US weighs clemency for inmates jailed for 10 years

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is encouraging nonviolent federal inmates who have behaved in prison, have no significant criminal history and have already served more than 10 years behind bars to apply for clemency, officials announced today.

The initiative is part of a broader Obama administration effort to trim the nation's prison population, ease sentencing disparities arising from drug possession crimes and scale back the use of strict punishments for drug offenders without a violent past.

The goal is to create a larger pool of eligible prisoners the Justice Department can recommend to the president to consider for shorter sentences.

Deputy Attorney General James Cole laid out a half-dozen criteria for clemency that the government will consider in evaluating future inmate applications. The announcement is aimed primarily at drug prisoners, especially those sentenced under old guidelines that resulted in significantly harsher penalties for people caught with crack cocaine than for those who possessed the powder form of the drug. But it also applies to federal inmates imprisoned for other crimes, provided they meet the same criteria.

"These defendants were properly held accountable for their criminal conduct. However, some of them, simply because of the operation of sentencing laws on the books at the time, received substantial sentences that are disproportionate to what they would receive today," Cole said. "Even the sentencing judges in many of these cases expressed regret at the time at having to impose such harsh sentences."