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August 1, 2018
Office of Inspector General issues "Review of the Department’s Clemency Initiative"
A couple of helpful readers made sure I did not miss today's release of this big new report from the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General titled simply "Review of the Department’s Clemency Initiative." Here is just the very start of its "Results in Brief":
Because I am on the road, I fear I will not have a chance to review and comment on this important and valuable new report. But what I have already read reinforces all my long-standing concerns about the Department of Justice having a central role in the clemency process and my long-voiced contention that all Prez should take clemency powers and possibilities seriously from the very moment they are elected to serve in the Oval Office.We found that the Department did not effectively plan, implement, or manage the Initiative at the outset. However, subsequent actions by Department leadership enabled the Department to not only meet its goal of making recommendations to the White House on all drug petitions received by the deadline of August 31, 2016, but also to make recommendations on over 1,300 petitions received by OPA after the deadline. In total, as a result of the Initiative, the Department made recommendations to the White House on over 13,000 petitions, resulting in 1,696 inmates receiving clemency.
Our review identified several shortcomings in the Department’s planning and implementation of the Initiative. Because of philosophical differences between how the Office of the Deputy Attorney General (ODAG) and OPA viewed clemency, Department leadership did not sufficiently involve OPA in the Initiative’s preannouncement planning. Moreover, despite the Department’s stated commitment to provide OPA with the necessary resources, the Department did not sufficiently do so once the Initiative began.
The Department also did not effectively implement the Initiative’s inmate survey, which was intended to help the Department identify potentially meritorious clemency petitioners. For example, rather than survey only those inmates who likely met the Initiative’s six criteria, the survey was sent to every Federal Bureau of Prisons inmate. As a result, CP 14 and OPA received numerous survey responses and petitions from inmates who clearly did not meet the Initiative’s criteria, thereby delaying consideration of potentially meritorious petitions. We found other problems with the survey, resulting in OIG’s issuance of a Management Advisory Memorandum to the Department, which is attached as an appendix to this report.
Further, the Department experienced challenges in working with external stakeholders to implement the Initiative. For example, the Department did not anticipate that CP 14 attorneys would have challenges in obtaining inmate Pre-sentence Investigation Reports and, as a result, it took almost a year before the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts allowed CP 14 attorneys to access them, which hampered CP 14’s ability to make timely eligibility determinations. We also found that the Department and CP 14 had very different perspectives regarding CP 14’s role in the Initiative. In particular, while the Department expected CP 14 to focus on identifying and submitting petitions on behalf of inmates who were strong candidates for clemency, CP 14 instead viewed its role as assisting and advocating for any inmate who wished to file a petition. As a result, the Department believes CP 14 took longer to complete its work.
August 1, 2018 at 12:58 PM | Permalink