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That's what federal authorities used to do, when the war on drugs fueled the passage of mandatory minimum sentencing laws. "It is dumb on crime", he said in a statement.
The move was assailed by critics as a return to failed drug-war policies that unduly affected members of minority groups and filled prisons with nonviolent offenders.
Earlier DOJ Guidance that discouraged the federal prosecution of low-level drug offenders resulted in a 14% drop in federal prosecution of drug cases and a focus on more serious offenses and more risky offenders.
Meanwhile, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, offered praise for Sessions' new action, saying "law enforcement should side with the victims of crime rather than its perpetrators".
Session said his directives "place great confidence in our prosecutors and supervisors to apply them in a thoughtful and disciplined manner, with the goal of achieving just and consistent results in federal cases".
The Holder memo, issued in August 2013, instructed his prosecutors to avoid charging certain defendants with drug offenses that would trigger long mandatory minimum sentences.
"To be tough on crime we have to be smart on crime".
The new guidance from Attorney General Sessions would rescind the Holder-era "Smart on Crime" that prioritized harshly prosecuting violent crime over non-violent drug offenses.
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Sessions has stated that if a prosecutor does not want to pursue the most serious charge, he or she must get the decision approved by a supervisor, such as a US attorney or assistant attorney general. "By definition, the most serious offenses are those that carry he most substantial guidelines sentence, including mandatory minimum sentences".
"We have a responsibility to use our best judgment ... and my view is we don't need to be legalizing marijuana", he said at the winter meeting of the National Association of Attorneys General.
"We will enforce the laws passed by Congress pure and simple", he said at an awards ceremony in Washington D.C, adding that prosecutors deserved to be "unhandcuffed and not micro-managed from Washington".
Paul's swift opposition is indicative of the irony of Sessions latest memo: It comes at a time when there is a growing consensus that the criminal justice system needs to be reformed away from policies of the past, particularly when it comes to sentences for drug crimes.
The Brennan Center's research shows that higher incarceration rates have not lowered overall crime rates.
But despite the public outcry, Sessions made it clear in the memo that he intends for the changes to be implemented immediately. "If you want to collect a drug debt, you can't file a lawsuit in court. You collect it with the barrel of a gun". "Attorney General Sessions" new policy will accentuate that injustice.
"Decades of experience shows we can not arrest and incarcerate our way out of America's drug problem", Brett Tolman, the former U.S. attorney of Utah, said in a statement. And now, after a brief experiment with an alternative approach, Sessions is ensuring that the strategy for fighting the war on drugs will remain unchanged.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions is telling the nation's federal prosecutors to pursue the most serious charges possible against most suspects. Will this policy end up increasing America's prison population, which is already the biggest in the world?
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