Room to improve: Obama's commutations.

• Author: Sullum, Jacob
• Position: Data - Brief article

PRESIDENT OBAMA, who during his first term commuted exactly one sentence, has picked up the pace recently. As of July, he had granted early releases to a total of 89 prisoners.

Last year the Justice Department signaled a new openness to clemency petitions, laying out criteria for the sort of applications the president wanted to see. An unnamed "senior administration official" told Yahoo! News the new guidelines could result in commutations for "hundreds, perhaps thousands" of federal prisoners by the end of Obama's second term.

The president will have to try harder if he wants to reach that goal. An estimated 8,800 prisoners could benefit just from retroactive application of the shorter crack cocaine sentences that Congress approved in 2010. They are serving...