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When History Repeats Itself: Attorney General Jeff Sessions Calls For Stricter Sentencing Policies As He Tries To Erase Former Obama-Era Justice Reform

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.”

“The policy announced today is not tough on crime. It is dumb on crime. It is an ideologically motivated, cookie-cutter approach that has only been proven to generate unfairly long sentences that are often applied indiscriminately and do little to achieve long-term public safety,” Holder said in a statement.
He added, “this administration reveals its lack of faith in their judgment and integrity.”
Holder has always been an advocate for lighter sentencing when it comes to nonviolent drug offenders which he says would also help with prison over population.

“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.

“Our biggest concerns about Attorney General Sessions are becoming reality. Yesterday’s action doubles down on a policy that we know was ineffective and discriminatory,” Richmond said. “In the name of helping communities, this policy destroyed many of them, including the families that live there.”
“It is widely known that every $1 we spend on mass incarceration makes the country less safe, but Attorney General Sessions has not learned this lesson and is determined to continue the war on drugs with extremely brutal force,” he said.
Sessions has been labeled as a racist for much of his career and the accusations derailed him from becoming a federal judge back in 1986 in Alabama.
“I am not the Jeff Sessions my detractors have tried to create,” he told Senate Judiciary Committee in response to the claims in 1986. “I am not a racist. I am not insensitive to blacks.”

 

Yeah … okay.

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Source: http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/12/politics/sessions-criminal-charging-memo/

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