Attorney General Eric Holder to Outline New Drug Offender Sentencing Proposal
Holder will outline the status of a broad, ongoing project intended to improve Justice Department sentencing policies across the country in a speech to the American Bar Association in San Francisco.
“I have mandated a modification of the Justice Department’s charging policies so that certain low-level, nonviolent drug offenders who have no ties to large-scale organizations, gangs, or cartels, will no longer be charged with offenses that impose draconian mandatory minimum sentences,” Holder is expected to say, according to excerpts of his prepared remarks provided by the Justice Department.
The United States imprisons a higher percentage of its population than other large countries, largely because of anti-drug laws passed in the 1980s and 1990s.
Holder will also reveal a plan to create a slate of local guidelines to determine if cases should be subject to federal charges.
The attorney general will point to the bipartisan backing of such goals in Congress, where there is “legislation aimed at giving federal judges more discretion in applying mandatory minimums to certain drug offenders.”
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