When President Obama issued his latest batch of commutations last week, the White House called them “102 second chances.” Obama, who shortened just one sentence during his first term, is finally taking advantage of his second chance by issuing more commutations “than the previous 11 presidents combined” (as the White House puts it), 97 percent of them in the second half of his second term.
While Obama deserves credit for his belated but numerically impressive mercy, it should not obscure the fact that most of the people whose petitions he has granted did not belong in prison to begin with, writes Jacob Sullum. Thousands more like them are still behind bars thanks to the moral travesty known as the war on drugs.
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