Sally Yates, the woman who went to Donald Trump and warned him about his then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn just blasted Attorney General Jeff Sessions. She was acting Attorney General briefly under Sessions with a quarter of a century’s experience working in the Justice Department. Yates wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post criticizing the AG for his latest deplorable act.
She wrote that Sessions wants to fill the for-profit prisons using “mandatory minimum drug sentences:”
‘Last month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions rolled back the clock to the 1980s, reinstating the harsh, indiscriminate use of mandatory minimum drug sentences imposed at the height of the crack epidemic. Sessions attempted to justify his directive in a Post op-ed last weekend, stoking fear by claiming that as a result of then-Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.’s Smart on Crime policy, the United States is gripped by a rising epidemic of violent crime that can only be cured by putting more drug offenders in jail for more time.’
Yates pointed out that people from the left and right, red and blue, conservative and liberal groups realized the “lock them all up and throw away the key” approach is wrong:
‘All across the political spectrum, in red states and blue states, from Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) and the Koch brothers to Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and the American Civil Liberties Union, there is broad consensus that the “lock them all up and throw away the key” approach embodied in mandatory minimum drug sentences is counterproductive, negatively affecting our ability to assure the safety of our communities.’
The former acting AG argued the unalienable facts about crime in America:
‘That argument just isn’t supported by the facts. Not only are violent crime rates still at historic lows — nearly half of what they were when I became a federal prosecutor in 1989 — but there is also no evidence that the increase in violent crime some cities have experienced is the result of drug offenders not serving enough time in prison. In fact, a recent study by the bipartisan U.S. Sentencing Commission found that drug defendants with shorter sentences were actually slightly less likely to commit crimes when released than those sentenced under older, more severe penalties.’‘During my 27 years at the Justice Department, I prosecuted criminals at the heart of the international drug trade, from high-level narcotics traffickers to violent gang leaders. And I had no hesitation about asking a judge to impose long prison terms in those cases.’
Yates continued, writing that criticizing the unreasonable mandatory-minimum laws does not work:
‘But there’s a big difference between a cartel boss and a low-level courier. As the Sentencing Commission found, part of the problem with harsh mandatory-minimum laws passed a generation ago is that they use the weight of the drugs involved in the offense as a proxy for seriousness of the crime — to the exclusion of virtually all other considerations, including the dangerousness of the offender… mandatory-minimum laws cast too broad a net and, as a result, some low-level defendants are serving far longer sentences than are necessary — 20 years, 30 years, even mandatory life sentences, for nonviolent drug offenses.’
Check out the entire Washington Post op-ed by clicking here.
Featured Image: Getty Images/Chip Somodevilla.
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