WASHINGTON – President Biden said Tuesday he would use his pardon powers for the first time to commute the sentences of 75 drug offenders and issue three pardons, including to the first Black Secret Service agent working on a presidential detail. long maintained he was wrongfully convicted.
“Helping those who have matured their time to return to their families and become members of their communities is one of the most effective ways to reduce recidivism and reduce crime,” Biden said in a statement. adding that those who have received pardon have “demonstrated their commitment to rehabilitation and strive to return and contribute to their communities every day.”
Mr Biden’s most important aides described the use of presidential power as part of a broader strategy to review the criminal justice system, relying less on prison to punish nonviolent drug offenders and using employment programs to to prevent ex-prisoners from returning to prison. On the same day, Mr. Biden detailed the changes, and the Department of Justice and Labor announced a $ 145 million plan to provide vocational training to federal prisoners to help them get jobs when they are released.
The replacement will become official on Tuesday, officials said.
Mr Biden’s actions come amid growing concern among progressive groups, who say the president has not focused enough on issues that resonate in colored communities, such as the right to vote or police review legislation.
As his approval rating plummeted and his domestic agenda stalled amid a majority in Congress, the president called on his allies to withdraw from daily negotiations with lawmakers and instead exercise his executive branch. It is hoped that this will allow him to demonstrate achievements and efforts to reduce rising crime and inflation ahead of the midterm elections, which Democrats appear to be on the verge of losing.
The White House sees the strategy to reduce recidivism among ex-prisoners as both a prison reform and a strategy to fight crime, according to a senior administration official who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity before the announcement. But the official said the administration was considering additional requests for clemency and voters should still expect Mr Biden to act on other criminal justice issues, including an executive order to deal with police.
The replacement also appears to be an effort to compensate drug offenders for harsh sentences rooted in a series of bills that Mr. Biden helped pass in his 36 years in the Senate, which laid the groundwork for mass imprisonment. . He apologized during the election campaign for parts of one of the more aggressive measures he supported, the 1994 crime bill.
Among those to be pardoned was Betty Joe Bogans, 51, convicted in 1998 of possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine after trying to help her boyfriend transport drugs. Neither her boyfriend nor her accomplice was arrested. Mrs. Bogans, a single mother with no previous experience, received a seven-year sentence.
Abraham Bolden Sr., 86, was accused of trying to sell a secret file to the Secret Service in 1964 after President John F. Kennedy appointed him the first black man to serve as president. After his arrest, he claims that the government is trying to persuade him of his intention to expose illegal behavior in the secret services. His first trial ended with a hanged jury, but he was convicted during a second trial, even after witnesses admitted they lied at the prosecution’s request.
Georgia’s Dexter Jackson, 52, was pardoned after admitting he allowed his business to be used to sell marijuana, even though he didn’t sell the drugs directly. He is now renovating homes in areas where affordable housing is lacking, according to the White House.
All 75 of those who needed to be replaced were nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were serving sentences under house arrest for the threat of a coronavirus pandemic, according to an administration official.
The Justice Department took a step to rely less on federal prison in December by repealing a Trump-era legal opinion that the Federal Bureau of Prisons will have to return to prisoners transferred to house arrest during the pandemic.
Almost a third of those who took advantage of the pardon would have received a lower sentence if charged today. Mr Biden has issued more pardon grants than any of his five immediate predecessors at the same time as their presidency, the official said.
The actions were also a reversal of the way former President Donald J. Trump is using his power to pardon. Mr Trump sometimes bypasses the usual pardon process that runs through the Department of Justice, choosing instead to rely on his friends and allies for recommendations and use his pardons and replacements to benefit people with wealth and connections, including some who abuse the power of elected offices.
The Biden administration returned to the process before Trump, in which requests for pardon from prisoners were sent to the Justice Department, which made recommendations to the president, according to administration officials. Replacement reduces the term of imprisonment, but does not overturn sentences, while presidential pardons that overturn sentences are usually given only to those who have already served their sentences.
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