Granting Pardon for the Offense of Simple Possession of Marijuana

Re:Granting Pardon for the Offense of Simple Possession of M... by danso on Friday October 07, 2022 @02:25AM (#33118049)

But a poorly executed mass pardon can harm Biden's presidential popularity, which is highly correlated to getting laws passed by Congress. Skimming the contents of this academic book [0], it doesn't look like there has been a major mass pardon in the 20th century other than Carter's?

There have been large state mass pardons recently, but most of those are of a different political beast -- i.e. at the end of a term, and are (usually, I assume) on a case-by-case basis, i.e. 500 individually researched cases, not all 500 felony drug users. And that has its own political problems that aren't relevant to Biden's situation

[0] http://cup.columbia.edu/book/mass-pardons-in-america/9780231...

[1] https://www.wlky.com/article/child-rapist-pardoned-gov-matt-...

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Re:Granting Pardon for the Offense of Simple Possession of M... by smsm42 on Friday October 07, 2022 @02:32AM (#33118086)

I imagine there would be some cases where a real hardcore criminal was imprisoned for simple possession because that's the only thing they could get to stick, and releasing such people probably will prove unpopular. However, I estimate the large percentage of people who are convicted only on simple possession aren't hardcore criminals, and thus there may not be any large negative consequence from this. OTOH, Biden runs with the crowd that literally called for abolishing the police a while ago, and succeeded in reducing the police budgets and significantly hindering its function in some major cities. If he's not concerned about that, there's no reason for him to be concerned about the effects of the pardon either.

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Re:Granting Pardon for the Offense of Simple Possession of M... by danso on Friday October 07, 2022 @03:42AM (#33118451)

Biden showed sympathy toward "Defund/Abolish" protesters, but never endorsed their movements. And by virtually every metric, he's increased federal dollars for local police:

Fact check: Political ad saying Biden wants to defund the police is misleading https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-misleading-bide...

Biden to request $37B in annual budget to support police and prevent crime: https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/3568076-bi...

> I imagine there would be some cases where a real hardcore criminal was imprisoned for simple possession because that's the only thing they could get to stick, and releasing such people probably will prove unpopular.

No matter how popular and light a blanket pardon initiative, political rivals will always blame the president/governor if any of the pardoned do something bad, even if it's a statistical certainty that at least 1/1000 people will get arrested for a crime.

I'm sure the Biden people sussed out the numebrs and tradeoff, e.g. there's not a lot of simple possession convicts, but it's a lot less politically risky to do a bulk pardon for them.

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