Attorney General Orders Tougher Drug Crime Prosecutions

[+Malamute]

Attorney General Sessions Orders Tougher Drug Crime Prosecutions

 

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/attorney-general-sessions-orders-tougher-drug-crime-prosecutions-n758111

 

 

Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered federal prosecutors this week to seek the maximum punishment for drug offenses, in one of the clearest breaks yet from the policies of the Justice Department under the Obama administration.

 

The move is an abrupt departure from policy made by President Barack Obama's Attorney General, to reduce the number of people convicted of certain lower-level drug crimes being given long jail terms.

The change, "affirms our responsibility to enforce the law, is moral and just, and produces consistency," Sessions said, in a memo to federal prosecutors written May 10 and made public Friday.

 

The memo urged prosecutors to file "the most serious, readily provable" charges that carry the most substantial punishment, including mandatory minimum sentences.

 

It marked a reversal of the policy imposed in 2013 under former Attorney General Eric Holder's "smart on crime" initiative. This directed prosecutors not to report the amount of drugs involved in an arrest if it would trigger mandatory minimums for non-violent offenders who had no ties to drug cartels or gangs and who did not sell to children.

In announcing his policy, Holder said at the time, "With an outsized, unnecessarily large prison population, we need to ensure that incarceration is used to punish, deter, and rehabilitate — not merely to warehouse and forget." Prosecutors were directed instead to focus on the most serious offenses.

 

Holder's approach included legislation to reduce some mandatory minimum sentences. Although it received bi-partisan support in Congress, it did not pass. One of those against the idea was Jeff Sessions, who did however support the successful move to reduce the disparity between sentences for offenses involving crack, as opposed to powdered cocaine.

 

Some prosecutors opposed Holder's directive, saying it deprived them of a tool for persuading drug crime defendants to plead guilty. But two years after imposing his policy, Holder said the share of cases in which defendants cooperated remained the same — about 97 percent.

 

In this week's memo, Sessions said the change was consistent with the Justice Department's responsibility "to fulfill our role in a way that accords with the law, advances public safety, and promotes respect for our legal system."

[+Malamute]

Yay for Trump. Double down on Drug War.

 

[william7]

Yay for Trump. Double down on Drug War.

 

head-bash.gif

 

[+Malamute]

Attorney general sparks fear with push for harsh sentences

 

http://www.kiro7.com/news/trending-now/attorney-general-sparks-fear-with-push-for-harsh-sentences/522343952

 

WASHINGTON D.C. - The nation's federal prosecutors should bring the toughest charges possible against most crime suspects, Attorney General Jeff Sessions instructed in a move that critics assailed as a return to failed drug-war policies that unduly affected minorities and filled prisons with nonviolent offenders.

 

The move announced Friday is a reversal of Obama-era policies that is sure to send more people to prison and for much longer terms. It has long been expected from Sessions, a former federal prosecutor who cut his teeth during the height of the crack cocaine epidemic and who has promised to make combating violence and drugs the Justice Department's top priority.

 

"This policy affirms our responsibility to enforce the law, is moral and just, and produces consistency," Sessions wrote in a memo to U.S. attorneys made public early Friday.

 

Advocates warned the shift would crowd federal prisons and strain Justice Department resources. Some involved in criminal justice during the drug war feared the human impact would look similar.

 

"It ruined families and took away a large number of African-American men from their communities at their prime working years," said Georgetown law professor Paul Butler, who was a federal prosecutor during the 1990s. "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. That's the era Jeff Sessions wants to return us to."

 

The announcement is an unmistakable undoing of Obama administration criminal justice policies that aimed to ease overcrowding in federal prisons and contributed to a national rethinking of how drug criminals were prosecuted and sentenced.

 

Sessions contends a spike in violence in some big cities and the nation's opioid epidemic show the need for a return to tougher tactics. 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.

 

"We know that drugs and crime go hand-in-hand," Sessions said in a Friday speech. "Drug trafficking is an inherently violent business. If you want to collect a drug debt, you can't file a lawsuit in court. You collect it by the barrel of a gun."

 

The policy memo says prosecutors should "charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense" — something more likely to trigger mandatory minimum sentences. Those rules limit a judge's discretion and are typically dictated, for example, by the quantity of drugs involved in a crime.

 

The memo concedes there will be cases in which "good judgment" will warrant a prosecutor veering from that rule. And Sessions said prosecutors maintain "discretion to avoid sentences that would result in an injustice."

 

But any exceptions 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 U.S. attorney's offices.

And even if they opt not to pursue the most serious charges, prosecutors are still required to provide judges with all the details of a case when defendants are sentenced, which could lengthen prison terms.

 

The directive rescinds guidance by Sessions' Democratic predecessor, Eric Holder, who told prosecutors they could in some cases leave drug quantities out of charging documents so as not to charge suspects with crimes that trigger long sentences. Holder's 2013 initiative, known as "Smart on Crime," was aimed at encouraging shorter sentences for nonviolent drug offenders and preserving Justice Department resources for more serious and violent criminals.

 

In a statement Friday, Holder called the reversal "dumb on crime," saying it would be "financially ruinous" for the department to focus its spending on incarceration rather than preventing and investigating crime.

 

"It is an ideologically 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.

 

The Obama policy shift coincided with U.S. Sentencing Commission changes that made tens of thousands of federal drug prisoners eligible for early release, and a clemency initiative that freed convicts deemed deserving of a second chance. Combined, those changes led to a steep decline in a federal prison population that now stands at just under 190,000, down from nearly 220,000 in 2013. Nearly half of those inmates are in custody for drug crimes, records show.

