Mr. Sessions is ordering federal prosecutors to ramp up prosecutions and likely seek heavier sentences on drug crimes.
Washington, D.C. The Friends Committee on National Legislation’s Legislative Associate for Domestic Policy José Santos Woss released the following statement in response to Attorney General Jeff Session’s new agency directive.
“Federal prosecutors will be directed to use more of the same failed tactics of lengthy prison sentences instead of what these communities need: public health, opportunity, and relief from mass incarceration. Quakers believe that God dwells in every human soul. People should have equal opportunity to fulfill their own potential and to contribute to their communities. Warehousing more and more poor people and people of color goes against what Spirit and Friends have called us to do; seek a world with equity and justice for all.”
The Attorney General announced today that he would rescind the Holder memo ultimately wasting precious federal dollars to go after low-level drug offenses with longer prison sentences. The memo AG Sessions effectively ended, directed federal prosecutors to limit asking judges to impose extremely long sentences except in cases where public safety is truly at risk. AG Sessions conflates violent crime with drug crime. Many who engage in the drug trade do so nonviolently. Those who break the law should face consequences, but those consequences should have the aim of rehabilitating—not merely just punishing.
The directive to ramp up enforcement under the Controlled Substances Act will only result in continuing to defy the core values we profess to live by: freedom, liberty, and equal justice under the law. Black youth make up 16% of all children in America, but comprise 28% of those in the justice system. The United States has 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of its prisoners. Furthermore, we know 95% of everyone that goes to prison will return to communities. In these communities we strip them of opportunities when our society refuses to hire them; many are denied federal safety-net protections –like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) or “Food Stamps” (SNAP)—when they need the most help; lastly many go right back to prison (a third) or get rearrested (50%) according to the government’s own numbers. We need to build a society where each person has the right to live a life of dignity by providing rehabilitation through re-entry services and fairer, shorter sentences, not more incarceration; Mr. Sessions is merely recycling problems through a broken system.
