Justifying leniency at a time of punitiveness: Federal clemency narratives in the United States

Scholarship on contemporary US penality has paid little attention to practices opposing the punitive trend. This study explores clemency – official acts moderating punishment and its lasting consequences – as an executive back-end mechanism of leniency. To explore how clemency is discussed at a time of increasingly punitive penal policies, I conducted a qualitative analysis of 36 years’ worth of presidential statements on clemency from Reagan to Obama. This study revealed that three central justifications are used to validate clemency decisions: individuals’ deservingness, community benefits and justice ideals. Discussions of clemency challenge punitiveness by closing the social distance between individuals with criminal histories and law-abiding society and calling for moderation in punishment and penal reform. However, by using a justificatory tone and mirroring penal rationales, clemency statements are limited in inviting progressive change and at times actively drive and reinforce dominant punitive narratives.