On January 5, 2017, then-President Obama published a commentary in the Harvard Law Reviewoutlining the rationale behind his administration's efforts to advance criminal justice reform, including his commuting the sentences of—or granting clemency to—more than 1,000 prisoners in recent years. The Obama administration's clemency initiative worked to both restore fairness to the criminal justice process and advance a pragmatic reconsideration of who is in our nation's prisons and how long they need to be there to serve the public interest. However, one key avenue for clemency that has health at its core—compassionate release—went unmentioned in the President's text and remains underutilized at both the federal and state levels.
