Breaking ranks with the Trump administration, Sen. Rand Paul writes in a CNN Opinion piece that he’s strongly opposed to new Justice Department sentencing guidelines, which call for prosecutors to charge suspects with the most serious provable offenses.
Paul, the most high-profile Republican to criticize the new policy, urges Attorney General Jeff Sessions to reconsider. The Kentucky senator says mandatory minimum sentences have unfairly and disproportionately incarcerated a generation of minorities.
The new guidelines will exacerbate the injustice in the criminal justice system, Paul says.
“This isn’t about legalizing drugs. It’s about making the punishment more fitting and not ruining more lives,” he writes.
Sessions, however, has called the policy change "simply the right and moral thing to do."
In an apparent reference to Obama administration’s policies, he said on Friday: "It is important to note that unlike previous charging memoranda, I have given our prosecutors discretion to avoid sentences that would result in an injustice."
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