If he wins the White House, Democratic presidential candidate and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker wants to make it easier for nonviolent federal drug offenders to seek mercy and get their sentences commuted.
President Barack Obama ended his two terms in office having issued more than 1,700 commutations.
More than 500 of those commutations came during his last week in office.
If not for the Obama administration's guidelines, thousands more could have been released before his term ended if the process had been more efficient.
Today, Booker announced that if he is elected president, he would on his very first day in office launch "The most sweeping clemency initiative in more than 150 years," an approach that could impact more than 17,000 nonviolent federal drug prisoners.
According to a piece he posted at Medium, Booker would target three classes of prisoners: People in federal prison for marijuana-related offenses; people who are serving sentences that would have been reduced under the First Step Act passed by President Donald Trump if the act had been retroactive; and anybody still serving time because of sentencing disparities between crack cocaine and powder cocaine convictions.
Booker intends to revise the Obama administration's process, speeding it up by moving much of the work from the Department of Justice to a new Executive Clemency Panel within the White House.
https://reason.com/2019/06/20/cory-booker-proposes-thousands-of-drug-war-commutations-if-elected-president/
President Barack Obama ended his two terms in office having issued more than 1,700 commutations.
More than 500 of those commutations came during his last week in office.
If not for the Obama administration's guidelines, thousands more could have been released before his term ended if the process had been more efficient.
Today, Booker announced that if he is elected president, he would on his very first day in office launch "The most sweeping clemency initiative in more than 150 years," an approach that could impact more than 17,000 nonviolent federal drug prisoners.
According to a piece he posted at Medium, Booker would target three classes of prisoners: People in federal prison for marijuana-related offenses; people who are serving sentences that would have been reduced under the First Step Act passed by President Donald Trump if the act had been retroactive; and anybody still serving time because of sentencing disparities between crack cocaine and powder cocaine convictions.
Booker intends to revise the Obama administration's process, speeding it up by moving much of the work from the Department of Justice to a new Executive Clemency Panel within the White House.
https://reason.com/2019/06/20/cory-booker-proposes-thousands-of-drug-war-commutations-if-elected-president/
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