Sessions’ sentencing memo bears attention
CORRECTIONS reform advocates are among those concerned that a memo from Attorney General Jeff Sessions to U.S. attorneys across the country will essentially halt efforts to take a smarter approach to crime and punishment. Here’s hoping that’s not so.
Oklahoma City U.S. Attorney Mark Yancey doesn’t believe it will be, saying the Sessions memo “is not going to fundamentally change” the way his office operates. But Yancey’s predecessor, Sanford Coats, contends the Sessions memo “obliterates basically everything” the Obama administration tried to do relative to prosecutorial discretion.
President Barack Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, in 2013 instructed prosecutors to avoid charging low-level, nonviolent drug offenders with crimes that carry mandatory-minimum sentences. Holder noted that such sentences sometimes produced unduly harsh results, something conservatives such as George Will concurred with in calling for reform of mandatory-minimum laws.
Sessions’ memo establishing charging and sentencing policy rescinded “any inconsistent previous policy” including Holder’s. “Charging and sentencing recommendations are crucial responsibilities for any federal prosecutor,” Sessions wrote.
Prosecutors should pursue “the most serious, readily provable offense,” he wrote, adding that, “By definition, the most serious offenses are those that carry the most substantial guidelines sentence, including mandatory minimum sentences.”
Carl Hulse, chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times, noted that as a U.S. senator, Sessions worked last year to stall a sentencing reform effort. “As attorney general, he has sent it reeling in Washington …” Hulse wrote.
U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said mandatory-minimum sentences have disproportionately impacted minorities, and that the new guidelines will only accentuate that. Writing at cnn.com, the libertarian senator said the drug problem in the United States should be treated as “a public health crisis, not an excuse to send people to prison and turn a mistake into a tragedy.”
That is an approach that’s gaining traction in many conservative states including Oklahoma, where substance abuse is a chief driver of the inmate population. Oklahoma’s prisons are consistently filled beyond capacity, and without significant reform the state will need to build more prisons in the coming years.
President Trump took a tough-on-crime approach during his campaign. Sessions’ directive indicates he’s on the same page as his boss. Yet the memo includes these lines:
“There will be circumstances in which good judgment would lead a prosecutor to conclude that a strict application of the above charging policy is not warranted. In that case, prosecutors should carefully consider whether an exception may be justified.”
Yancey points to this part of the memo as an indication that prosecutor discretion remains. And, he said, he thinks the memo makes it clear that local U.S. attorneys are better situated to make charging and sentencing decisions than attorneys in Washington, D.C., which is a “real benefit.”
The impact of Sessions’ memo won’t be known for some time, but it bears close attention. Certainly, giving prosecutors discretion appears a better method than micromanagement from afar, regardless of what administration is in power.