President Obama, who has stepped up his campaign this year to overhaul the nation's criminal justice system, commuted the sentences of 22 drug offenders Tuesday.
More than a year after the Justice Department launched an initiative aimed at granting clemency to nonviolent offenders, the effort has gotten off to a slow start,  In December 2013 Obama commuted the sentences of eight people as part of the effort, all of whom were serving lengthy prison sentences for crack cocaine offenses.
In a blog post outlining the reasoning behind the Tuesday pardons, White House counsel Neil Eggleston noted that under current sentencing guidelines many of the individuals receiving clemency would have already served their time in prison.
