Sen. Rand Paul believes Attorney General Jeff Sessions is going to set the country back with his new policy demanding that prosecutors charge suspects with the most serious provable offenses.
Paul, R-Ky., wrote in an op-ed for CNN that the new guidelines reverse a productive policy that was helping alleviate injustices in the court system.
“The attorney general’s new guidelines, a reversal of a policy that was working, will accentuate the injustice in our criminal justice system,” Paul wrote. “We should be treating our nation’s drug epidemic for what it is — a public health crisis, not an excuse to send people to prison and turn a mistake into a tragedy.”
Sessions announced last week that he’s reversing an Obama-era directive from the Department of Justice that directed prosecutors not to charge people with drug crimes that carry mandatory-minimum sentences. Instead, prosecutors under Obama were told to reserve mandatory-minimum sentences for cases involving violent and serious crimes.
Those mandatory-minimum sentences have disproportionately harmed black communities, Paul said.
“The ACLU reports that blacks are four to five times likelier to be convicted for drug possession, although surveys indicate that blacks and whites use drugs at similar rates. The majority of illegal drug users and dealers nationwide are white, but three-fourths of all people in prison for drug offenses are African American or Latino,” Paul wrote.
“Why are the arrest rates so lopsided? Because it is easier to go into urban areas and make arrests than suburban areas. Arrest statistics matter when cities apply for federal grants. It doesn’t take much imagination to understand that it’s easier to round up, arrest, and convict poor kids than it is to convict rich kids.”
Paul wrote he has proposed legislation that allows judges to impose sentences below mandatory minimums, freeing them up to make a case-by-case judgment instead of a one-size-fits-all penalty.
Doing so would let judges make special decisions in certain cases, and Paul said that’s a much better alternative than Sessions’ plan.
“I urge the attorney general to reconsider his recent action. But even more importantly, I urge my colleagues to consider bipartisan legislation to fix this problem in the law where it should be handled,” he wrote. “Congress can end this injustice, and I look forward to leading this fight for justice.”
