Criminal Justice - Obama Presidency Oral History

During the final years of the Obama presidency the administration also took steps to reduce the sentences of certain federal prisoners. The centerpiece of this effort was the Clemency Initiative, which DOJ launched in 2014 to encourage inmates to petition Obama to commute or reduce their sentences. Inmates were generally considered eligible for clemency if they were non-violent, low-level offenders; had limited criminal histories; had served at least 10 years of their sentence; and would likely have received a substantially lower sentence if convicted of the same offense at the time of the review. By the end of his second term, Obama granted more than 1,300 commutations—more than his 12 predecessors combined. The administration also worked to support people with criminal records as they sought to reintegrate into society following their incarceration. The White House launched the Federal Interagency Reentry Council, which was tasked with finding ways to reduce barriers formerly-incarcerated people face while pursuing education, jobs, housing, and health care. Toward those ends, the Office of Personnel Management issued a rule prohibiting federal agencies from asking job applicants about criminal histories, the Department of Housing and Urban Development released guidelines to limit the use of criminal records in housing decisions, and the Department of Education encouraged colleges and universities to conduct holistic evaluations of applicants with criminal records. Narrators from across the project archive discuss these policies and initiatives, and outline the administration’s efforts to reduce the prison population and ease post-incarceration reentry. 

Over the course of the Obama years, grassroots movements for racial justice and criminal justice reform emerged in response to high-profile killings of unarmed African Americans. #BlackLivesMatter appeared on social media following the acquittal of George Zimmerman, who had killed Trayvon Martin in 2012, and over the course of Obama’s second term Black Lives Matter came to describe a national decentralized anti-racist movement. Large Black Lives Matter protests took place following the unprosecuted police killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in New York City in 2014, and Freddie Gray in Baltimore in 2015.

Activists associated with the movement increased focus on structural and systemic racism in the US criminal justice system, and were at-times sharply critical of Obama and his administration. In the project archive, activists and administration officials discuss the rise of Black Lives Matter, and share stories of White House meetings between Obama, movement activists, federal officials, and civil rights leaders. 

With police brutality and racial profiling centered in criminal justice reform debates, the administration took a number of administrative actions to eliminate police department abuses and improve police-community relations. Central to this effort was the Task Force on 21st Century Policing, which Obama created in late 2014, and which brought together law enforcement, DOJ officials, and outside activists to make recommendations related to data collection, technology, oversight, and police responses to public demonstrations. The administration also made extensive use of "consent decrees" to sanction and retrain police departments with histories of excessive force and racial profiling. Following the militarized response to the 2014 Ferguson protests, Obama signed an executive order to scale back the transfer of military surplus to local police departments. In their oral histories, key figures involved with the Task Force discuss its activities, while narrators from across the project archive reflect on the administration's capacity to transform local law enforcement practices.

The Obama Presidency Oral History project’s coverage of criminal justice reform overlaps and intersects with a number of other topic areas in the collection, including Black Politics, Human Rights, and Counterterrorism.