Attorney General (AG) Jeff Sessions certainly knows how to create a bipartisan consensus.
After last week’s announcement by AG Sessions, requesting local prosecutors return to the old days of handing out the harshest drug sentences possible, more than a few congressional members spoke out against the Atty. Gen.’s proposed guidelines.
Per the 2013 Holder memo, Obama’s AG requested local district attorneys rethink how they charge certain drug-related activities. Not interested in stuffing the for-profit prison system with low-level drug offenders, Holder requested local prosecutors reconsider mandatory minimum sentencing for defendants not connected to criminal organizations.
A lot has changed since then.
Under Sessions’ new charging policy, summarized in a two-page document, local prosecutors and assistant AGs in Washington are to “charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense.”
Calling the new policy “dumb on crime,” the former U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder received strong support from both sides of the political aisle:
U.S. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT):
“To be tough on crime we have to be smart on crime. That is why criminal justice reform is a conservative issue.”
“Mandatory minimum sentences have unfairly and disproportionately incarcerated too many minorities for too long. Attorney General Sessions’ new policy will accentuate that injustice.”
U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT):
“The Attorney General’s new sentencing policy is an ideologically motivated attempt to resurrect the failed policies of the War on Drugs. Make no mistake, low-level offenders will spend years and even decades more in prison. This will not make us safer — quite the opposite, it will strip critical public safety resources away from targeting truly violent criminals in order to house nonviolent drug offenders.”
“This policy shift flies in the face of the growing bipartisan consensus that we need to reduce—not increase—the length of prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenders. It will send already skyrocketing prison costs even higher, undermining other important public safety priorities and separating nonviolent drug offenders from their families for years, which has a destructive effect on communities and erodes faith in our criminal justice system.”
Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN):
“Sessions’ memorandum is a return to the failed policies of the War on Drugs. It is bad for our communities, and utterly destructive for low-level, non-violent drug offenders. The only people who benefit from these laws are those who have a financial stake in imprisonment: the private prison industry and vendors to the public system.”
Congressman Steve Cohen (D-TN):
“Harsher sentences for non-violent drug crimes cost taxpayers more money and waste limited resources that are needed to go after more dangerous, violent offenders who put the public at risk. The beneficiaries of these policies are often private prisons who profit from locking up more inmates, disproportionately affecting people of color.”
Creating only a few exceptions to the harshest penalties possible, the Sessions’ memo notes any leniency must be approved by a U.S. attorney, assistant attorney general or their supervisor.
