How about a few clemency grants, Prez Obama, to really honor vets in need on Veterans Day?

On Veterans Day, I always find myself thinking about veterans who, after serving our country in the military and thereby supporting of our nation's commitment to liberty and freedom, return home and discover the hard way that these constitutional values are not always paramount in our modern criminal justice systems.  This Daily Beast piece, headlined "From PTSD to Prison: Why Veterans Become Criminals," highlights that there are now probably hundreds of thousand of veterans in America's prison and jails:

In 2008 the RAND Corporation surveyed a group of veterans six months after their return. It found that almost one in five had either PTSD or major depression. In recent years rates of substance abuse and suicide among veterans have also ticked steadily upward.

A certain number of veterans suffering from mental-health issues will, invariably, end up in jail or prison. After Vietnam, the number of inmates with prior military service rose steadily until reaching a peak in 1985, when more than one in five was a veteran. By 1988, more than half of all Vietnam veterans diagnosed with PTSD reported that they had been arrested; more than one third reported they had been arrested multiple times. Today veterans advocates fear that, unless they receive proper support, a similar epidemic may befall soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

No one knows how many veterans are incarcerated, but the most recent survey, compiled by the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2004, found that nearly one in 10 inmates in U.S. jails had prior military service. Extrapolated to the total prison population, this means that approximately 200,000 veterans were behind bars.

As the title of this post highlights, I would like to see President Obama go beyond the usual symbolic gestures and use his historic clemency powers to salute at least a few veterans in federal prison with commutations that would create just a bit more physical liberty and honor a few more veterans with pardons that would free offenders from the enduring collateral consequences of a federal criminal conviction.

This effective recent op-ed by Mark Osler, headlined "Clemency is a task for people and institutions of faith; It should also be a task for the president, but he seems unwilling or unable to use his powers," starts by noting why, sadly, I am not expecting the President to step up to the clemency plate today or anytime soon:

President Obama is, by a wide margin, the stingiest president in modern times in his use of the pardon power.  He seems unwilling or unable to use this simple constitutional tool, even as both conservative and progressive commentators are criticizing the federal government’s overincarceration of nonviolent offenders.  A simple way to alleviate that problem would be to commute (shorten) the most egregious of these sentences using the pardon power.

Some recent and a few older posts concerning federal clemency practices:

• "How to Awaken the Pardon Power"
• New Slate pitch for Prez to use clemency powers to address crack sentencing disparities
• "Clemency Reform: We're Still Waiting"
• "Clemency for the 21st Century: A Systemic Reform of the Federal Clemency Process"
• Will Prez Obama's clemency record ever match his inaugural rhetoric?
• "Why Has Obama Pardoned So Few Prisoners?"
• "Barack the Unmerciful: Obama's amazingly stingy clemency record"
• New York Times editorial assails Prez Obama's considerable clemency failings
• "Obama Has Granted Clemency More Rarely Than Any Modern President"
• Updated numbers on President Obama's disgraceful clemency record
• Noting President Obama's (still) stingy clemency record
• ProPublica reveals more ugliness in federal clemency process
• "A no-pardon Justice Department"
• Effective USA Today coverage of President Obama's clemency stinginess
• "Obama should exercise the pardon power"
• NYTimes op-ed assailing Obama's pathetic pardon practices