UNITED STATES—Alice Marie Johnson was granted a full pardon from her life sentence with no parole on Friday, August 28. Her case received national attention in 2017 after an interview with Mic went viral. Johnson’s story brought attention to America’s drug punishments, as many called for criminal justice reform.

The 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act declared a war on drugs and transformed the federal system from rehabilitative to punitive. Joe Biden, 78, who was a senator in the United States at the time, was a key sponsor of the bill and pushed for the eradication of parole at a federal level. Biden wrote the 100-1 bill which specifically targeted the use of crack-cocaine, impacting low-income communities. The bill enforced a minimum sentence of five years for the possession of only five grams.

In 1988 the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) began composing case studies of people sentenced to life with no parole, on accounts of non-violent drug crimes. The ACLU coined the project Buried Alive, comparing life sentences with no parole to death. As of 2020, the project has a total of 3834 documented cases.