Uninspired comments and plans emerging from Biden White House concerning clemency vision

The New York Times has this new story that reinforces some of the buzz I have been recently hearing that Prez Biden is disinclined to significantly transform either the process or the practice of federal clemency anytime soon.  Regular readers know I have been urging clemency action by Prez Biden since his first days in office, but the first line of the article suggests we ought not expect any grants until at least mid to late 2022: "Administration officials have quietly begun evaluating clemency requests and have signaled to activists that President Biden could begin issuing pardons or commutations by the midpoint of his term."

The article does goes on to suggest Prez Biden might at least be considering a clemency approach akin to what Prez Obama eventually adopted at the very end of his second term. But it sounds like any program would still be administered through the Pardon Attorney's office still problematically located in the Department of Justice.  Here are excerpts of a piece worth reading in full:

Mr. Biden’s team ... has signaled in discussions with outside groups that it is establishing a more deliberate, systemic process geared toward identifying entire classes of people who deserve mercy.  The approach could allow the president to make good on his campaign promise to weave issues of racial equity and justice throughout his government.

The White House has publicly offered few details about his plans for issuing pardons, which wipe out convictions, and commutations, which reduce prison sentences.  But White House officials have indicated in private conversations with criminal justice activists, clemency seekers and their allies that Mr. Biden’s team is working with the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney to process clemency requests with an eye toward having the president sign some before the 2022 midterm elections.

“We asked them not to wait to the end of a term to execute pardon and commutation power for photo ops, and they definitely assured us that is not this administration’s plan,” said DeAnna Hoskins, the president of the criminal justice group JustLeadershipUSA, who participated in a Zoom session for former prisoners with White House officials last month. “This administration is looking at early on,” said Ms. Hoskins, who worked on prisoner re-entry issues for county, state and federal government agencies after serving a 45-day sentence for theft in 1999.

Participants in the Zoom session and other meetings with the White House have come away with the impression that Mr. Biden intends to use clemency grants — which are among the most unchecked and profound powers at a president’s disposal — to address systemic issues in the criminal justice system.  The Biden campaign hinted at such an approach in its criminal justice platform, which indicated that he intended to use clemency “broadly” to “secure the release of individuals facing unduly long sentences for certain nonviolent and drug crimes.”

Among those supporting the administration’s efforts is Susan E. Rice, who leads Mr. Biden’s Domestic Policy Council. She is focused on instilling racial equity in all of the administration’s initiatives and has recruited a team with deep roots in civil rights and justice....  But the White House has indicated that it will rely on the rigorous application vetting process overseen by the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney.

Mr. Biden’s White House has already signaled that even its allies will have to go through the process, as was made clear to Desmond Meade, who in 2018 led a successful push to restore voting rights to more than 1.4 million Floridians with felony convictions.  Mr. Meade, who has expressed interest in a federal pardon for a decades-old military conviction for stealing liquor and electronics on Navy bases while he was serving in the Army, was steered this year to the Justice Department’s pardon attorney...  In an interview, Mr. Meade said that the department’s clemency process was “way too bureaucratic,” adding that “the pardon application in itself is daunting, and it screams that you need to hire an attorney to make that happen.”  He said he was among the activists who urged White House officials to consider moving the process out of the Justice Department, noting the paradox of entrusting an agency that led prosecutions with determining whether the targets of those prosecutions deserve mercy.

But the Biden administration is not inclined to circumvent the department, according to a person familiar with the White House’s thinking. Instead, Mr. Biden’s team has pointed to the approach adopted by President Barack Obama, who issued more than 1,900 clemency grants.  Most went to people recommended by the Justice Department, many of whom had been serving sentences under tough antidrug laws, including those convicted of low-level, nonviolent crimes like possession of cocaine.

In outreach sessions to criminal justice activists, White House officials have collected recommendations on categories of clemencies that should be prioritized.  The sessions have included groups with strong connections in the Black community and those that aggressively opposed Mr. Trump, including the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as the libertarian Cato Institute and the Prison Fellowship, which counts evangelical conservatives among its staff and supporters....

The A.C.L.U. highlighted those prisoners and others in an online and newspaper advertising campaign during Mr. Biden’s inauguration week.  It urged him to grant clemency to 25,000 people in federal prison, including “the elderly, the sick, those swept up in the war on drugs and people locked up because of racist policies of the past that have since been changed.”  Udi Ofer, the director of the A.C.L.U’s justice division, said that Mr. Biden “has a special obligation given his history to use the power of clemency to fix these issues, because he was the architect of so many of the mass incarceration policies that we are now trying to repeal.”

I suppose I should be pleased that clemency issues continue to get significant attention, but I remain displeased that all we have seen so far is a lot of clemency talk (or proclamations about second chances) and no actual clemency grants.  Notably, recent polling shows lots of support for commuting the sentences of a wide variety of persons serving problematic sentences, and  almost everyone readily recognizes that there are many, many persons in the federal criminal justice system still subject to problematic sentences.  I say "almost everyone" because I sense that federal prosecutors working in the Department of Justice do not see all that many federal sentences as so problematic, which is why so many others (myself included) think it so problematic that the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney continues to serve as the gatekeeper (and wet blanket) in the federal clemency process.  

A few prior recent related posts:

• Might Prez Biden use his clemency power relatively soon?
• New detailed polling reveals broad support for broad use of clemency power to commute sentences
• How about some clemency grants from Prez Biden to go with Second Chance Month, 2021 proclamation?
• ACLU urging Prez Biden to "use his clemency powers to bring home 25,000 people" from federal prisons 
• Notably advocacy for Prez Biden to use his clemency power to ensure those released into home confinement need not return to prison 
• How about Prez Biden and lots of Governors starting a tradition of granting lots of clemencies around Mother's Day?