Jeff Sessions Escalates Drug War: Tells Prosecutors to Seek "Most Serious" Charges, More Severe Sentences for Drugs
Jeff Sessions speaking at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, DC. (Flickr/Gage Skidmore)
WASHINGTON, DC Attorney General Jeff Sessions, pushing back on bi-partisan momentum to reduce the amount of people behind bars, issued a memo to prosecutors, calling on them to push for the most serious charges against people, hoping to trigger mandatory minimum drug sentences.
The memo is a direct reversal of the policy of his predecessor, Attorney General Eric Holder, who urged prosecutors to avoid draconian mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenses.
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, said Michael Collins, deputy director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance. Sessions is taking the country back to the 1980s by escalating the failed policies of the drug war.
The last thing our country needs to do is go back to the lock em up and throw away the key mentality that has made the United States the number one incarcerator of the world, said Anthony Papa, manager of media relations at the Drug Policy Alliance, who served 12 years behind bars on a mandatory minimum sentence under New Yorks draconian Rockefeller drug laws. Jeff Sessions push for long mandatory minimums will destroy people, families and communities.
This is the latest in a serious of measures ...
