Wouldn’t pardons and commutations for those who served be a great way for Prez Biden to honor Veterans Day?

November 11, 2022

The question in the title of this post is inspired by today’s national holiday, Veterans Day. Based on the latest data from Bureau of Justice Statistics, from this March 2021 report “Survey of Prison Inmates, 2016: Veterans in Prison,” veterans make up over 5% of the federal prison population (and nearly 8% of state prison populations). Moreover, as an important new initiative from the Council for Criminal Justice has highlighted, roughly “one third of veterans report having been arrested and booked into jail at least once in their lives, compared to fewer than one fifth of non-veterans.” In other words, at both the federal and state level, there are surely no shortage of justice-involved veterans who could and should be a focus of concern and attention on this important day and for whom clemency consideration would be justified.

Though I am not expecting that Prez Biden will celebrate this Veterans Day by making a special effort to grant commutations or pardons to a special list of veterans, I have long thought criminal justice reform advocates ought to lean into this day by urging the President and all Governors to make a tradition of using clemency powers in this kind of special and distinctive way on this special and distinctive day. As I have noted before, a key slogan for this day is “honoring ALL who served,” not just those who stayed out of trouble after serving.

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