How does Biden's pardon record compare to previous presidents since Reagan?
Executive summary
President Biden issued by far more clemency actions than recent presidents — including thousands of commutations and multiple mass proclamations — leaving him above modern predecessors on total pardons and commutations [1] [2]. Pew’s quantitative review finds Biden reversed a decades‑long decline in the share of petitions granted, returning the grant rate above the single‑digit levels that followed Reagan [3].
1. A dramatic surge in raw numbers: Biden tops modern lists
Biden’s four‑year clemency total — reported by some outlets in the thousands and described by a factbox as 8,064 “clemency actions” — makes him the most active modern president on raw counts, a tally that includes large class proclamations such as the marijuana‑possession pardons that covered 6,500 people [1] [4]. Major news outlets also report Biden issuing 39 individual pardons in one notable batch and commuting roughly 1,499 or “nearly 1,500” sentences in another action late in his term [2] [1].
2. How the Justice Department counts clemency and why totals vary
Official Justice Department statistics and the Office of the Pardon Attorney distinguish individual petitions from class‑wide proclamations; the department’s clemency statistics exclude some class actions from certain tallies because those cases were not processed through the Office of the Pardon Attorney [5]. That counting practice helps explain why different outlets report different totals for “pardons” and “clemency actions” [5] [1].
3. Grant rates: Biden reversed a long downward trend
Pew’s analysis of Justice Department data shows a long post‑Carter decline in the percentage of clemency petitions granted: every president from William McKinley through Carter granted at least 20% of petitions, but the rate fell to 12% under Reagan and to single digits for presidents after him — until Biden, who raised the share again [3]. In short, Biden’s presidency marked a reversal in the trend of lower grant rates that had persisted since the 1980s [3].
4. Comparisons with individual recent presidents
By raw counts, the differences are stark: Reagan granted about 406 clemencies during his term; George H.W. Bush granted just 77; George W. Bush issued 200 — numbers that are small compared with Biden’s thousands when class actions are included [1]. Other modern presidents such as Clinton, Carter and Ford issued several hundred clemencies in their terms, but none match Biden’s totals once mass proclamations and widespread commutations are counted [1].
5. What’s included — and what isn’t — in the headline figures
Reporters and agencies include different items in their headlines: some counts focus only on individual pardons, others include commutations, and some add mass proclamations that affect thousands. The Office of the Pardon Attorney explicitly notes that grants made outside the petition process (for example, class proclamations) are counted differently and may not appear in “Petitions Received” figures [5]. That makes direct apples‑to‑apples comparisons across presidencies sensitive to which categories are counted [5].
6. Political context and controversies around mass pardons
Biden’s use of proclamations to forgive federal simple‑possession marijuana convictions — and late‑term batches of pardons and commutations — has drawn praise from criminal‑justice reform advocates and criticism from opponents who flag specific high‑profile pardons; reporting notes the presidency’s family pardons and other contentious late actions that fueled political debate [4] [1] [2]. Sources document both the reform rationale and the partisan backlash in coverage [2] [1].
7. Limitations in available reporting and what remains unclear
Available sources document Biden’s unusually large totals and Pew’s finding on grant‑rate reversal, and the Justice Department’s own pages explain counting methods [3] [1] [5]. Available sources do not mention uniform, single‑source reconciled tallies that reconcile every differing methodology across outlets; therefore precise “who gave how many” rankings depend on whether class proclamations and commutations are included [5].
8. Bottom line for readers
If you measure presidential clemency by raw numbers including class proclamations and mass commutations, Biden ranks at the top of modern presidents, driven largely by large‑scale actions such as marijuana‑possession pardons and extensive commutations [1] [2]. If you focus only on individually processed pardon petitions, comparisons require care because the Justice Department’s accounting rules and different media methodologies produce different final counts [5] [3].