Sessions claims in his memo that "charging and sentencing recommendations are crucial responsibilities for any federal prosecutor".
"In removing the discretion I vested in the men and women of the Department of Justice to seek justice for the unique circumstances that each case presents, this administration reveals its lack of faith in their judgment and integrity", he wrote. Some involved in criminal justice during the drug war feared the human impact would look similar. "You had people who weren't able to be responsible fathers for their kids, who weren't able to serve a couple of years for making a mistake, then come home and do better".
"Jeff Sessions wants to turn back the clock on the progress we've made, and we're going to have to fight and speak out against it", she added.
"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. He foreshadowed the plan early in his tenure, when he signaled his strong support for the federal government's continued use of private prisons, reversing another Obama directive to phase out their use.
"As the Attorney General noted, Memphis is not alone in facing challenges posed by gangs, violent criminals, and drug traffickers".
That was particularly significant, because large quantities of drugs typically forced judges to impose stiff sentences - 10 years for a kilogram of heroin, five kilograms of cocaine or 1,000 kilograms of marijuana. In that ruling, Sullivan urged prosecutors to consider alternatives that keep people charged with nonviolent offenses out of prison.
"Sessions appears to subscribe to outdated ideas about criminal justice policy that conservatives, progressives, and law enforcement leaders agree do not help reduce crime", Ames C. Grawert, counsel in the Brennan Center's Justice Program, said at the time.
In cases in which prosecutors decide to veer from the new rules, the exception will need to be approved by top supervisors and the reasons must be documented, allowing the Justice Department to track the handling of such cases by its 94 USA attorney's offices.
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Comey was set to testify before the Intelligence Committee Thursday, but Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe will take his place. She reported this directly to the White House, she said, so officials could "take action".
Sessions has stated that if a prosecutor does not want to pursue the most serious charge, he or she must get the decision approved by a supervisor, such as a US attorney or assistant attorney general.
Holder had ordered US attorneys to drop the across-the-board tough-guy act Sessions is reviving and instead reserve the harshest sentencing enhancements and multi-layered indictments available in the law for offenders with clear links to violent crime and organized criminal syndicates. It's dumb on crime.
He says Sessions' policy is "an ideologically motivated, cookie-cutter approach that has only been proven to generate unfairly long sentences". One of the big factors in why so many individuals serving time in federal prison were convicted on drug charges is because they pled down from more serious charges, such as armed robbery or even murder, in relation to the drug offense.
Statistics show 46 percent of inmates were jailed for drug related reasons.
Obama officials cited that decline and a drop in the overall number of drug prosecutions as evidence that policies were working as intended. His memo tells prosecutors to charge steeper crimes that would trigger long, mandatory minimum prison sentences.
Though Holder did say that prosecutors ordinarily should charge the most serious offense, he instructed them to do an "individualized assessment" of the defendant's conduct. Attorney General Sessions said, "we know that drugs and crime go hand-in-hand..."
This represents an important landmark in Sessions's battle against the bipartisan drive for criminal-justice reform.
The head of a defense attorneys organization says Attorney General Jeff Sessions' directive that prosecutors pursue tougher charges against suspects has stripped them of their ability to seek justice.
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