Obama's administration announced in April 2014 the most generous clemency program in 40 years, urging attorneys all over the country to take on the cases of convicts and teasing thousands of jailed drug offenders to seek early years. Nearing the second anniversary of the president's declaration, the program is said to be struggling under a deluge of unprocessed cases.
According to International Business Times, more than 8,000 cases out of more than 44,000 federal prisoners who applied for early release have not made it to the Department of Justice for processing. Another 9,000 cases are still unsettled at the Justice Department for different reasons, which includes lack of program staffing.
Only 187 prisoners have had their sentences commuted, this is far below the thousands expected by the justice reform advocates. The numbers are merely a tiny fraction of the 2.2 million inmates in the US, which has the world's highest incarceration rate. Obama's administration said it wanted to decide on all the applications before the president's term ends by the end of January 2016.
The Washington Post reported that the White House will hold an event on March 31 called "Life after Clemency." The event will include former lawyers, for inmates, and some prison reform advocates. The gather centers on one of Obama's centerpiece criminal-justice initiative. Though it is not open to the press, the letter of invitation says it will include a discussion on ways to improve paths to reentry.
President Barack Obama has commuted more sentences than the past five US presidents combined, says Reuters. He has been an unyielding detractor of harsh US sentencing policies and said that these policies have disproportionately burdened minorities.
Records from the US Sentencing Commission suggests that since Obama took office, federal life sentences have fallen from 280 in the fiscal year 2009 to 154 in 2013. Clemency Project 2014 said it does not comment publicly on the people it represents.
By far, 25,000 of 34,000 applications received by the Clemency Project 2014 have been rejected for failing to meet the basic criteria. About 10,000 prisoners did not go through the Clemency Project and neither applied directly to the Justice Department or through a paid lawyer.
