The criminal justice system learns from its mistakes and evolves. New laws, policies, and practices recognize that yesterday's legal framework produced excessive, often cruel, sentences.

New laws promise fairness. Old procedural rules make sure many never receive it.

Thousands remain imprisoned under sentences today's justice system rejects

There is no parole in the federal system.

Clemency exists because strict adherence to the law can sometimes produce a legally sound but morally disproportionate punishment. While courts are bound by rigid statutes and precedent, clemency allows the president to act.

Not every injustice can be blamed on an outdated law, policy, or practice. Sometimes the system itself is the problem—prosecutors wielding unchecked discretion, weaponized conspiracy laws, abusive charging practices, distorted sentencing calculations, coercive plea bargaining, defendants punished for exercising their constitutional right to a trial, sentences based largely on entirely separate uncharged crimes or massive amounts of uncharged ghost drugs, judges imposing punitive sentences that bear little relationship to the actual conduct or circumstances of the case, and more.

Executive Clemency is the Constitution's answer to the inevitable failures of the criminal justice system.

Clemency doesn't require Congress. It doesn't require another election. It doesn't require waiting.

A president can act immediately.