Obama sets single- year record for commutations
688 this year, 872 in office in bid to lighten sentences
President Obama granted 98 more commutations to federal inmates Thursday, bringing the total for this year to 688 — the most commutations ever granted by a president in a single year.
In all, he’s now shortened the sentences of 872 inmates during his presidency, more than any president since Woodrow Wilson.
The actions were part of Obama’s extraordinary effort to use his constitutional power to rectify what he sees as unduly harsh sentences imposed during the “War on Drugs.”
Through a clemency initiative announced in 2014, he’s effectively resentenced hundreds of non- violent drug dealers to the sentences they would have received under today’s more lenient sentencing guidelines.
Unlike a full pardon, a commutation only shortens the sentence while leaving other consequences — such as courtordered supervision — intact.
But while Obama’s commutation grants get most of the attention, he’s also been quietly denying a record number of commutations — a function of the unprecedented number of applications submitted through the clemency initiative. On Oct. 6, for example, the White House announced that Obama granted 102 commutations.
A week later, Justice Department statistics revealed that he had denied 2,917 commutation petitions on Sept. 30.