Statement from Jessica Jackson Sloan, National Director of #cut50, in response to President Obama’s latest Clemency announcement:
“Today, President Obama took another step towards justice by granting 238 deserving people a second chance. As the clock counts down on the Obama administration, the need for commutations of these non-violent drug offenders– and many more like them– is more important than ever.
“Justice requires that the President accelerate the rate of clemencies he is granting. In the 80’s and 90’s, hundreds of thousands of people were handed decades-long or even life sentences behind bars for nonviolent drug offenses — but the laws have changed. These men and women would be given a shorter, more equitable, sentence if they were to be tried for the same crime today.
“Many people, like Alice Johnson, were handed virtual death sentences with life behind bars for first-time offenses committed under financial distress. Do we want to be the kind of country that separates families for life because of one mistake? President Obama has raised the hopes of thousands of families with his historic clemency initiative — we urge him not to dash those hopes by failing to process all of the applications currently awaiting his review. There is still for the President to grant more families the most special gift of all this Christmas — freedom.”
#cut50 is a national bipartisan initiative to safely and smartly reduce our incarcerated population by 50 percent over the next 10 years.
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