Real Clear Politics: The Real Scandal of Stone's Commutation Isn't What You Think
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“Oddly enough, the controversy over this particular commutation presents opportunity,” attorney Holly Harris told me. “Thousands of people in federal prison are serving unfairly long sentences that don’t fit the crimes, and we urge the president to show America that his mercy extends to these individuals, and beyond the wealthy and well-connected.”
Harris is executive director of Justice Action Network, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit created in 2015 to pursue criminal justice reform. It joined forces with other groups, all of which make their arguments on the merits rather than political pressure or doling out campaign cash. Mainly, those arguments consist of presenting compelling human-interest stories that document the terrible toll draconian sentencing practices exert on families and marshalling evidence of the fiscal folly of mass incarceration.