Clemencies just aren’t what they used to be. In his final year, Obama has started swimming against the tide — but even if he swims fast, there’s no way he’ll come close to rivaling early 20th century American presidents. If he’s lucky, he might edge out Nixon.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, writes Love, “Pardons were granted frequently and generously at regular intervals over the course of each president’s term.” They weren’t concentrated at term’s end like they are now — instead, they were a regular part of presidential duties. In fact, between 1902 and 1933, there was only one month without a single pardon.

The reasons for granting clemency were all over the map, from “dying confession of the real murderer” to “enabling farmer prisoner to save his crops.” Parole didn’t make an appearance in the criminal justice system until 1910, so clemency was often the only way to cut an inmate some slack. Clemency also frequently functioned as political critique. Theodore Roosevelt and William Taft both felt that the death penalty should not apply to unpremeditated murder, and granted commutations accordingly. Woodrow Wilson, no fan of Prohibition, gave clemency to many liquor law violators in order to signal his desire for legal reform — a parallel to Obama’s 2016 strategy.

As the parole system took shape, the clemency system changed, too. In the mid-20th century, the two developed separate roles: parole emerged as a rehabilitation tactic, while clemency became more of a gesture of mercy. In the 1940s and ’50s the clemency application and approval process became more formal and more complex, and the increased paperwork led to a downturn in grants. But still, it was a pretty routine part of presidential life. Just check out Lyndon B. Johnson’s numbers.

It all changed with Reagan. Love attributes the steep late-20th century drop-off to “the ascendency of retributivism in punishment theory” — that is, the rise in zero-tolerance and tough-on-crime attitudes toward criminals. “It became conventional wisdom that appearing ‘soft on crime’ could only get an elected official into trouble,” Love writes. In the 1980s and ’90s, presidents became fearful of granting clemency, as sympathy for law-breakers was no longer a desired character trait in politicians.

President George H.W. Bush pardoned a captive Thanksgiving Turkey in 1990. (Photo by © Wally McNamee/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

Mandatory minimums, the gutting of the parole system and the decline of executive clemency all resulted in more pathways into prison and fewer pathways out. As a result of these and other incarceration-oriented policies, the prison population ballooned. Look at the number of presidential clemencies next to the number of federal inmates over time:

Stats from the Department of Justice

The federal prison population has dipped a bit lately, but it’s still enormous. Even if Obama grants a slew of commutations here at the end of his presidency, it will hardly make a dent in the number of inmates that have been stuffed into federal prison since the beginning of the tough-on-crime era.

Still, Obama said he “thought it was important for us to send a clear message that we believe in the principles behind criminal justice reform, even if ultimately we need legislation.”