[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Pages 8014-8015]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM

  Mr. SCHUMER. Now, on another matter, Mr. President, criminal justice 
reform. Last week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered Federal 
prosecutors to ``charge and pursue the most serious readily provable 
offense,'' even for low-level drug crimes. Functionally, this means 
Federal prosecutors will seek the harshest possible penalty even for 
nonviolent, low-level drug crimes.
  This is a significant reversal from the Obama-era Smart on Crime 
Initiative, in which Federal prosecutors were instructed to focus on 
more dangerous drug traffickers and avoid charging less-serious 
offenders with crimes that required long, mandatory minimum sentences. 
As a result of the Obama policies, Federal drug cases dropped by more 
than 19 percent between 2012 and 2016, according to the U.S. Sentencing 
Commission. Cases with charges carrying longer, mandatory minimum 
sentences fell precipitously, from nearly 60 percent in 2012 to 45 
percent last year. Thanks in part to this initiative, President Obama 
became the first President since Carter to leave the White House with a 
smaller Federal prison population than when he took office.
  Meanwhile, prosecutions of the more serious crimes--the evil drug 
dealers, those who run the drugs, often from out of this country to 
here, they are the ones we can really go after and need to go after--
increased by 17 percent and 14 percent, which makes it the way we can 
stop these evil drugs from coming into this country.
  So that policy was tough on crime and smart on crime. Our law 
enforcement agencies have finite resources. They should be focused on 
combating violent crimes. When a prosecutor is spending hours in court, 
days, for a low-level possession charge and not

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having the resources to go after the drug runners, the drug dealers who 
poison our kids, that is misplaced priorities.
  What Attorney General Sessions has just ordered is the exact opposite 
approach of what we need. Instead of giving judges and juries the 
discretion to use their judgment in sentencing, it compels prosecutors 
to seek as much jail time as they can get for every single offense, 
treating low level and high level the same. It is a blunt instrument 
that will result in more unnecessary, punitive sentences, overcrowding 
of our prisons, and will be less effective in our fight on crime. It 
runs completely counter to a bipartisan consensus here in Congress.
  Many Members of this body, Democrats and Republicans, agree that 
mandatory minimum sentences have led to bloated, costly prisons, and 
disproportionately ravaged minority communities.
  In the last Congress, a bipartisan group of Senators sought to make 
meaningful progress with a sentencing reform proposal that had, among 
its cosponsors, a diverse group of Senators, ranging from Senators 
Durbin and Booker on the Democratic side to Senators Lee and Paul on 
the conservative side. Unfortunately, those efforts to strike a 
compromise to bring much needed reform to our Nation's criminal justice 
system were derailed by the obstruction of, guess who--then-Senator 
Sessions, with the cooperation of the Republican leadership. Now, after 
making progress under President Obama and Attorney General Holder, 
Attorney General Sessions has chosen to simply revert back to the one-
size-fits-all approach that criminologists, police leaders, and 
bipartisan lawmakers have determined is not the right answer.
  In order to truly be tough on crime, we must be smart on crime. This 
approach is dumb on crime. Congress, of course, still has the power to 
legislate this issue. We have the power to override the Attorney 
General's decision. So I hope this misguided change in the Department 
of Justice's policy revives a bipartisan desire to pursue sentencing 
reform. When we look for areas where there can be significant 
bipartisan cooperation, this is one of them. I hope Leader McConnell 
will choose to pursue it.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  I yield the floor.

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