Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey on Thursday announced a plan to offer clemency to more than 17,000 inmates serving time for nonviolent drug-related offenses on the first day of his presidency, an expansive use of executive power that would be the broadest clemency initiative since the Civil War.
The plan, which draws heavily on previous legislation he has introduced and passed as a senator, takes pains to address the vast racial inequalities wrought by the so-called war on drugs. It focuses on those serving sentences for marijuana-related offenses, as well as those with disparate sentences because of old distinctions between crack and powder cocaine.