Updated (but still partial) accounting of Prez Biden’s (and others’) clemency record

Writing for the Pew Research Center, John Gramlich’s has this new updated piece that provides an overview of Prez Biden’s clemency record and how it compares to prior presidents. The article is headlined “Biden granted more acts of clemency than any prior president,” and here are some excerpts (with links from the original):

Former President Joe Biden granted more acts of clemency than any previous chief executive on record, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Overall, Biden granted 4,245 acts of clemency during his four-year tenure in the White House. That far exceeds the total of any other president since the beginning of the 20th century, including Franklin D. Roosevelt, who granted 3,796 such acts during his 12 years in office. It is also far ahead of the current total of President Donald Trump….

The Justice Department’s statistics do not count clemency granted to entire classes of people by proclamation, such as the actions taken by Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford to forgive thousands of Vietnam War-era draft dodgers. Biden granted clemency this way, too: In October 2022 and December 2023, he granted pardons by proclamation to people convicted of certain federal marijuana offenses. And in June 2024, he issued a proclamation granting pardons to former military service members convicted of violating a since-repealed ban on consensual gay sex.

Over four years, Biden issued 80 pardons and 4,165 commutations for a total of 4,245 acts of clemency.

The number of pardons Biden issued is the second lowest on record; only George H.W. Bush granted fewer (74). But the nature of some of Biden’s pardons is historically unique.  Biden issued “preemptive pardons” to several prominent people who had not been convicted of, charged with or even investigated for any crimes….

Unlike his relatively infrequent use of pardons, Biden stands out for the sheer number of commutations he granted. His total was more than double the number granted by the next-closest president, Barack Obama, who issued 1,715 during his eight years in office.

The vast majority of Prez Biden’s commutations involved the nearly 1500 sentences bering served by the COVID home confinement cohort in December 2024 and the nearly 2500 sentences bering served for “non-violent drug offenses.”  I am hoping we will eventually see a more detailed accounting of the demographics and other aspects of Prez Biden’s record-setting commutations.