Jeff Sessions wants to grow the prison population. Nashville's sheriff says that's 'unfortunate.'

During a speech Thursday in Nashville, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions embraced a goal of growing the prison population — a stark contrast to some efforts of local officials here and elsewhere across the nation.

Sessions largely stuck to the kind of hard-line, law-and-order message that animated the candidacy of President Donald Trump. He bemoaned the fact that the federal prison population had dropped in recent years — from 220,000 to 180,000 — and pledged to pursue longer sentences moving forward.

"We've got some space to put some people," he said as a crowd of law enforcement officials laughed. "We need to reverse a trend that suggested that criminals won't be confronted seriously with their crimes."

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Pursuing mandatory minimum sentences, which have been criticized by advocates of criminal justice reform, would be "a good step in the right direction," he said.

Sessions received a warm reception from the hundreds of people gathered for the conference for the International Association of Chiefs of Police. The audience packed in the ballroom at the Sheraton Music City Hotel bookended his 30-minute speech with two standing ovations.

Sessions' message was 'unfortunate,' Nashville sheriff says

But Davidson County Sheriff Daron Hall, who did not attend the conference, pushed back at Sessions' assertion that putting more people in prison would increase community safety.

“It’s unfortunate that the attorney general, or anybody for that matter, believes that jail space should be filled," Hall said in an interview.

“We should all want our communities to be safer," he said, "but filling jail beds or prison beds has never proven to do that."

Nashville's jail population has dropped dramatically in recent years — it's down about 30 percent since 2015, Hall said.

The sheriff is collaborating with the district attorney, the public defender and Nashville judges to create a plan to shrink the jail population even further by sending fewer misdemeanor suspects to jail before trial.

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And the new downtown jail under construction now will house up to 700 inmates, 600 fewer than the previous facility. The new jail also will include a treatment center for suspects with mental illnesses or addictions that drive their behavior.

Hall said that approach — treating people instead of locking them up — would have a better long-term impact on the city.

“It sounds like some people just feel comfortable having the beds filled," Hall said. "You should want to be emptying our jails and prisons to better suit what the real problem is.”

Sessions praises cops: 'We intend to continue to invest in you'

Elsewhere in his speech, Sessions lavished his audience with praise, calling them "the thin blue line that stands between the law-abiding and the criminals."

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"We're not going to stand by and let violent crime increase," he said. "We intend to continue to invest in you."

Referencing the Feb. 14 mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Sessions said the Department of Justice would provide funding for cities to put officers in schools.

Sessions added that more efforts would be made to improve the system for funneling tips about potentially dangerous people to the proper authorities in hopes that it might prevent future mass shootings.

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And he stressed the importance of combating the "intractable problem" of mental illness, acknowledging the need for more accessible treatment, including more options for "involuntary commitment."

Ultimately, Sessions said, he hoped to make the country "safer from the threats of guns and violence."

Thursday marked the second time that the attorney general has come to Nashville to address law enforcement. In August, Sessions spoke to a gathering of the national Fraternal Order of Police at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center.

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Reach Adam Tamburin at atamburin@tennessean.com or 615-726-5986 and on Twitter @tamburintweets.

About the conference

The International Association of Chiefs of Police conference also included discussions on "preparing for and responding to protests," techniques for stopping wrong-way drivers and "lessons learned from the Las Vegas shooting," according to the agenda.