AP | With the U.S. facing massive overcrowding in its prisons, Attorney
General Eric Holder called Monday for major changes to the nation's
criminal justice system that would scale back the use of harsh sentences
for certain drug-related crimes.
In remarks to the American Bar
Association in San Francisco, Holder said he also favors diverting
people convicted of low-level offenses to drug treatment and community
service programs and expanding a prison program to allow for release of
some elderly, non-violent offenders.
"We need to ensure that
incarceration is used to punish, deter and rehabilitate — not merely to
convict, warehouse and forget," Holder said.
In one important
change, the attorney general said he's altering Justice Department
policy so that low-level, non-violent drug offenders with no ties to
large-scale organizations, gangs or cartels won't be charged with
offenses that impose mandatory minimum sentences.
Mandatory
minimum prison sentences, a product of the government's war on drugs
that began in the 1980s, limit the discretion of judges to impose
shorter prison sentences.
Under the changed policy, the attorney
general said defendants will be charged with offenses for which
accompanying sentences "are better suited to their individual conduct,
rather than excessive prison terms more appropriate for violent
criminals or drug kingpins."
