Holder says drug offenders are serving draconian sentences. Why won't Obama let them out?

This initiative reminds me of the Fair Sentencing Act, which President Obama signed in 2010. Instead of eliminating the senseless sentencing disparity between smoked and snorted cocaine, the law reduced it, which surely was better than nothing but not quite as good as one might reasonably have expected given the bipartisan consensus that crack penalties were out of whack. (The law passed Congress almost unanimously.) Holder cites the Fair Sentencing Act as evidence that his boss has “felt strongly” about criminal justice reform “ever since his days as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago.” The other example of Obama’s strong feelings that Holder mentions—”legislation that addressed racial profiling”—dates from Obama’s days as a state legislator. As a U.S. senator and president, he has resembled a standard-issue drug warrior much more than a reformer. Most shamefully, he has failed to use his unilateral clemency powers to free the federal drug offenders whose prison terms he admits are unjust.

As Holder notes, his Smart on Crime initiative, like the Fair Sentencing Act, reflects a conclusion that has “attracted overwhelming, bipartisan support in ‘red states’ as well as ‘blue states’ “: The mindlessly harsh penalties produced by a reflexive tough-on-crime attitude are neither fair nor prudent. Or as UCLA criminologist Mark Kleiman puts it, “long prison terms are wasteful government spending.” The attorney general’s speech is encouraging as yet another sign of that realization. Whether it amounts to more remains to be seen.