© Photo: Stephen Crowley / The New York TimesAttorney General Jeff Sessions speaks about immigration, in Washington, DC, March 27, 2017. Sessions seeks to expand the failed "War on Drugs" by once again aggressively sentencing low-level drug offenses with mandatory minimum sentences.
In a two-page memo issued Friday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions advanced another step forward in his war against a mythical crime wave. The memo,
Department Charging and Sentencing Policy, called for all federal prosecutors to "charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense" for federal crimes, including drug offenses. Sessions argued that such an approach was "moral, just, and produces consistency," emphasizing the importance of advancing "public safety" and promoting "respect for our legal system."
New York magazine called the memo Sessions' "first big step toward bringing back the war on drugs." A spokesperson for the ACLU, Udi Ofer
said that Sessions was risking the repetition of a "vicious cycle of incarceration."
In particular, Sessions' memo resurrects federal drug laws' emphasis on mandatory minimum sentencing requirements. These minimums provide lengthy compulsory penalties for specific amounts of drugs, virtually removing judges' discretion. A 2010
study by the United States Sentencing Commission concluded that mandatory minimums were a key contributor to mass incarceration as well as a major factor in the disproportionate incarceration of Black and Latin people.
Sessions' memo rescinds moderate reforms put in place by Obama Attorney General Eric Holder beginning in 2013, which aimed to reduce the use of mandatory minimums. In two path-breaking
memos, Holder urged prosecutors to construct charges for those with low-level drug cases so as to avoid triggering the mandatory sentences. Commentators like Terry Carter of the American Bar Associated
characterized Holder's memo as "a sweeping reversal of the War on Drugs." Holder himself
issued a statement on Twitter, describing Sessions policy as "not tough on crime" but "dumb on crime" destined to generate "unfairly long sentences."
By contrast, the Sessions memo instructs prosecutors to "disclose to the sentencing court all facts that impact" sentencing, and recommends strict application of the guidelines for mandatory minimums.
Stepping Up Law and OrderThis action by Sessions is the latest move in the Attorney General's efforts to step up the "law and order" agenda of the Trump administration. Previous measures by the attorney general include
adding more judges to immigration courts in the Southwest,
pulling out of a federal consent decree involving investigating police misconduct in Chicago,
modifying a federal appeal of a compulsory ID law in Texas,
reversing former Attorney General Loretta Lynch's order to block funding for schools that discriminated against transgender people, and the hiring of long-time drug warrior and mandatory minimum advocate
Steven Cook to head the new Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety.
Social justice activists were quick to condemn the Sessions memo. Paul Wright, executive director of the Human Rights Defense Fund, told Truthout, "Sessions' memo seems to be a reiteration of the de facto practice of federal prosecutors for the past fifty years to overcharge defendants and continue the federalization of petty offenses in order to secure lengthy federal prison sentences."
Members of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a nonprofit organization that represents families whose loved ones who are "forced to serve disproportionately lengthy prison sentences," noted in a media release that they are "greatly disappointed" with the memo. They called Sessions' strategy "misguided, unsupported by evidence, and likely to do more harm than good."
Wright noted that the federal prison population has grown from 21,000 people in 1970 to over 200,000 today. While this figure did decline in the final years of the Obama administration, Sessions' actions make future spikes in federal incarceration highly likely.
It should be noted that Sessions' reach solely applies to the federal system, where less than 10 percent of the incarcerated population resides. The vast majority of incarcerated people are held in state prisons and local jails. However, while this memo may not directly impact them, it will likely contribute to reasserting the ethos of punishment and repression in law enforcement in all spheres.
In addition to promoting this administration's law and order agenda, the timing of the memo reflects a likely desire to deflect popular attention from the spate of scandals and alleged lawbreaking within the Trump administration, which have become the main fare of national news reports. In choosing this moment to resurrect the demons of the war on drugs, perhaps Sessions is aiming to distract voters from Russian connections, failed health care initiatives and inexplicable drone attacks on faraway lands.
Regardless of the rationale behind the timing, this move constitutes a painful regression -- a reminder of the policies that landed people like
Clarence Aaron lifetime sentences for minor drug offenses as part of the tough on crime policies of the 80s and 90s. Aaron received a commutation from President Obama in 2013 after serving 20 years on crack cocaine charges. But with Sessions and Trump at the helm, thousands of poor people of color may once again face decades behind bars as a result of a racialized dragnet of the Drug War born again.
About the authorJames Kilgore is an activist, researcher and writer based in Urbana, Illinois. He is the author of Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People's Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time (The New Press, 2015). He has also written four novels, all of which he drafted during his six and a half years of incarceration. Email him: waazn1@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter: @waazn1.
Reader Comments
And
You can't prosecute the C-i;A for drug running
If drugs were legalized in the US, the Mexican economy would collapse since the earnings from drugs bring in more hard currency than its largest licit source, oil sales. Mexico is a corrupt state that has now become dependent on the earnings on an illegal product. But inevitably, the product will become legal and then Mexico will retain its corruption but must face the needs of its citizens now employed by the drug industry who have become steeped in violence and conditioned to higher incomes. Charles Bowden
No strikes on syria.
New 9/11 commission.
Meet the new boss; Same as the old boss. (And most - by far most - americans realize the WOD has been a Police State creator since the beginning. So why don't we stand up and DO something? Incrementalism got the populace, along with the dumbing down of Kids born 1995 to present, and even earlier to say 1980..)
R..C.