December 24, 2013 11:55AM # A Stinting Round of Presidential Drug Pardons By [Walter Olson](https://www.cato.org/people/walter-olson) --- SHARE Last week President Obama [commuted](http://reason.com/blog/2013/12/19/obama-commutes-eight-insanely-long-drug) the [sentences](http://reason.com/blog/2013/12/19/obama-frees-clarence-aaron-and-seven-oth) of eight inmates caught up in the crack cocaine sentencing fury, all of whom had served at least 15 years for what was often relatively peripheral involvement in the [drug trade](http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/12/19/how-drug-wars-led-to-harsh-federal-sentences/). Clarence Aaron, for example, was serving three life sentences without possibility of parole for a first-time nonviolent offense. Many advocates from all political viewpoints [pushed for Aaron’s release](http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/clarence-aaron-pardon-obama-rodgers-justice), among them Debra Saunders who wrote [dozens of columns](http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Free-Clarence-Aaron-Debra-Saunders-columns-over-5079862.php) on his case in the San Francisco Chronicle over the past 12 years. I’ve got a [new op-ed](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-22/obama-s-unpardonable-record-on-pardons.html) for Bloomberg View (my first appearance there) calling the new venture in presidential clemency “mingy and belated”: > According to the Washington Post, one of the administration’s [motives](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-22/%5C%5Cwww.washingtonpost.com%5Cpolitics%5Cobama-commutes-sentences-of-8-inmates-with-crack-cocaine-convictions-citing-2010-law%5C2013%5C12%5C19%5C758d2848-68da-11e3-a0b9-249bbb34602c_story.html) was, oddly, its wish to help “eliminate overcrowding in federal prisons.” > > > If that’s the case, Obama is trying to bail out Lake Michigan with a paint can. The federal prison population [has increased](http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42937.pdf) by more than 700 percent since 1980 and the number of inmates now [exceeds](http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/412932-stemming-the-tide.pdf#page=7) the Bureau of Prisons bed capacity by 35 percent to 40 percent, requiring the use of contract prisons, halfway houses and other makeshifts. > > > Even if the president could free another batch of eight prisoners every week for a year, his mercy will still have touched only about one-fifth of 1 percent of the inmates in federal prisons. One argument I’ve heard on behalf of the White House is that this is a trial balloon, and if the President doesn’t suffer political damage from it, he may be back with broader pardons later, perhaps after the mid-term elections. It’s a politically coherent argument, I suppose, but I can’t think it’s one that’s especially flattering to Obama as he will appear to later historians. \[cross-posted and adapted from [Overlawyered](http://overlawyered.com/2013/12/president-obama-pardon-power/)\] ##### Related Tags [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).