President Obama will travel to Oklahoma’s El Reno Correctional Institution, home to Jason Hernandez – a prisoner convicted on drug charges who had his life sentence commuted by Obama in 2013, reports Vice News.
The trip, which will be recorded for a Vice documentary airing on HBO this fall, comes amidst the Obama administration’s broader efforts towards creating what it sees as a fairer US criminal justice system, mostly in response to tougher drug laws that disproportionately imprisoned minorities.
The New York Times reports that in the coming weeks, Obama is expected to issue orders freeing dozens of federal prisoners locked up on nonviolent drug offenses, possibly taking the total number of commutations under his presidency to more than 80.
This will mean he will probably commute more sentences at one time than any president has in nearly half a century.
Lyndon B. Johnson commuted the sentences of 80 prisoners in the 1966 fiscal year. No president has matched that feat in his entire administration, let alone a single year. Currently, Obama has commuted four times as many prisoners as President George W. Bush – although Bush has pardoned many more, Vox reports.
Pardons are acts of presidential forgiveness that erase any remaining legal liabilities. Commutations reduce sentence lengths but don’t restore civil rights lost as a result of conviction.
While Obama’s efforts at clemency are extraordinary by presidential historical norms, critics say the steps are symbolic and are dwarfed by the scale of the issue.
More than 30,000 federal inmates have come forward in response to his administration’s call for clemency applications, The New York Times reports.
Obama’s commitment to easing punishments has been evident since his first term when he signed a law that reduced disparities in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine-related crimes. In those four years, his attorney general at the time, Eric H. Holder Jr., also issued new guidelines for prosecutors to avoid “excessive” prison terms.