Released from Prison

Released from Prison October 13, 2015

A moving story of someone — Donel Clark —  granted clemency, and someone who illustrates restorative justice.

A 51-year-old who has spent more than two decades behind bars, Clark is one of 22 nonviolent drug offenders whom Obama granted clemency in March in an effort to shorten the harsh mandatory minimum sentences imposed on thousands of mostly African American men during the war on drugs in the 1980s and 1990s.

Those ex-convicts, along with 46 others given commutations in July, are making their way from federal prison back into neighborhoods around the country. Separately, 6,000 federal prisoners will be released at the end of the month after retroactive changes in sentencing guidelines.

After receiving Obama’s clemency letter six months ago in the Seagoville federal prison, just southeast of here, Clark was surrounded by guards and inmates who shook his hand and congratulated him.

He was free, they told him. But freedom, he learned, comes step by bureaucratic step.

Inmates granted clemency are first moved to lower-security prisons, then to halfway houses before home-confinement and, finally, probation.

Clark was initially transferred to a minimum-security prison camp at Seagoville, but outside the high razor-wire fence.

“I was like, man, I’m out here outside the fence and it was so weird,” Clark said.


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