Thursday, May 18, 2017

Sessions Ends Obama's Lenient Sentencing Policies

By Douglas V. Gibbs
AuthorSpeakerInstructorRadio Host

Donald Trump, during the presidential campaign season of 2016, promised to be the "law and order president," and Attorney General Jeff Sessions has made a move that will be tougher on crime, and help fulfill Trump's plan to restore the United States as an orderly society.

The policies of the liberal left Democrats are designed to seek to eliminate consequences.  From their point of view, taking responsibility for your actions is not a good thing.  Therefore, unplanned pregnancies are solved by killing the baby in the womb, drug use is resolved by making the drugs legal, poverty is attacked by paying the poor to remain poor through government benefit programs, and crime is negotiated by reducing the seriousness of the sentencing, and working to get hardened criminals to simply say they are sorry for what they did (rehabilitation programs).

The reality is that the greatest deterrent away from unplanned pregnancies is the reality that a great responsibility goes along with a child and so it is best not to tempt the odds unless you are prepared to take on the responsibility (and if it happens, for you to step up and take on the responsibility); legalizing drugs like marijuana does not solve the drug problem, it creates more opportunities for people to take drugs; poverty is not resolved by handing people money and products from government resources, but through private and charitable programs that educate and give the poor a greater opportunity to work and become stronger economic influences in society as a whole, and in their communities as they pull themselves up by the bootstraps and tackle their own personal economic responsibilities; and crime is best fought against by strong deterrents.  While some criminals will commit crimes, no matter the threat of penalty, many of the people who commit crimes will be dissuaded if the penalty, and the processes involved with handling their crime, is swift and unpleasant.

That's just basic common sense, and the reality of human nature.

Societies crumble when a society ceases to be virtuous, and encourages criminal activity by making sentencing policies more lenient.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions' announcement recognizes these self-evident truths.  He has sent out the message to federal prosecutors to abandon the policies of the Obama White House and to pursue the most serious charges possible against criminal suspects.

“We will enforce the laws passed by Congress pure and simple,” he said at an awards ceremony in Washington D.C, adding that prosecutors deserved to be “unhandcuffed and not micro-managed from Washington.”

“This is a key part of President Trump’s promise to keep America safe,” Sessions said. “We’re seeing an increase in violent crime in our cities – in Baltimore, Chicago, Memphis, Milwaukee, St. Louis and many others. The murder rate has surged 10 percent nationwide – the largest increase since 1968.”

In a letter to 94 U.S. attorneys Thursday night, Sessions called it a “core principle” that prosecutors charge and pursue “the most serious and readily provable offense.” Sessions defined the most serious offenses as those that carry the most substantial guidelines sentence.

Obviously, there are always exceptions to the rule.  There are those situations where special care and judgment needs to be applied, and Sessions addressed that reality.  “There will be circumstances in which good judgment would lead a prosecutor to conclude that a strict application” of the policy is not warranted, but that any exceptions must first be approved by a U.S. attorney, assistant attorney general, or a designated supervisor.

The move, initially, will increase the number of criminals headed to jail, and have them there for a longer period of time.  But, in the long run, if the policy is maintained, those numbers will begin to decline when crime is reduced as a result.  This means, also, and abandonment of the policies of Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder who called their monstrosity “Smart on Crime” which focused on not incarcerating people who committed low level, non-violent crimes.  In truth, according to Sessions, the straw man argument that persons committing low level, non-violent crimes were being slammed with incarceration before the Obama-era policies, and with Obama's and Holder's policies these violators would not go to jail sent a message encouraging low level crime, while in truth unless a gun is involved, most of those cases aren’t charged, anyway.

What the Obama-era policies did, also, was put prosecutors in a position to apply the law unevenly, and to make deals pursuing non-incarceration for hardened criminals who should have been in jail for more serious crimes.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and other leftist groups that pose as civil rights groups, slammed Sessions' decision, describing the move as a move that will “reverse progress” and repeat the War on Drugs, which it called a “failed experiment.”

The National Association of Assistant United States Attorneys disagrees, and back the move.  According to them, the decision by Sessions will, in the long run, make the public safer and give prosecutors to “tools that Congress intended” to lock up drug dealers and dismantle gangs.

Bishop Ron Allen, an associate of mine at the Congress of Racial Equality, and a regular Fox News contributor who is often brought on the network to discuss the drug epidemic and issues facing the black community, also stands with Sessions.  He appeared on Fox News' "Fox and Friends" to discuss his feelings about the move by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

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