As people prepare to attend the Presidential Inauguration to honor President Barack Obama’s second term, thousands of inmates and their families are wondering why the president has granted so few clemencies. For a man that proclaims “life is all about second chances,” he has done very little to give second chances to those requesting it.

In 2008 during an interview with Rolling Stone as presidential candidate, Obama said that making felons out of “nonviolent, first-time drug offenders” is “counterproductive“ and “doesn’t make sense.” Obama’s campaign said he believes “we are sending far too many first-time, nonviolent drug users to prison for very long periods of time.” It promised he “will review drug sentences to see where we can be smarter on crime and reduce the blind and counterproductive sentencing of nonviolent offenders;” however, during the month of December — a traditional season for presidential clemency — President Obama had only granted one commutation (which shortens a prisoner’s sentence) and 22 pardons (which clears people’s records, typically after they’ve completed their sentences). His first term record is weaker than all but three presidents (George Washington, William Henry Harrison, and James Garfield), according to professor of political science at Rock Valley College in Rockford, Illinois, P.S. Ruckman Jr.

The odds of winning a pardon from Obama so far are 1 in 59, compared to 1 in 2 under Richard Nixon, 1 in 3 under Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, 1 in 5 under Ronald Reagan, 1 in 10 under George H.W. Bush, 1 in 5 under Bill Clinton, and 1 in 13 under George W. Bush, per Ruckman’s calculations. The odds for commutation are even longer: 1 in 6,631 under Obama, compared to probabilities under the seven preceding presidents ranging from 1 in 15 (Nixon) to 1 in 779 (Bush II), as written on Reason.com.

To his credit, the president did support the 2010 legislation that shrank the irrational sentencing gap between crack cocaine and cocaine powder; however, he did not face much political risk in supporting it because the bill passed Congress almost unanimously. Furthermore, the Fair Sentencing Act did not apply retroactively, and Obama has used commutation to help just one of the thousands of crack offenders serving mandatory minimums that nearly everyone now admits are unjust.