"We cannot afford to be complacent in the face of violence that threatens too many of our communities," Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in his memo. | Win McNamee/Getty Images Sessions fleshes out plan to crack down on gangs, drugs and guns

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is unveiling a new aspect of his promised crackdown on violent crime: the reinvigoration of a longstanding Justice Department program aimed at getting federal prosecutors to make a concerted effort to stem drug trafficking and violent gangs in their communities.

In a memo issued Thursday to U.S. attorneys across the country, Sessions announced plans to impose new requirements aimed at bolstering a 16-year-old initiative known as Project Safe Neighborhoods. The program calls on the chief federal prosecutors to dedicate personnel to violent crime reduction and to develop plans to collaborate with local police and prosecutors to try to get the most violent criminals off the streets.


"We cannot afford to be complacent in the face of violence that threatens too many of our communities," Sessions said in his memo. "All United States Attorneys must implement an enhanced violent crime reduction program that incorporates the lessons learned since the original program's launch in 2001 and leverages new strategies to help turn the tide against violent crime."

Project Safe Neighborhoods, set up under President George W. Bush, is an outgrowth of Project Exile — a state-federal effort in Richmond to make sure that those using guns in crimes got mandatory prison sentences.

Sessions and Justice Department officials were low-key in their criticism of the Obama administration's handling of the program, but noted that violent crime has risen over the past two years, calling for a federal response.

"Unfortunately, the Department's support of this successful initiative has waned in recent years," the attorney general said.

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Other Justice officials said the Obama administration put increased focus on issues like white-collar crime and that some of the focus was understandable in light of the 2008 financial meltdown.

"In the last years, the department had other priorities and never focused quite as much on the program as we did in the, say, previous 10 years," said one official who asked not to be named. "We're rebooting it, basically."

"There just was not this priority placed on violent crime and narcotics prosecution. That was not the message we received in the field," another Justice official told reporters.

In the works for months but announced on the heels of the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, the new effort includes a change to how federal authorities process traces for guns used in crimes. Those linked to crime scenes will be given priority, with plans to complete such traces in 24 hours, officials said.

Meeting that goal could be challenging since the process sometimes involves checking paper records kept by gun dealers. Gun-rights advocates have blocked legislation that would put more gun sale and ownership data in federal hands.

While Project Exile is generally viewed as successful in discouraging gun crime, critics have said its inflexibility led to thousands of young offenders — most of them minorities — getting stiff prison terms with little regard to whether the crime was their first offense or other extenuating circumstances.

"Out goal is not to fill up the prisons. Our goal is to reduce crime," the Justice official said.

There is no major infusion of resources behind the program yet, officials said, although Sessions has committed to using existing funds to add 40 prosecutor slots to places around the country experiencing spikes in violent crime.

President Donald Trump's budget request for the current fiscal year includes proposals for 300 new prosecutors to focus on violent crime and immigration issues and for $70 million in grant funding to support anti-violence efforts. The federal government is currently operating on a stopgap funding measure with prospects for passage of traditional appropriations bills unclear.

Officials said they could not say precisely what current work might be adversely impacted by the new focus.

"Will that have some concomitant effect of, well, does that mean we do one less Social Security fraud case? Maybe, but it's going to be office by office," one of the Justice officials said.

Some of the previous priorities were misplaced, the official argued.

"You go to Chicago right now — this should be their priority. And I think you will see if you saw numbers in Chicago. They did a lot less violent crime cases over the last, call it, four years and folks [brought] more white-collar. ... And to their detriment," he said.

The new policy also calls for U.S. attorneys to report on their anti-violence efforts every six months instead of every two years and to work with local authorities to set up systems to track gun violence in their jurisdictions.