Biden to commute sentences of drug offenders

President Biden announced Friday that he would commute the sentences of nearly 2,500 inmates serving long prison terms for nonviolent drug offenses, the largest commutation of individual sentences ever by a U.S. president.

The commutations affect offenders who received harsher sentences for drug crimes than under current practices, a move aimed at reversing long-standing criminal justice disparities, Mr. Biden said. These disparities have disproportionately affected Black people and fueled mass incarceration, many experts say.

“This action is an important step toward righting historic wrongs, correcting sentencing disparities, and providing deserving individuals with the opportunity to return to their families and communities after spending far too much time behind bars ” Mr. Biden said in a statement.

These commutations come on top of Mr. Biden’s heavy use of his pardon powers as he prepares to leave office. In recent weeks, he also commuted the sentences of nearly all federal death row inmates and set what was a single-day record of 1,500 commutations for people transferred to home confinement during the pandemic.

Mr. Biden said he would consider in the coming days additional pardons, which overturn convictions, and commutations, which leave the guilty verdict intact but reduce all or part of the sentence. Among other things, Mr. Biden is considering granting preemptive pardons to a number of former elected officials and others whom his successor, President-elect Donald J. Trump, could target for political retaliation.

Mr. Biden said his latest commutations would help those who received sentences based on now-discredited distinctions between crack and powder cocaine, or who were charged with drug crimes.