A thread about the debate and the horribleness of the Presidential pardon exchange. Will be boring/ under documented to prison abolitionists https://twitter.com/RichPuchalsky/status/1319478480501940228

Here's a short explainer for liberals around this

Biden: "Look and granted, he did in fact, let 20 people … he commuted 20 people’s sentences. We commuted over 1,000 people’s sentences, over 1,000."

I remember Obama and Biden commuting these people's sentences. It was towards the end of their term mostly: Obama issued 212 pardons and 1,715 commutations, "clemency actions aimed at low-level criminals who were given long sentences many years ago" https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/oct/06/joe-biden/biden-inflated-number-clemency-actions-obama/

How many pardons could Obama have issued if he really disagreed with the policy of locking people up for nonviolent drug crimes? Obama and his defenders would fond of saying that they couldn't do anything because of the GOP Congress.

There are no limits on numbers of pardons

Obama and Biden could have put out a call to public defenders across the US: "send us the names of people who have been convicted of only nonviolent drug crimes and we'll pardon all of them". How many people would this have been?

Because of the nature of the US carceral system this is a difficult number to figure out, especially if you include both people currently in jail and people with a past offense on their record.

But 450,000 people are incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses on any given day in the US. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html

So this would be a number in the millions.

There was no institutional check on Obama and Biden pardoning all of these people. They could have done it if they'd wanted to.

Let's assume that they actually believe that these people shouldn't be in jail. So why didn't they get them out of jail?

Basically, to preserve their own positions as after-office people of influence. Obama's speeches and control over the party, Biden's ability to run

That's what Biden is talking about when he compares his expansive 1000 people (or sure, 1,970 people) to Trump's 20. He's talking about a form of charity, pennies dumped on a few lucky beneficiaries and the system that grinds them down left as it is

Since Biden won the primary, it has become routine to say that any comparison of Trump and Biden, or statement that a lot of people are going to be bad off under either, is a defense of Trump. Biden is better in the sense that 1,900 people is better than 20 people.

But after the election the reality of those millions of people is going to continue.

/fin