What crimes were most commonly covered by Biden's pardons and commutations?
Executive summary
President Biden’s clemency record heavily focused on nonviolent drug offenses and large categorical actions: his administration issued mass commutations and pardons for people convicted of simple marijuana possession and thousands of nonviolent drug offenders (including roughly 1,500 commutations tied to COVID-era home confinement and later nearly 2,500 commutations for nonviolent drug crimes), and he commuted 37 federal death‑row sentences to life without parole [1] [2] [3] [4]. Official Justice Department lists document dozens of discrete pardon and commutation rounds between 2022 and early 2025 [5] [6].
1. The clemency story in one line: drugs, mass relief, and a death‑penalty move
Biden’s most common clemency recipients were people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses — including categorical pardons for simple marijuana possession and mass commutations for long drug sentences — and his administration took the unusual step of commuting 37 federal death‑row sentences to life without parole [4] [1] [3] [2].
2. How the administration delivered relief: proclamations and large batches
Rather than relying only on individual reviews, the White House used proclamations and large bundles of actions: October 2022 and December 2023 proclamations pardoned people convicted of certain federal marijuana offenses, and December 2024–January 2025 rounds included roughly 1,500 commutations (home‑confinement cohort) and later nearly 2,500 commutations focused on nonviolent drug crimes, plus dozens of individual pardons [4] [2] [3] [1].
3. Why drug offenders were the primary focus
The administration framed the mass actions as corrective: the commutations addressed “disproportionately long sentences” tied to outdated sentencing policies — notably crack/powder cocaine disparities and long mandatory sentences for nonviolent drug offenses — a rationale the White House and the president repeatedly cited in announcing the actions [3] [7] [1].
4. Death‑row commutations: an unusual presidential intervention
Parallel to the drug clemency, Biden commuted the sentences of 37 individuals on federal death row to life without parole, a high‑profile use of clemency that drew immediate political backlash and legal and policy debate over its scope and the fate of victims’ interests [1] [8].
5. Scope and scale: record‑setting numbers, according to analyses
By mid‑January 2025 reporting, Biden had granted more acts of clemency than any prior president on record — totals cited include thousands of acts (4,245 clemency acts in one dataset) and multiple large single‑day actions that pushed his count past previous records [4] [3] [2].
6. Political and legal pushback: partisan framing and attempts to overturn
Critics labeled the mass actions as overbroad and politically motivated — for instance focusing on pardons of family members and claims the autopen or staff actions tainted decisions — and Republican officials sought reviews or even announced plans to reverse some actions, leading legal experts to note that revoking finalized pardons would be unprecedented and subject to court challenges [9] [10] [11] [12].
7. Recordkeeping and the autopen controversy complicate the narrative
Congressional and oversight complaints about how some documents were signed (autopen use) and how last‑minute clemency rounds were managed have become central to political arguments over legitimacy, though fact‑checkers and legal scholars point out that signature method controversies do not by themselves prove invalid clemency — courts would decide challenges [9] [11] [13].
8. What the official records show and what they don’t
The Department of Justice maintains public lists of pardons and commutations across many dates through January 2025, documenting the actions and recipients; those lists make clear the prevalence of drug‑related clemency and the mass nature of several packages [5] [6]. Available sources do not mention a comprehensive breakdown of every underlying statutory offense by percentage across all 4,000+ acts in a single table — the public record requires compiling many releases to get a full offense‑by‑offense frequency [5] [6].
9. Bottom line for readers
The clemency pattern under Biden was deliberate and policy‑driven: the most common crimes covered were nonviolent drug offenses (including simple marijuana possession), addressed through large, categorical pardons and commutations intended to correct sentencing disparities; the president also used clemency to commute nearly all federal death sentences, which intensified political conflict and legal scrutiny [4] [2] [1] [3]. Policymakers and advocates disagree sharply about whether these mass actions restored justice or overreached; the record shows both the scale of the interventions and the political heat they generated [8] [9].