Roughly two million Americans are waking up behind bars this morning. The incarceration rate in the United States is more than twice as high as that of Brazil; more than four times higher than in Britain or Mexico; almost six times higher than in China; and almost 15 times as high as in Japan.

A central reason for American mass incarceration is the long prison sentences in our criminal codes, even for some nonviolent offenses. A second reason is the infrequency and arbitrariness of parole, as Jennifer Gonnerman documented in a recent New Yorker story. A third reason — arguably the least common but most outrageous — is wrongful conviction.

Clemency is rarely an easy decision for a president or governor, because it involves freeing somebody convicted of breaking society’s rules, sometimes violently so. But in a legal system that errs far too often on the side of harshness, clemency is vital. It’s a way to correct abuses, albeit one case at a time, until true criminal justice reform can occur.

One recent example: Felipe Rodriguez, a Brooklyn man who spent 27 years behind bars for a horrific 1987 murder he didn’t commit. Rodriguez spent years trying and failing to get prosecutors and police to turn over relevant evidence. Only after Governor Andrew Cuomo commuted his sentence in 2016 — bringing more attention to the case — did police locate a file in the archives that helped clear Rodriguez.

Another argument for a greater use of clemency is the troubled parole system. Some parole boards don’t even meet with the prisoners whose cases they’re considering, as Jorge Renaud has written for the Prison Policy Initiative. Other states reimprison people for insignificant parole violations: “Alaska prohibits an individual on parole from changing residence without notification and considers an overnight stay a change of residence, punishable by parole revocation,” Renaud writes.