Clemencies In 2025
Kyle from Federal Prison Tips is back in Washington, meeting with officials about clemency applications.
First things first – back on June 5th, 2025, the Director of the Federal Prison System, Billy Marshall, updated the BOP programming statement around clemency.
It clarifies that an inmate’s case manager must submit clemency applications for interested inmates. Of course, they’ll do it reluctantly, and will simply use the eight page, fill-in-the-blank form to accomplish this. They will write little to no narrative about the inmate – which is precisely what is needed to make the compelling case about the inmate to make their story stand out.
The normal way of submitting a clemency application has not changed. You or a loved one can still fill out the clemency form and include a long form narrative.
Or, you can hire an attorney or firm. Or, you can hire a prison consultant, like the Legal Advocation Center with Jeffrey Henson, Freedom Fighters PC with Chad Marks, or of course, Federal Prison Tips.
All of us know how to write a compelling long form narrative on a clemency petition.
But back to clemency – according to meetings held thus far, the Trump administration is still “prioritizing clemency.” But anyone who’s seen the news knows how quickly things change every day. There are all kinds of international and diplomatic issues that are also a “priority.”
However, we do know that Biden granted 4,600 clemencies during his time in office, and Trump vowed to grant more than that. At one point, he even said 10,000 throughout the course of his term.
When will that actually happen? They keep saying “soon.” We know that soon is never soon enough. But the best thing to do is this scenario is be prepared and have your petition submitted as early as possible.
If news outlets begin reporting that clemencies are being granted, the clemency office will start flooding with petitions. To have the best chance of success, you want to have yours on someone’s desk before that starts to happen.
So, you can have your case manager do it, give it a try yourself, or give us a call: 407-434-0175 during business hours.