President Barack Obama has commuted more sentences than his last nine predecessors combined. | Getty Obama commutes 214 sentences

President Barack Obama commuted the sentences of 214 people on Wednesday, bringing his total number of commutations to 562.

The president's biggest batch of commutations comes as Donald Trump touts a "law and order" message. But for advocates of sentencing reform, it's a sign that the administration isn't letting up on the 2014 Justice Department initiative to ease punishments for low-level drug offenders who received long sentences due to mandatory minimums. Wednesday's set includes 67 people who had been facing life sentences.


Obama has granted more commutations than his nine most recent predecessors combined, White House Counsel Neil Eggleston noted in a blog post on Wednesday.

However, he added, “Our work is far from finished. I expect the president will continue to grant clemency in a historic and inspiring fashion.”

While criminal justice reform advocates have cheered the intention behind the initiative, they’ve complained that the pace of commutations has failed to meet expectations and that the process appears arbitrary. As of early June, there were more than 11,000 applications still pending.

Based on a screening process conducted by volunteer lawyers called the Clemency Project 2014, advocates believe that at least 1,500 people meet the Justice Department’s basic criteria, which include nonviolence and having served 10 years already.

“At the current pace, they will fall far short of meeting that threshold,” said Mark Osler, a co-founder of the Clemency Resource Center at NYU Law who was among the signers of a letter to Obama in June calling for him to intervene to speed things up. “These non-violent offenders have been promised a full review and relief, and they deserve nothing less.”

Eggleston promised to pick up the pace this spring, noting new resources for the Pardon Attorney, and in April, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates wrote to the Clemency Project, urging them to get applications in by May.

In a statement, the group said it still has “many more” applications nearing submission. It was responsible for 118 of Wednesday’s clemency recipients.

“I think the criteria is fair, but the caseload is large,” said California Attorney Gen. Kamala Harris last week at a POLITICO discussion Philadelphia. “We probably need to think about what we can do to improve the system around being able to deal with those cases in large numbers and review them as swiftly as possible.”

This latest batch of commutations comes at a politically sensitive time, just two weeks after Trump stressed a “law and order theme” at the Republican National Convention, with warnings of danger in the streets fueled by attacks on police in Dallas and Baton Rouge.

Those attacks were preceded by widely decried killings of black men by police, and the administration has held multiple meetings with law enforcement officials and community leaders over the past month.

Obama has increasingly used his commutation power to tailor recipients’ sentences, rather than simply shorten them. While some clemencies have been effective on the day he issued them, others won’t be freed until after Obama leaves office, in some cases remaining in prison for years. In Wednesday’s set, Obama also attached drug treatment programs as a condition of release in some cases.

While the White House and Justice Department had earlier declined to explain these variations, Eggleston shed light on them in his latest blog post, noting that in some cases, “the president has commuted their sentences to a significantly reduced term so they are consistent with present-day sentencing policies.”

He continued, “While these term reductions will require applicants to serve additional time, it will also allow applicants to continue their rehabilitation by completing educational and self-improvement programming and to participate in drug or other counseling services. Underlying all the president’s commutation decisions is the belief that these deserving individuals should be given the tools to succeed in their second chance.”

The focus on policing issues in recent weeks has drawn public attention away from the broader criminal justice reform agenda. The White House has consistently characterized its clemency initiative as a limited fix, and that Congress must act to reduce mass incarceration and reverse war-on-drugs-era policies now seen as too punitive. While the House is expected to vote on sentencing reform when it returns in September, advocates acknowledge that prospects for full passage before the election look grim.

As head of the U.S. Justice Action Network, a left-right coalition of groups lobbying for sentencing reform, Holly Harris said during a POLITICO event in Cleveland during the Republican National Convention, she has seen momentum for the bills stall in Congress since late last year.

“To say that we’re frustrated is an understatement,” Harris said.

Luiza Savage contributed reporting.