Biden’s pardons show focus on easing drug punishments, and women’s rights

U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday pardoned six people who have already served time for crimes, including five convicted of drug or alcohol-related offenses and a woman who killed her allegedly abusive husband nearly five decades ago.
The latest pardons showed Biden nudging U.S. criminal justice policy away from the war-on-drugs ethos that he and other liberal lawmakers once championed.
Now gearing up for a possible re-election bid in 2024, the Democratic president faces pressure to show progress on racial and criminal justice issues. The United States has less than 5% of the world’s population but a fifth of its prisoners. A disproportionate share are people of color, who make up a sizable chunk of Biden’s base of support.
All three of Biden’s uses of the pardon power so far in his term have involved reducing the sentences of people convicted of drug-related offenses.