President Obama has commuted prison sentences of 673 federal inmates, and Florida leads the nation in the number of granted clemency cases, with most coming from Tampa Bay’s Middle District of Florida, reports the Tampa Bay Times. Dozens of Tampa Bay lawyers are also among 4,000 in a nationwide initiative helping inmates.
The pace of clemency grants in coming months as Obama’s second term ends. According to data compiled by the newspaper, of Obama’s 673 commutations, 121 of them are from Florida, including 58 from the Middle District of Florida. “We’ve been overcriminalizing and we’re incarcerating too many people and really doing harm to ourselves,” said criminal defense lawyer Brian Shrader of Tampa. “We’re really punishing our own society.”