number of prisoners, per capita in the world, just behind Seychelles, a country in the Indian ocean with a population of just 93,000 as compared to the US with a population of roughly 300 million. The numbers of those in prison has escalated from roughly 0.5 million in 1980 to a high of 2.4 million at current day.

In studying prisons around the world, there are a few that have excelled in making incarceration much more human and nearly eliminated the number of returning felons. Their systems are radical by US standards, but the results speak for themselves and while a number of US prisons are studying the approach, changes will be extremely slow due to the existing prison populations.

Considering the president is a Constitutional Scholar, having taught Constitutional law, he indeed may be the best qualified person to make such judgements and even if he isn’t, the approach of releasing non-violent prisoners and giving them that needed 2nd chance may turn out to be a good thing. I surely hope there is someone out there that has started tracking these people and keeps records on how many are successful and how many squander the opportunity. That will, after all, be the proof of success or failure, and perhaps another lesson will be learned.