USA - Obama reducing 102 inmates' sentences.

Obama reducing 102 inmates' sentences. Another 102 prison inmates learned today their sentences are being reduced by a stroke of President Barack Obama's pen, the latest batch in a record-setting effort by the White House to reverse harsh sentences for mostly nonviolent drug offenders. Obama has now granted clemency to 774 individuals, the vast majority of whom were serving time for nonviolent drug crimes. Just in the past year, Obama has granted clemency to 590 prisoners -- the most commutations in any single year of US history. At the same time, the number of inmates who have applied for pardons or commutations has increased sharply in the final year of Obama's tenure, creating a backlog of requests for Obama's team to process before he leaves office in January. "I've told my office that anything that gets to us will get processed," Neil Eggleston, the White House counsel, said in an interview Thursday. "We're not going to have a failure of resources here. I'm pretty confident that we'll get to all of those." Eggleston said Obama would continue to personally review clemency requests up until the final days of his administration. The White House wants to bring existing sentences -- many handed down when strict "mandatory minimum" punishments were in place -- closer in line with current guidelines. Even as Congress has reduced mandatory sentences for certain drug crimes, thousands of Americans are still serving long sentences that current law no longer requires. Obama has argued the severe sentencing practices of the 1980s and 90s — a facet of the larger "war of drugs" — have destroyed communities and led to an exploded US prison population that far exceeds those in other countries. Legislative action on criminal justice reform, which seemed to gain momentum earlier this year, has been put on hold amid a contentious political election where crime has played a prominent role. Of the 102 clemency grants Obama issued on Thursday, 34 shortened life sentences. New release dates vary, from the earliest in February of next year to several years down the road. Thirteen involved the use of a firearm. More than 12,000 commutation requests are pending at the Justice Department. It's not likely that even a majority of the applicants would be eligible; in the past year, the Obama administration has quietly denied more than six times the number of clemency applications than it has granted. Lawyers who advocate on behalf of prisoners estimate roughly 1,500 people could qualify for reduced sentences under the administration's guidelines.