Former federal prosecutors are also speaking out against a new order from Attorney General Jeff Sessions to pursue the most serious sentence possible against those suspected of crimes, calling it a return to the failed "War On Drugs."

Yuri Gripas / Reuters Attorney General Jeff Sessions

Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a memo this week ordering federal prosecutors to pursue “the most serious, readily provable” offense against those suspected of crimes, a reversal of course from the Obama administration which sought to change how some nonviolent drug offenders were prosecuted.

“By definition, the most serious offenses are those that carry the most substantial guidelines sentence, including mandatory minimum sentences,” Sessions' memo reads. The directive did not come as a surprise, as the Trump administration has indicated for weeks that such an order was imminent. Even still, the policy change received a harsh reaction from several former federal prosecutors, current lawmakers, and criminal justice groups on Friday, who called it a potentially dangerous return to the failed “War on Drugs” and era of mass incarceration. “The policy announced today is not tough on crime. It is dumb on crime,” former Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement Friday, calling Sessions' decision "unwise" and "ill-informed." At Friday's press briefing, White House press secretary Sean Spicer backed up the policy, saying, "As the attorney general said this morning, this will take the handcuffs off our nation's prosecutors and, if I can add, it frankly puts the handcuffs on the drug traffickers, who threaten the safety of our families and communities." Joyce Vance, former US Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, however, put out a series of tweets Friday saying, "[the] DOJ returned to a charging and sentencing policy known as tough on crime today. It means charging to get the longest sentence in most cases." "This approach leads to bloated prisons at enormous cost. Prisoners are warehoused [without] rehabilitation opportunities," Vance, who identifies herself as "President Obama's US Atty in Birmingham" in her Twitter bio, tweeted.

"The memo is truly a throwback to failed drug war policy and to an era of mass incarceration that has devastated communities of color,” former head of the DOJ civil rights division Vanita Gupta told BuzzFeed News. “It just seems like the AG is out of touch with folks in his own party who have been pushing for the reform of our criminal justice laws.” Wade Henderson, CEO at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights — a organization that Gupta is joining as president later this year — said, "Attorney General Sessions seems to have missed the memo that the War on Drugs is over."



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Indeed, criminal justice reform aimed at lowering the prison population — the US maintains 25% of the world’s incarcerated people, while having only 5% of the world's population — has received bipartisan support with both Republicans and Democrats in Congress pushing for new legislation. Republican Senator Rand Paul put out a statement Friday saying that the Trump administration's new policy will "accentuate" injustices. “Mandatory minimum sentences have unfairly and disproportionately incarcerated too many minorities for too long,” Paul said. “Attorney General Sessions’ new policy will accentuate that injustice. Instead, we should treat our nation’s drug epidemic as a health crisis and less as a ‘lock ‘em up and throw away the key’ problem.” Michigan GOP Rep. Justin Amash called the policy "unjust, ineffective, and costly."

Let's pass criminal justice reform to put an end to this unjust, ineffective, and costly policy. https://t.co/BTT5aKY0Aj