 

Obama officials cited that decline and a drop in the overall number of drug prosecutions as evidence that policies were working as intended. They argued prosecutors were getting pickier about the cases they were bringing and were seeking mandatory minimum sentences less often.

 

Still, some prosecutors felt constrained by the Holder directive and expressed concern that they'd lose plea bargaining leverage — and a key inducement for cooperation — without the ability to more freely pursue mandatory minimum sentences.

 

The reversal restores prosecutors' tools to go after drug traffickers and gangs, said Lawrence Leiser, head of the National Association of Assistant U.S. Attorneys.

 

Sessions has remained an advocate for longer sentences, even as efforts to overhaul the criminal justice system secured bipartisan support in recent years. He argues Holder's approach sidestepped federal laws that impose such sentences and created inconsistency across the country in the way defendants are punished.

 

"I trust our prosecutors in the field to make good judgments," Sessions said. "They deserve to be unhandcuffed and not micro-managed from Washington. Rather, they must be permitted to apply the law to the facts of each investigation."

[william7]

At the end of this 2 minute trailer for The House I Live In documentary, David Simon says: "the war on drugs is a Holocaust in slow motion." The AG is just ramping up the Holocaust again in my opinion.

 

[velx]

I read this the other day and it made me a little sick.  Of all the people I know, that got off of hard drugs, and turned their lives around.  They would all be in prison under this lunatic's policies.  I didn't vote for Trump and I didn't vote for Obama.  Can't we find better people to lead this country.  There has to be someone out there that can look out for the people.  The War on Drugs has never worked, will not work now.  All it did was make things worse.  Now we are going back to it?  Idiots.

[Wild Bill]

How Jeff Sessions’ Mandatory Minimums Benefit Private Prisons

 

By Sara Morrison

May 12, 2017 at 4:10 PM ET

 

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has ordered federal prosecutors to seek the harshest possible penalties for drug-related offenses, a move that should make the private prison industry that relies on those offenders very happy.

 

The new policy, which was outlined in a memo released on Friday, will effectively reverse the Justice Department’s “Smart on Crime” policy during the Obama administration, which sought to shorten sentences for minor, nonviolent drug offenders in an effort to reduce the prison population.

 

The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with about half of the inmates in federal prisons incarcerated drug offenses. Many of them are serving mandatory minimum sentences that were created during the course of America’s war on drugs. In the memo, Sessions, who said in March that there was “too much of a tolerance for drug use,” called for prosecutors to charge offenders with the “most serious, readily provable offense,” deviating only in special circumstances and with the approval of a U.S. attorney general or assistant attorney general.

 

“This policy affirms our responsibility to enforce the law, is moral and just, and produces consistency,” Sessions wrote. “Any inconsistent previous policy of the Department of Justice relating to these matters is rescinded, effective today.”

 

The Obama administration’s effort to get drug offenders out of jail would have meant less money for the controversial private prison industry that houses many of them. But Sessions’ memo was exactly what many opponents of mandatory minimum sentences feared ─ and what advocates for the prison prison industry have been waiting for since Trump took office. The $4.8 billion industry has spent millions of dollars lobbying for laws that call for harsher sentences for offenders and against legislation that would reduce them. USA Today found that two of the largest for-profit prison operators in the country, GEO Group and CoreCivic, each donated $250,000 to Trump’s inaugural fund, with the former also giving $225,000 to a Trump super PAC. As the American Civil Liberties Union noted in January, GEO Group hired two of Sessions’ former aides as federal lobbyists.

 

“[T]he private prison industry stands to gain tremendously if he is confirmed as attorney general,” the ACLU said.

 

Both companies’ stocks plummeted after former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates announced last August that the Justice Department was planning to phase out its use of private prisons. Once the new administration took office, Sessions rescinded that memo in February. The two for-profit prison operators in question have also seen their stocks spike. On Nov. 7, 2016, a day before Trump won the presidential election, GEO Group’s stock was worth $10.61 a share and CoreCivic’s was at $14.19. As of Thursday, they were worth $32.10 and $32.81, respectively.

 

[+Malamute]

Fake News!!!....

 

 

Figured I would preempt the Trumpkins....

 

 

 

 

It is all so blatant, you have to work really hard to put the blinders on to not see it.

[bax]

In a statement Friday, Holder called the reversal "dumb on crime," saying it would be "financially ruinous" for the department to focus its spending on incarceration rather than preventing and investigating crime.

 

"It is an ideologically 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.

holder had his chance to reschedule marijuana. just another loser now.

[+Malamute]

Cocaine is in Schedule 2.  Would it have really helped?

 

It is about Congress changing the law, and a President willing to sign said law.

[bax]

you cant in one post say holder isnt responsible for continuing the war on drugs

while in the same thread say sessions is responsible for continuting the war on drugs.

 

the AG has the power to schedule or unschedule drugs in the CSA.

 

maybe he would have removed it, who said anything about schedule 2, strawman?

 

i'm just yanking your chain mal.

Edited May 15, 2017 by bax

[+Malamute]

Holder was the first AG to reverse the trend on the war on drugs and imprisonment since Jimmy Carters administration.  It was actually going down.  Actually started righting the wrongs of the Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush administrations.   Not by much, but the trend was down, and the Cole memo etc.

 

*shrug*

 

Now,... if ya wanna know what really yanks my chain, is Obama is the one that initiated the current surge in the war on Opiates.  Sessions is just doubling down.

 

I won't forget...