January 17, 2025
Biden Decreases Number Of Black Incarcerated People: Pardons Nearly 2,500 Nonviolent Drug Offenders
President Biden's stance on drug offenders has come a long way since the 1980s.
In his final days in the White House, President Joe Biden has issued pardons for close to 2,500 individuals with nonviolent drug charges, ABC News reports.
The announcement was handed down just three days before the Trump-Vance administration takes over.
In a statement, Biden said these offenders had “serv[ed] disproportionately long sentences compared to the sentences they would receive today under current law, policy, and practice.”
On X, Biden called the move an “important step toward righting historical wrongs and providing deserving individuals the opportunity to return to their communities after far too much time behind bars.”
Biden has come a long way from his original stance against drug offenders. In the 1980s, the then-senator supported legislation that increased penalties for drug users. One law essentially lengthened sentences for crack cocaine users, often viewed as African-Americans in comparison to white people who were labeled as powder cocaine users.
Decades later, Congress has worked to reverse the damages those laws did through the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 and the First Step Act of 2018.
“Today’s clemency action provides relief for individuals who received lengthy sentences based on discredited distinctions between crack and powder cocaine, as well as outdated sentencing enhancements for drug crimes,” Biden wrote.
A 2021 report from The Sentencing Project revealed Black Americans are stationed in state prisons close to five times the rate of white Americans, according to CNN. Data showed one in 81 Black adults—per 100,000 U.S. resident—was serving time in a state prison.
Senior analyst Ashley Nellis said the eye-opening numbers only elevate the narrative that “the criminal justice system cannot be accomplished without acknowledgment of its racist underpinnings.”
With just a few days remaining as commander-in-chief, Biden said he will “continue to review additional commutations and pardons,” highlighting its historical context.
“With this action, I have now issued more individual pardons and commutations than any president in U.S. history,” Biden said.
Biden joined a list of other presidents since the Ford administration, who have issued pardons to those deemed unnecessary to serve time behind bars. Biden’s former boss, Barack Obama, issued 1,700 commutations during his two-term bid, decreasing long sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.
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