 Mark Curtis, Vanessa Ruiz, you're watching 12 news at 10 President Barack Obama granting commutation to 58 prisoners today including one Phoenix man The 55 year old was serving a 20-year sentence for drug related convictions, but he'll now be released in May 2018 Kevin Kennedy is live in the newsroom with more on the effort to ease punishments for nonviolent offenders Kevin Yeah, it's all part of a big push to reduce the number of nonviolent criminals in our federal prison system now some inmates We're actually looking at 20 to 30 years compared to some violent criminals who actually got less than 10 Stephen Martin kills a woman and gets 12 years Simon Martinez shoots and kills his dad and gets just shy of eight Taylor Baccio bashes his kid's skull and gets seven years every crime violent or deadly and yet Shannon Blake got 20 years for dealing drugs people will look at that from the outside and say how is it possible? The short answer is our justice system for whatever reason drug crimes often end up with harsher penalties than violent offenses Blake was convicted of a federal crime and there are mandatory penalties a judge must follow Then a judge is handcuffed and cannot give that defendant or that person less than 10 years of prison President Obama now reducing Blake's sentence and 57 others today Is is one small step along the road prisoners must petition so far the president commuting? 306 sentences since he took office sensible sentencing reform started back in 2014 But black and hand be both agree real changes could take years Ignoring nonviolent criminals behind bars a Lot longer than people who've killed Shannon Blake had his sentence reduced by about six years today's commutation follows a bigger one earlier this year When 61 people had their sentence reduced Kevin Kennedy 12 news at 10