WASHINGTON (AP) – The United States is broadening the criteria it will use in evaluating clemency petitions from certain federal prisons, and inmates serving time for nonviolent drug offenses are their targeted group.
The new criteria are intended to lead to a reduction in the nation’s federal prison population.
The announcement is part of an ongoing Obama administration push to re-evaluate sentences for drug crimes that officials believe were unduly harsh and were imposed under old federal guidelines that treated convictions for crack cocaine more punitively than those involving the powder form of the drug.
