It was slow in starting, but picked up steam, and some applause, when President Obama used his constitutional authority to commute sentences.  Not pardon, of course, as the president has been the most niggardly in using the pardon power of any president since Garfield, who was shot three months into office. But he’s got his commutation machine cranked up.

President Obama granted clemency to a record 214 inmates on Wednesday, far surpassing his previous single-day record, as part of an ongoing effort to release federal inmates serving prison terms deemed to be unduly harsh.

What’s not to like? And the president has kept it going, up to 775 commutations. Wait, make that 774.

Arnold Ray Jones did what more than 29,000 federal inmates have done: He asked Obama for a presidential commutation.

And then, after it arrived on Aug. 3, he refused to accept it.

Jones’ turnabout highlights the strings that come attached to an increasing number of Obama’s commutations: In this case, enrollment in a residential drug treatment program — which has been a condition of 92 of Obama commutation grants. Jones is the first to refuse that condition.

Most people have no clue what a commutation is, but they know it sounds like something really good, certainly better than spending the rest of your life in prison. When we learn of these mass commutations, we breathe a sigh of relief. The president is finally putting his pen to paper and making good on the promise of doing something about mass incarceration.

Unlike pardons, which represent a full legal forgiveness for a crime, commutations can shorten a prison sentence while leaving other consequences intact. And as Obama has increased his use of commutations in his last year in office, he’s also gotten more creative in adapting the power to fit the circumstances of each case. Unlike the more common “time served” commutations, which release a prisoner more or less immediately, many of his commutations since August have been “term” commutations, which have left prisoners with years left to serve on their sentences.

Except 774 commutations in a federal prison population of nearly 200,000 isn’t exactly a tidal wave. When they walk out, they’re still saddled with their felonies, and the disabilities that go with them. And it’s not like he’s cutting them loose. but shortening their sentences. And then, with conditions.

Still, drug treatment hardly sounds like a bad thing, especially if a prisoner’s history with addiction served to land him in Club Fed in the first place, right?  Hasn’t there been a huge call to treat drug crimes as a public health problem, where the cure is treatment rather than prison? Even if they went to prison, isn’t treatment still a good idea to prevent them from returning to drugs, returning to the cause of their imprisonment?

“For some, the president believes that the applicant’s successful re-entry will be aided with additional drug treatment, and the president has conditioned those commutations on an applicant’s seeking that treatment,” [White House counsel Neil] Eggleston wrote. “Underlying all the president’s commutation decisions is the belief that these deserving individuals should be given the tools to succeed in their second chance.”

Since Aug. 3, 22% of the commutations Obama has issued have required drug treatment.

So what would possibly make this fellow, Arnold Ray Jones, who sought commutation, refuse it when it is granted, but with a condition that provided him with “the tools to succeed in [his] second chance”?

If Jones had agreed to complete the the program, he would be out in two years. He still has six years left on his original 2002 sentence for drug trafficking, but Jones may be counting on getting time off for good behavior, which would have him released in April 2019 — eight months longer than if he had accepted the commutation. Jones, 50, is in a low-security federal prison in Beaumont, Texas.

Jones had been through drug treatment before. It didn’t work. Contrary to the rosy belief that drug treatment is some amorphous magic, many people who have been through it say there are more drugs available in residential treatment programs than there are on the street. After all, if you want to sell drugs, what better way than to get a job at a drug treatment center, where all the addicts are.

Others speak to the fact that these programs are mostly scams, scientifically baseless and incapable of fulfilling the promise that those who want to believe in magic solutions think they can. Still others know that they are as bad as high security prison, worse than a prison camp.

There is a risk to accepting the condition. Take it and cut eight months off the back end of the sentence. Not exactly the hugest upside, but still, eight months is eight months. But if you fail, you will pay an even steeper price for your failure, owing back the time but without benefit of good time for not adhering to the condition of the commutation, plus whatever other charges get piled on top.

And then there is the silent killer, that the guy who comes out of prison, has no job, no money, no place to live, no car, no friends and no clue how to navigate the country that he left in 2002 when he emerges in 2016, has the burden of having to put the drug treatment program ahead of trying to find a way to eat that night. It’s hard enough to get anyone to take a chance on a felon, an ex-con, because America hates criminals, and employers hate liability.

In a country where there is huge unemployment, little of which is reflected in the official statistics, there isn’t much of a reason to give a guy like Jones a break. But should he get a break, a job, what are the chances that the employer will be cool with his going to drug treatment sessions three times a week? After all, what employer of an ex-con wants to pay him to not be there, doing the job?

This isn’t to say that President Obama’s use of his power of commutation is a bad thing, any more than to say that drug treatment is an inherent curse. it is, however, to say that there is far more involved than what appears on the surface to those who feel all justice-y about these 775 commutations. Oops, my bad. 774.

H/T Doug Berman