A new memo from Sessions instructs prosecutors to “charge and pursue the most serious offense” in any given case, which will likely lead to longer prison sentencing, The Washington Times reports.
The document effectively nullifies former Attorney General Eric Holder’s policy to be “smart on crime” to mitigate excessively harsh penalties for nonviolent offenses, like drug possession, the report said.
“Unlike [the] previous charging memorandum, I have given our prosecutors discretion to avoid sentences that would result in injustice,” Sessions said at a Friday news conference on the guidance.
Sessions seems to equate going easy on mandatory minimum sentences with “injustice.”
“The most serious offenses are those that carry the most substantial guidelines sentence, including mandatory minimum sentences,” Sessions wrote in a memo on the new guidance.
Mandatory minimums are a one-size-fits all sentencing policy that limits how much discretion judges have in determining sentence lengths. There are many critics of this policy, including one who currently shares the same boss as Sessions: former Texas Governor Rick Perry, current Secretary of the Department of Energy.
“You want to talk about real conservative governance? Shut prisons down. Save that money,” Perry said at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in 2014. “Stop the recidivism rates—lower them. That’s what can happen with these drug courts,” he added.
Perry was referring to local drug courts and diversion programs created during his tenure in Texas. “Over the years, I came to see our approach to nonviolent drug offenses as flawed,” Perry explained in a 2015 speech. Instead, the local courts and diversion programs treat “alcoholism and drug addiction as a disease and not a moral failing.” This helped Texas shut down three prisons, he noted.
“Most mandatory minimum sentences apply to drug offenses, but Congress has enacted them for other crimes, including certain gun, pornography, and economic offenses,” according to Families Against Mandatory Minimums.
“Mandatory sentencing laws cause federal and state prison populations to soar, leading to overcrowding, exorbitant costs to taxpayers, and diversion of funds from law enforcement,” the group says on its website.
Sessions’ memo “ignores a rare bipartisan political consensus that has formed around sentencing reform efforts,” Holder replied in a statement on Friday, adding that it was an “absurd reversal” motivated by individuals who “until now have been relegated to the fringes of this debate.”
