A demonstrator waves a flag with marijuana leaves outside of the White House in 2016Jose Luis Magana/AP
President Joe Biden is running out of time, and so are federal prisoners awaiting clemency for marijuana-related criminal charges stemming from a tough-on-crime approach he helped promote.
That fact is on display, literally, on a website launched by the Last Prisoner Project, one of several advocacy groups that have called on the president to make use of his clemency powers before Donald Trump takes office on January 20.
In December, the president commuted the sentences for 37 inmates facing the federal death penalty to life in prison. That earned him the praise of advocates like Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU, who called the move “one of the seminal achievements of the Biden presidency.”
Since democrats lost last November’s election, Biden has tried to make good on a campaign promise from the 2020 primary. Back then, he said, “anyone who has a record should be let out of jail, their records expunged.” Biden commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 people convicted of non-violent offenses who were serving out their time in home confinement.
At the time, while Biden’s clemency action was historic, it still left behind thousands of people facing federal prison sentences for marijuana-related charges. And those facing longer prison sentences because of the racist disparity between the sentences for powder and crack cocaine. That disparity was set by a 1986 bill drafted by then-Senator Joe Biden which he later said he regretted. (The White House did not respond to questions about whether Biden was planning to issue additional pardons or commutations)
Some people who had their sentences commuted by Biden received legal and financial assistance from the Last Prisoner Project. The organization’s executive director, Sarah Gersten, told me over email that clemency has “transformative effects on people and communities across the country.”
Gersten points to Flavio Tamez, who she says was able to better care for his children and help run the family business after having his prison time commuted while on home confinement.
“When a person goes to prison for a long time, it is not only that person doing the time; it is also the family,” Tamez told the Dallas Morning News.
Gersten estimates that about 3,000 individuals still remain in federal prison because of marijuana-related charges. “It is not too late for President Biden to undo the harms inflicted on families impacted by cannabis criminalization,” she told me. “The President has the opportunity to right history and restore justice by fulfilling his promise that no one should be incarcerated for cannabis.”
