"Gill was one of about 1,700 federal inmates whose sentences Obama commuted as part of a broader campaign to give relief to nonviolent offenders serving long prison terms that dated to a frenzied period in the nation’s war on drugs."
Unlike everyone else here, I have few problems with that. Jailing people is expensive. I prefer non-violent drug offenders not spend their time in prison (costing taxpayers money), and preferably be forced to pay back any damages they caused. Obviously this guy managed to escalate to property damage and I'd argue violent offenses by ramming vehicles.
Indeed. I'm with you. Thus far we have 1 out of 1700 confirmed to have messed up shortly after. The rest are unverified claims. A dozen doing so would still be less than 1% of his commutations. The majority of his commutations have been overriding the extra-ordinarily harsh mandatory minimums from the eighties and nineties down to something resembling what such people would be sentenced to today for their crimes. Hell, some wouldn't have ever seen the inside of prison today.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/news/20161220/sarasota-womans-life-sentence-commuted-by-obamaOne case I remember was one of those where 'everybody' who was an actual criminal rolled over and ratted out everybody else, but a few on the fringes, who weren't proper criminals/dealers didn't and were subsequently hit with harsh sentences because they didn't roll over. In this case, one of the busted parties called a woman who, admittedly, wasn't 100% clean before but had 'gotten out' was was leading a non-criminal life, and pressured her into saying that she'd 'get him in touch with somebody' regarding buying drugs, but never followed up on that. She got life in prison on conspiracy and drug dealing charges because she was 'facilitating' and couldn't/wouldn't rat anybody else out.
Finally consider Obama's words: "Now it is up to you to make the most of this opportunity." - this guy failed. Not all have done so.
This; there are plenty of undesirable places they can be dumped and left to fend for themselves. Then they can have the option of producing something useful, which we can buy at significantly less than market price, and they can use what little they make on it to order themselves some nicer stuff from Amazon.
No, really, there aren't. And a lot of these people have family to return to. Not all by many means, but many.
