President Barack Obama will shorten the sentences of eight prisoners serving time for nonviolent drug crimes and pardon 12 ex-convicts, the Justice Department announced Wednesday.

The act of presidential clemency is traditional around Christmastime, but Obama’s action is part of his administration’s broader push to roll back harsh mandatory drug sentences that imprisoned people for decades for nonviolent drug crimes. The “tough on crime” drug laws contributed to America’s record of locking up a larger share of its population than any other nation in the world.

Recently, judges have been given more flexibility around mandatory minimums, and in 2010 Congress narrowed the disparity that sent crack dealers to prison for a hundred times longer than cocaine dealers. But those who were incarcerated under the old laws remained there, prompting the Justice Department to announce in April that nonviolent offenders could apply for clemency through a special initiative called “Clemency Project 2014.” Thousands of prisoners have done so, and an outside group of nonprofit lawyers is currently vetting the applications. An administration official said the president will most likely grant more commutations of this kind as the applications begin to land on the pardon attorney’s desk.

Barbara Scrivner, who was serving 30 years for her minor role in her drug-dealer husband’s meth ring, is among the eight prisoners whose sentences were commuted by the president on Wednesday. The subject of a Yahoo News feature last April, Scrivner said that two of her previous clemency applications were denied by the pardon attorney’s office in 2005 and 2011, though even the judge who sentenced her unequivocally supported her petition. Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder reformed the pardon attorney’s office in April, replacing Ronald Rodgers, who had been criticized for knee-jerk rejections of petitions, with Deborah Leff, an advocacy-minded attorney, to lead the office. One of the factors Leff may be giving less weight to is remorse in petitions. In the past, prisoners were required to show unqualified contrition to get a second look from the pardon attorney.

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Scrivner’s attorney, Sam Kauffman, said his client cried when he called her to tell her she had received the commutation from the president. She still had more than four years of her sentence left to serve.

“It should have happened a long time ago, but what are you going to do?” Kauffman said.

In April, Scrivner told Yahoo she wanted to get out of prison to be there for her daughter, Alannah, who was just a toddler when she was sentenced.

"Ten years is a long time to be in prison. And now it’s been 20 years," Scrivner said at the time. "It just doesn't seem real to me.”

The eight prisoners, all of whom have served at least 10 years, will be released in June.

“While all eight were properly held accountable for their criminal actions, their punishments did not fit their crimes, and sentencing laws and policies have since been updated to ensure more fairness for low-level offenders,” Deputy Attorney General Jim Cole said in a statement.