With so much attention devoted to President Donald Trump’s fumbling of the #MeToo movement, the Russia investigation and the ballooning deficit, it’s easy to lose sight of the relentless effort by Trump and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions to reverse so many of the Obama-era criminal justice reforms. While many political issues jockey for our attention, these rollbacks regularly affect millions of Americans.

In May 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice rescinded former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s 2013 memorandum, instructing federal prosecutors not to specify a specific drug amount when charging low-level and nonviolent drug offenders. The Holder Memo gave judges the discretion to impose the sentence they deemed appropriate—rather than a required mandatory minimum term based on drug quantity. This return to mandatory minimum sentences will again increase the prison population, disproportionately affecting African-Americans and Hispanics. This has proven time and again to be a failed tactic in the war on drugs.

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