Attorney General Jeff Sessions has rolled back criminal justice sentencing reforms put in place by the Obama administration, paving the way to bring back the War on drugs. In a sentencing memo to federal prosecutors, he instructed them to charge defendants with the most serious offense is possible, most likely to trigger severe mandatory minimum sentences. It means that we're going to meet our responsibility to enforce the law with judgment and fairness. It is simply the right and moral
thing to do. The Session sentencing memo is similar to the Ashcroft sentencing memo. Under President George W. Bush, the Obama administration had put in place policies reducing harsh prison sentences for non violent, low level in first time drug offenders, leading to the first decline in the federal prison population in forty years. Joining us are sentencing experts Aimes Grauert, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, and Heather McDonald
fell at the Manhattan Institute. Ames Session has prom missed law and order agenda since he came to office. He says tough new sentencing policies are necessary to combat what he described as a surge of violent crime in cities. Is there any evidence that strict sentencing accomplishes that? Hi, First, thanks so much for having me. And second, no, I don't think there's any evidence that rolling back to these ashcraft air policies will help kind into crime at all.
If you look at an analysis, um that, if you look at analysis from people like the Brennan Center and that former Attorney General air Colder himself has put out, UH, there's no sign that cooperation rates for guilty please dropped.
There's no sign that the number of prosecutions of relatively high level drug crimes dropped at all thanks to these thanks to his charging policies, I don't think we'll see any safety benefits, but we might see a return to the same over incarceration trend that we've been dealing with for decades. Heather, let me ask you the same question, would is there a justification for this this changed by the Attorney General. Well, for one thing, it's following the law.
The Congress and the Sentencing Commission mandated a certain penalty for possession of drugs with intent to distribute UH, and the Holder Memo had instructed prosecutors to conceal the actual amount that a defendant trafficker was caught with from the judge so as not to trigger the mandatory minimum possibility, something that is used by prosecutors in order to plea bargain down a sentence in exchange for cooperation in naming people higher up in a drug drug trafficking organization. So
this change simply restores uh congressional intent. If if Congress believes that the mandatory minimum penalties are too severe, it should be up to Congress to change those, not not prosecutors concealing the actual drug amounts that traffickers are caught with. Aims describe what the holder memo did in your opinion, sure, and I just want to push back on the notion that this is somehow violating the law. Sessions clearly believe the same thing. He said Zona four speech in Congress
a couple of years ago. But there's a there's a broader interplay between the sentencing law that Congress passes and the sentencing outcomes that defendant receipt. And that interplay involves another key actor, and that's prosecutors. I was a prosecutor for four years at the state level. UM, we made broad use of our prosecutorial discretion to make sure that the punishments at the crime. Uh, there's there's no law that says prosecutors shouldn't do the exact same thing at
the federal level. Well, this was this preserves discretion. It allows prosecutors to, uh, to not charge for the mandatory minimum. It's the facts warranted. But the Holder memo basically instructed prosecutors to conceal from the judge. And I would say that the whole conceit of nonviolent drug traffickers, I think is is fallacious. Uh. This February, eleven year old Tequilla Holmes in Chicago was shot dead in the head with a bullet to the head by a nineteen year old
marijuana dealer. James Comey, UH as FBI director, gave an extraordinarily powerful speech in October at the University of Chicago where he described a drug operation in in Arkansas that was greeted by cheers and officers, officers of food, offers of food, and hugs by the predominantly black residents who realized that they were no longer now going to be
living under the threat and Paul of violence Aimes. Let's go for a moment with about thirty seconds about into the discretion idea, because Jeff Session says there's discretion, but the prosecutors have to get recommendations of from outside the glands. They have to go to supervisory approval and a documented explanation. It's not just on their own. That's exactly right, And it was the same thing under the Holder Memo that the Holder Memo didn't say, prosecutors, you can charge withever
the whatever you want, regardless of approval. It set forth a narrow, narrow number of criteria that had to be satisfied before they reduce a charge and the type of violent crime them. If McDonald's just talking about it wouldn't have qualified for a Holder era departure from the guidelines. Now you're right, Uh, Any departure from the maximum sentence that Congress authorizes in any case has to be cleared
with either main Justice or u S Attorney. Since we haven't don't have any HISSE attorneys confirmed by the Senate yet, query how exactly that discretion will be used. We've been talking about Attorney General Jeff's Sessions rolling back criminal justice sentencing reforms and a sentencing memo to federal prosecutors instructing them to charge defendants with the most serious offense is
