The Trump Administration has really lived up to it’s name when it comes to trying to trump all of Obama’s former policies. First healthcare and now Attorney General Jeff Sessions wants to worsen the mess we call a justice system. In a two page memo to staff, Sessions demanded that federal prosecutors “charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense,” — meaning he wants to do away with lenient sentencing for nonviolent drug crimes.
“This policy affirms our responsibility to enforce the law, is moral and just, and produces consistency. This policy fully utilizes the tools Congress has given us,” Sessions said in the memo. “By definition, the most serious offenses are those that carry the most substantial guidelines sentence, including mandatory minimum sentences.”
Sessions spoke more about his stance to the Sergeants Benevolent Association of New York City
“Charging and sentencing recommendations are bedrock responsibilities of any prosecutor. And I trust our prosecutors in the field to make good judgments,” Sessions said. “They deserve to be unhandcuffed and not micromanaged from Washington.”
“We are returning to the enforcement of the laws as passed by Congress, plain and simple,” Sessions goes on to say. “If you are a drug trafficker, we will not look the other way, we will not be willfully blind to your misconduct.”
The memo sounds like the 2017 calling for the rebirth of the “war on drugs” and we all know how that ended. With that being said, Sessions’ message has been met with great criticism especially from former Attorney General under the Obama Administration, Eric H. Holder Jr who says successor’s move would “take this nation back.”
“This is a disastrous move that will increase the prison population, exacerbate racial disparities in the criminal justice system, and do nothing to reduce drug use or increase public safety,” Michael Collins, deputy director at the Drug Policy Alliance, said in a statement emailed to NPR. “Sessions is taking the country back to the 1980s by escalating the failed policies of the drug war.”
Congressional Black Caucus chairman Cedric Richmond also blasted Sessions’ newest iniative calling it “discriminatory” and says history shows his policy “destroyed” families.
Yeah … okay.
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Source: http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/12/politics/sessions-criminal-charging-memo/
