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Jeff Sessions Reboots the Drug War

posted by on Tuesday May 16 2017, @04:08AM   
from the guilty dept.

takyon writes:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Friday that he has directed his federal prosecutors to pursue the most severe penalties possible, including mandatory minimum sentences, in his first step toward a return to the war on drugs of the 1980s and 1990s that resulted in long sentences for many minority defendants and packed U.S. prisons.

[...] In the later years of the Obama administration, a bipartisan consensus emerged on Capitol Hill for sentencing reform legislation, which Sessions opposed and successfully worked to derail.

In a two-page memo to federal prosecutors across the country, Sessions overturned former attorney general Eric H. Holder's sweeping criminal charging policy that instructed his prosecutors to avoid charging certain defendants with offenses that would trigger long mandatory minimum sentences. In its place, Sessions told his more than 5,000 assistant U.S. attorneys to charge defendants with the most serious crimes, carrying the toughest penalties.

More at Washington Post, Fox News, Huffington Post, The Hill

Memorandum on Department Charging and Sentencing Policy - US Department of Justice PDF

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Original Submission

• XIII XIII (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16 2017, @04:28AM (4 children)

  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16 2017, @04:28AM (#510390)

  > this must be funded by the owners of privatized prisons

  Or all the companies that get to use the slave labor of prisoners.
  Oh, you thought slavery was outlawed by the 13th amendment? Nope.

  Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

  Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

  https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiii [cornell.edu]

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• Re:XIII Re:XIII (Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Tuesday May 16 2017, @07:15AM (3 children)

  by hemocyanin (186) on Tuesday May 16 2017, @07:15AM (#510429) Journal

  When offshoring just isn't profitable enough.

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  • Re:XIII Re:XIII (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16 2017, @11:10AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16 2017, @11:10AM (#510480)

    Finally, jobs that H1B's can't do...SN must be happy about this.

    Parent

    • Re:XIII Re:XIII (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16 2017, @12:17PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16 2017, @12:17PM (#510501)

      SN is a single person?

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      • Re:XIII (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16 2017, @04:24PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16 2017, @04:24PM (#510568)

        Yes they are.

        Parent