Attorney General Sessions orders tougher drug crime prosecutions

Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered federal prosecutors this week to seek the maximum punishment for drug offenses, in one of the clearest breaks yet from the policies of the Justice Department under the Obama administration.

The move is an abrupt departure from policy made by President Barack Obama's Attorney General, to reduce the number of people convicted of certain lower-level drug crimes being given long jail terms.

The change, "affirms our responsibility to enforce the law, is moral and just, and produces consistency," Sessions said, in a memo to federal prosecutors written May 10 and made public Friday.

The memo urged prosecutors to file "the most serious, readily provable" charges that carry the most substantial punishment, including mandatory minimum sentences.

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It marked a reversal of the policy imposed in 2013 under former Attorney General Eric Holder's "smart on crime" initiative. This directed prosecutors not to report the amount of drugs involved in an arrest if it would trigger mandatory minimums for non-violent offenders who had no ties to drug cartels or gangs and who did not sell to children.

In announcing his policy, Holder said at the time, "With an outsized, unnecessarily large prison population, we need to ensure that incarceration is used to punish, deter, and rehabilitate — not merely to warehouse and forget." Prosecutors were directed instead to focus on the most serious offenses.

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Holder's approach included legislation to reduce some mandatory minimum sentences. Although it received bi-partisan support in Congress, it did not pass. One of those against the idea was Jeff Sessions, who did however support the successful move to reduce the disparity between sentences for offenses involving crack, as opposed to powdered cocaine.

Some prosecutors opposed Holder's directive, saying it deprived them of a tool for persuading drug crime defendants to plead guilty. But two years after imposing his policy, Holder said the share of cases in which defendants cooperated remained the same — about 97 percent.

In this week's memo, Sessions said the change was consistent with the Justice Department's responsibility "to fulfill our role in a way that accords with the law, advances public safety, and promotes respect for our legal system."