possible most likely to trigger severe mandatory minimum sentences. And our guests are Heather McDonald, she's a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and Ames Groward, he is a counsel at
the Brennan Center for Justice. Aims there was an effort, a bipartisan effort in Congress a few years ago to change the sentencing laws, the bipartisan Criminal Justice legislation, And there are some civil rights advocates, sentencing advocates, some Republicans in Congress who have been pursuing these sentencing reform measures, who have been critical of Session sentencing. For example, Republican Senator Mike Lee tweeted, to be tough on crime, we have to be smart on crime. Tell us about the
bipartisan criminal justice legislation and what happened with it. I'm happy too. It's it's actually, it's one of the most heartening things I've seen in DC in a while. I think, uh, you you would, you would think. And there was some fear that this bipartisan amentum we had going into the election would have evaporated during a badly controversial, continuing political season. But on the other hand, exactly like you said, we've heard a lot of support from Mike Lee Rand Paul
who spoke to to criticize Attorney General Sessions. Um move uh and and that's a great sign. I'm hoping that we can get the same amentum going that we had last time. Uh. That was the sentenc Perform and Correction deck. As the bill you're describing, it was sponsored by Senators grass Lee and Durban and had a broad range of bipartisan support. One of the very few Republican critics was Jeff Sessions, who just happens to now be the Attorney General.
How there isn't Jeff Sessions sort of an outlier on this issue? You know? There there was, indeed, as June just said, this bipartisan movement. Um. You know. Mike Lee, after after the Mr. Sessions is announcement, wrote on Twitter to be tough on crime, we have to be smart on crime. Isn't he going against the green of what? You know? It seems to be a consensus of everybody else thinks. Well, that never did come to a vote.
And I'm not sure that, say, the Koch Brothers necessarily represents a or Ran Paul represents a consensus on attitudes towards criminal justice system in policing UH. You know, I think the most important voices to listen to are those in inner cities, people living with the threat of drug violence. I've never been to a police community meeting in the inner city where I do not hear people ask the police, you get the dealer, you arrest the dealers, They're back
on the corner the next day. Why can't you keep them off the streets? Prison remains a lifetime achievement award for persistence in criminal offending, and people that UH are living with drug violence understand that it is a extraordinary UH crime on their freedoms and on economic activity. We hear about the alleged costs of incarceration. They're about forty three billion dollars when you take into account actual spending
on institutions as opposed to probation and training. That's a drop in the bucket compared to what it costs communities to live with with unimpeded crime and trafficking. Americans spend seven point four billion on Halloween alone, forty three billion dollars to get the most serious offenders off the streets.
For a good period of time is frankly a bargain compared to the costs of letting them stay on the streets, so aims of the former Attorney General, Eric Holder called the move unwise and ill informed, and he said that sessions directive puts the country in danger of repeating an all mistake spending one third of its budget on incarcerating people rather than for ending, detecting or investigating crime. What about the numbers for incarceration. Do you agree with what
Heather said? Well, I think if you're going to do a formal, full cost benefit study of the criminal justice system, the forty three billion would be just a drop in the bucket. But it also would be just the very beginning of that analysis. You can say it costs, however much to incarceory people, but that's not taking into account the amount of diminished productivity, uh, the amount of the problems with wage growth and finding a job that people
say after they return from prison. Uh. And of course those effects apply to everyone who goes to prison, not just someone who uh people might say deserve to be there for committing a serious drug crime. That would apply to even someone who commits a very minor federal offense,
which is possessing marijuana, which is still a federal crime. Uh. Those same people have to go back reintegrate into their communities, and we should probably count the economic problems they face, the hurdles they'll face in their professional life in the
future as part of the full cost benefits study. I think when you finally finish that, which would be a really hard task to do to telly up all the individual costs and benefits, I think you'd come to the conclusion that our current high level of incarceration is not costpenct that justified, and that we could find better ways to spend that money. At one one point where I think miss McDonald and I agree, uh, is that the more police officers you have on the street, the better.
There's that there's really good evidence for that just be It's important to note that those police officers should be engaging actively with their community, is not necessarily going after every single petty offense that they cannet. We are going to be talking about this for quite some time. I believe I want to thank you both for your insights. That's Ames grow Worth. He's a counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice and a former prosecutor, and Heather McDonald.
She's a fellow at the Manhattan Institute