Thursday, August 12, 2021

 

PMT: A glimmer of hope on clemency

 

As most of you, I am an advocate for more vigorous use of clemency by American presidents. I've been able to speak with the last three White House's about it, and have have several meetings with Biden administration officials about what they should do. 

Sadly, there hasn't been much to get excited about. But in today's White House press briefing, we finally got a bread crumb through this exchange with WH spokeswoman (and William and Mary grad) Jen Psaki:

Q    Thank you, Jen. I appreciate it.  There are still roughly 2,000 inmates who were released to home confinement through the CARES Act.  We’ve reported that the Biden administration deemed that the Trump administration was correct in interpreting that that authority would basically end at the end of the pandemic.  Would the President prefer issuing clemency to those inmates, seeing a legislative fix that keep them on home confinement?  Or is he okay seeing them returned back to prison — most of them?

MS. PSAKI:  Well, I saw your reporting.  We all did, of course.  We are working hard every day to reform our justice system in order to strengthen families, boost our economy, give people a chance at a better future. 

As part of this, the President is deeply committed to reducing incarceration, helping people successfully reenter society.  And he has said too many people are incarcerated — too many are Black and brown.  And he is therefore exploring multiple avenues to provide relief for — to certain nonviolent drug offenders, including through the use of his clemency power. 

I don’t have anything to preview for you today, but he is, again, looking at a range of avenues. 

Of course, I know better than to make too much of this. But it does tell me that at least there are some discussions going on at the highest levels, and that's something....

# posted by Mark Osler @ 1:00 AM
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