US Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Friday ordered prosecutors to seek the toughest possible charges and punishment against criminal suspects, reversing the Obama administration's effort to end extreme sentencing of drug users and other non-violent offenders.
The move is needed to address a rise in violent crime in cities across the country, Sessions said, tying it to drug use and saying the new policy "promotes respect for our legal system."
But critics, led by former attorney general Eric Holder, blasted the move as likely to revive the application of harsh "mandatory minimum" sentencing that was overwhelmingly applied to poor African-American and Hispanic communities during the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s.
Sessions told Justice Department attorneys around the country in a two-page memo that when prosecuting cases, they should apply the most serious charges possible that can be proven in court.
"By definition, the most serious offenses are those that carry the most substantial guidelines sentence, including mandatory minimum sentences," the memo said.
"This is a key part of President Trump's promise to keep America safe," Sessions told a gathering of police officers in New York.
"We are returning to the enforcement of the law as passed by Congress –- plain and simple."
– 'Unfairly long sentences' –
Holder called the move "unwise and ill-informed," saying it will "take this nation back to a discredited past."
"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," he said in a statement.
Holder was instrumental in former president Barack Obama's effort to reverse a three-decade swelling of the prison population largely by black men arrested on minor drug and other offenses.
A 1986 "War on Drugs" law meant to address the rise in crack cocaine forced judges to mete out lengthy sentences for repeat offenders. Subsequent laws across the country laid down tough minimums for other crimes.
But the net effect was that small-time crack users and dealers — mostly African Americans — were jailed en masse, often on sentences lasting decades, while white users of cocaine got off easily.
Black and Hispanic offenders were far more likely to be hit with mandatory minimum sentences than those of other races, a 2011 report by the US Sentencing Commission said.
In a July 2015 policy shift, Obama and Holder — both African-Americans — blamed mandatory minimum sentencing for filling prisons to record levels, 2.2 million people at the time, ruining salvageable lives and sending prison system costs skyrocketing.
The new policy gave prosecutors and judges more leeway to adjust charges and sentences to better fit the crime, Obama said at the time.
– Sessions: policy addresses crime wave –
But Sessions implicitly blamed that shift for a rise in crime, citing higher murders, drug overdose deaths and other crimes across the country.
"We intend to reverse that trend," he said.
He ordered prosecutors in most cases to stick to recommending sentences based on mandatory minimums. Those who want to recommend lighter punishment will have to get permission from their superiors in addition to providing written justification.
Critics in Congress blasted the new policy.
"Mandatory minimum sentences have unfairly and disproportionately incarcerated too many minorities for too long," Republican Senator Rand Paul said. "Attorney General Sessions' new policy will accentuate that injustice."
"The US already locks up more of its own citizens than any other country," Democratic Congressman Tim Ryan tweeted. "We can't incarcerate our way out of this addiction epidemic."