The Sentencing Project Applauds President Biden’s CARES Act Clemency
President Biden announced that he was commuting the sentences of nearly 1500 individuals placed on home confinement during the Covid-19 pandemic who had successfully reintegrated into the community, as well as pardoning 39 individuals convicted of nonviolent crimes.
Related to: Federal Advocacy
Today, President Biden announced that he was commuting the sentences of nearly 1500 individuals placed on home confinement during the Covid-19 pandemic who had successfully reintegrated into the community, as well as pardoning 39 individuals convicted of nonviolent crimes. President Biden’s announcement indicated that he would continue to review clemency petitions during his remaining weeks in office.
Liz Komar, Sentencing Reform Counsel with The Sentencing Project, released the following statement:
“We applaud President Biden for boldly using his clemency powers to ensure that justice prevailed for CARES Act home confinement recipients. Individuals on CARES Act home confinement have been overwhelmingly successful. Today, common-sense and public safety won.
In 2020, Congress passed the bipartisan CARES Act, giving the Bureau of Prisons the ability to place low-risk individuals convicted of nonviolent offenses in home confinement to save lives during the Covid-19 pandemic. Many beneficiaries of CARES Act home confinement have now been home for four years. They’ve returned to work, school, and caring for their loved ones. They are contributing members of their communities and deserve the opportunity to move on to a life of freedom.
Thousands more remain in federal prisons deserving of clemency. We urge President Biden to commute the sentences of the 40 incarcerated individuals on federal death row. We also urge him to prioritize relief for elderly “old law” individuals convicted of offenses that occurred before November 1987 who are ineligible for compassionate relief and others serving sentences far longer than they would receive today. We applaud President Biden’s bold action today and encourage him to continue to show mercy and make clemency a defining element of his legacy.”
