Despite committing to tackling mass incarceration during his presidential campaign, President Joe Biden has rarely used the presidential pardon to commute sentences during his time in office. As his term draws to a close and amid outrage over the pardon of his son Hunter, advocates are pressuring Biden — who has pardoned thousands who had been convicted of federal drug charges but were not incarcerated at the time of their pardons — to grant clemency to thousands more who are still in prison over cannabis offenses. The president has a chance to atone for his past support of “tough on crime” measures, says the Last Prisoner Project’s Jason Ortiz. He says Biden has an opportunity of “correcting the injustices that were done over the past 20 or 30 years” and should “extend the same grace and compassion” he showed his son Hunter “to all the folks that he helped put in prison to begin with.”
