Former Attorney General Eric Holder slammed the recently released Justice Department guidelines on sentencing and prosecution, saying the policy is "dumb on crime," according to The Washington Examiner.
"The policy announced today is not tough on crime. It is dumb on crime. It is an ideologically motivated, cookie-cutter approach that has only been proven to generate unfairly long sentences that are often applied indiscriminately and do little to achieve long-term public safety," Holder said in a statement Friday.
Current Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a memo to his department directing federal prosecutors to charge defendants with the most serious crimes with the most severe penalties.
Holder issued his own memo in August 2013 instructing prosecutors to avoid drug charges that carry long mandatory minimum sentences if the defendants meet certain criteria, including not being associated with a gang or cartel, according to The Washington Post.
According to the Examiner, Holder mentioned department data showing that because of his Smart on Crime directive, prosecutors have been able to reallocate resources and focus on high-level drug offenders.
"The data showed that while they brought fewer indictments carrying a mandatory minimum sentence, the prosecutions of high-level drug defendants had risen and that cooperation and plea rates remained effectively the same," Holder said.
"These reversals will be both substantively and financially ruinous, setting the Department back on track to again spending one-third of its budget on incarcerating people, rather than preventing, detecting, or investigating crime."
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