Sessions moves forward with war on drugs like he doesn’t have anything more important to worry about – Daily Kos

Talk about misplaced prioritiesisn't there an entire FBI scandal and collusion with Russia that he should be concerned with?

No surprises here: Jeff Sessions is moving forward with his plans to toughen rules on prosecuting drug crimes. This movewill only serve to rollback some of theprogress the Obama administration made toward directing prosecutors away from federal mandatory minimums and imposing harsh sentences for minor drug cases. Though it didntstop the mass incarceration of black and brown people, it marked the first decline of the federal prison population in a decade andit was certainly a step in the right direction. But being the good old boy andwhite supremacist that he is, Jeff wasnt satisfied with Obamas progress.Instead, he came up with his very own planto revive the war on drugs and craft tougher sentencing policy.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is expected to soon toughen rules on prosecuting drug crimes, according to people familiar with internal deliberations, in what would be a major rollback of Obama-era policies that would put his first big stamp on a Justice Department he has criticized as soft on crime. [...]

Current and former government officials have said for weeks that Mr. Sessionss new policy could come at any time. They said Tuesday that they expected to see it finalized shortly, and Mr. Sessions himself has foreshadowed the announcement this year, calling for a return to tougher federal charging policies in speeches and issuing memos telling prosecutors to anticipate policy shifts.

If you look at the differences between the current attorney general (Sessions) and previous one (Eric Holder), and their views on the criminal justice system, they are starkto say the least. In 2013, Holder directed federal prosecutors to avoid mandatory minimums, suggesting that in certain cases it might be appropriate to omit details about drug quantities from charging documents so as not to automatically prompt harsh penalties for offenders.

We must ensure that our most severe mandatory minimum penalties are reserved for serious, high-level, or violent drug traffickers, hewrote in 2013. Too many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long and for truly no good law enforcement reason.

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Sessions moves forward with war on drugs like he doesn't have anything more important to worry about - Daily Kos