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Fifteen months into his presidency, Joe Biden has granted his first clemencies<\/a>. Last week he pardoned three people and commuted the sentences of 75 others. The beneficiaries of these pardons and commutations were non-violent offenders who already had served most of their sentences. In fact, many of them were already out of jail and in home confinement.<\/p>\n While this exercise of clemency was an important first step, it was neither bold nor courageous. Biden seemed to be testing the waters rather than taking the plunge into an ambitious, reform-oriented use of the clemency power.<\/p>\n It is a disappointment that he did not seek to do more.<\/p>\n During his presidential campaign<\/a>, Biden talked about clemency in expansive terms, linking it to a broad criminal justice reform and racial equity agenda<\/a>. According to a report<\/a> in The New York Times <\/em>one year ago, the White House signaled to criminal justice activist groups that it intended to use clemency grants \u201cto address systemic issues in the criminal justice system.\u201d<\/p>\n At the same time, the Biden administration also promised to restore order to the clemency process, which had been regularly short-circuited or circumvented<\/a> by former President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n But if the president is to fulfill the vision of the clemency process he outlined in his campaign, he will need to do more than tinkering with the process and addressing the unduly harsh sentences given to non-violent drug offenders. He will have to the use his power to tackle inequities and injustices and to extend mercy to the thousands of violent offenders<\/a> sentenced to prison under tough on crime policies that Biden himself advocated early in his Senate career.<\/p>\n The president has a chance to lead the way by acknowledging that harsh sentences and mass incarceration have not made America safer<\/a> and that even many violent offenders deserve a second chance<\/p>\n