He added that this "will only perpetuate mass incarceration of poor, Black, and Brown people, the explosion of federal spending on prisons, and the mushrooming of our federal prison population". "Now you're telling them, gosh, you don't need a judge, you need a calculator, that's all you need".
Sessions told the nation's United States attorneys in a memo to pursue the most serious charges possible against most suspects.
Black and Hispanic offenders were far more likely to be hit with mandatory minimum sentences than those of other races, a 2011 report by the US Sentencing Commission said.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions may reverse an Obama-era standard of not charging low-level drug offenders with crimes that would trigger a mandatory minimum prison sentence.
Violent crime remains at a historic low nationally-violent and property crimes have dropped by a combined 14.6 percent between 2010 and 2015-although it spiked slightly between 2014 and 2015 according to Federal Bureau of Investigation figures; Sessions has used this as evidence that we ought to return to harsher sentencing practices. Defendants who met a set of criteria such as not belonging to a large-scale drug trafficking organization, gang or cartel, qualified for lesser charges-and in turn less prison time-under Holder's policy.
A spokeswoman with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Sacramento told ABC10 Friday that they are reviewing Sessions' memo.
At the same time, the 30 largest USA cities saw double-digit increases in their murder rates in 2016, according to a new year-end report, Sessions insisted that federal prosecutors would be fair. Undocumented entry cases have been previously charged as misdemeanors. Critics said that it could lead to innocent people pleading guilty to lesser criminal charges out of fear of excessively long prison sentences if they could not prove their innocence.
Woman who works near nursing home heard gunshots
According to NBC4 reporter Dan Pearlman, all students who attend classes there have been safely moved to Watkins Middle Schools. Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said the accused shooter took two hostages in an alley, but both were released unharmed.
"It ensures that the Department enforces the law fairly and consistently, advances public safety and promotes respect for our legal system", Sessions said in the memo. But in reality, the savings would be minimal, because about 97 percent of federal convictions and 94 percent of state convictions are already the result of plea deals struck out of court.
There are a staggering 2 million people in the prison system today.
Republican Sen. Rand Paul was also outspoken in his disagreement with the policies Sessions sought to enact. The directive on sentencing, coupled with the president's guidance to resume the use of private prisons, is just another illustration of how this Administration seeks to line the pockets of the wealthy and, clearly, has nothing to do with justice.
Bottom line: The Trump campaign's rally line of "lock her up!" is now the Trump administration's policy of "lock them up".
The Koch-aligned Freedom Partners, which supports criminal justice reform, also issued a statement on the Justice decision showing there is bipartisan support for a different approach.
And there is some evidence that the fiscal impact of incarcerating huge numbers of Americans might be much larger than expected.
The number of sentenced prisoners in federal custody fell by 7,981 inmates - or 5% - between the end of 2009 and 2015, according to a January Pew Research Center analysis.
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