As a senator, Jeff Sessions helped kill bipartisan legislation that would have made federal drug penalties less mindlessly draconian. As attorney general, he seems determined to make those penalties as disproportionate as possible, writes Jacob Sullum. Last week Sessions instructed federal prosecutors to pursue the most serious provable charges without regard to culpability or dangerousness.
That policy, announced in a memo last week, reverses a Justice Department initiative that sought to spare low-level, nonviolent drug offenders the five-, 10-, and 20-year minimum sentences that are supposedly aimed at ringleaders and kingpins. The shift, writes Sullum, signals a return to unfair, ineffective drug policies that have been rightly repudiated by politicians across the political spectrum.
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