The grant of clemency, timed to coincide with the Christmas holiday, is the largest such grant of Obama's presidency, and takes the total number of sentences he's commuted up to 184. The grant comes on the heels of 46 commutations Obama issued last July.
More than 40 of the commutations are for life sentences, and most of the beneficiaries will be released in April.
Despite the large number of commutations, a look at the list of beneficiaries reveal there is very little variety in the crimes they committed. For 72 of them, one of their offenses was trafficking in cocaine, and of these, all but a handful were specifically convicted of trafficking in crack cocaine (often described as "cocaine base" in criminal law).