Now Attorney General Jeff Sessions has taken a major step toward rolling back their efforts. In a memo released Friday, Sessions instructed federal prosecutors nationwide to mandatory minimum sentence the strongest possible charges and sentences against defendants they target. By definition, the most serious offenses are those that carry the most substantial guidelines sentence, including mandatory-minimum sentences.
National Federal Defense Lawyer Group
It is an ideologically motivated, cookie-cutter approach that has only been proven to generate unfairly long sentences that are often applied indiscriminately and do little to achieve long-term public safety. The shift underscores the central role prosecutors play when determining how long Americans spend behind bars. Prosecutorial discretion, like gravity, is the unseen force that binds the American criminal-justice system together. Roughly 95 percent of federal criminal cases are resolved through plea dealsmaking the prosecutor the most influential actor in the modern system.
As policing and justice issues rose to the forefront of the mandatory minimum sentence conversation in recent years, Sessions became a frequent critic of reform efforts, including federal oversight of local law enforcement. He also played a prominent role in scuttling a bipartisan sentencing-reform bill in the Senate last year that had the support of figures ranging from Barack Obama mandatory minimum sentence the Koch brothers.
Effects of Mandatory Minimums in the Justice Systems of Florida and Other States
Trump has also cast the possible threat of higher crime in dramatic terms, portraying himself as its only solution. In a report analyzing crime trends from to published last month, the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice concluded that the nationwide murder rate rose an estimated 7.
But the Brennan Center noted that a large share of the increase could be attributed to a spike in homicides in Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington, D. Sessions, however, has been a frequent critic of the decrees in general, describing them as unnecessary federal intrusion sentehce the local policing practices. We want to hear what you think about this article.
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