Free Republic

“Government’s first duty,” President Reagan said in 1981 and President Trump recently tweeted, “is to protect the people, not run their lives.” The safety of law-abiding citizens has always been a core principle of conservatism. And it is why we need to take this opportunity to pass real criminal-justice reform now. Although violent crime rose during the final two years of President Obama’s time in office, it decreased during the first year of Trump’s presidency. We need to keep that momentum going. And criminal justice reform can help us do that in two ways. First, commonsense sentencing reform can increase...

Attorney General Jeff Sessions' office sent out a letter late Thursday to the nation's federal prosecutors instructing them to pursue the most serious charges possible against most criminal suspects. The move will send more people to prison and for much longer terms by triggering mandatory minimum sentences. Officials at the Department of Justice said the new guidelines are a direct rebuttal of policies implemented under President Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder. The memo is already being referred to as “the Sessions Memo.” The 94 U.S. attorneys were instructed in the memo to “charge and pursue the most serious and readily...

Attorney General Eric Holder has infuriated U.S. Assistant Attorneys by not waiting for the U.S. Sentencing Commission to recommend reductions of sentencing guidelines for drug offenders and pushing them to prosecute based on his new guidelines. “We do not join with others who regard our federal justice system as ‘broken’ or in need of major reconstruction,” the National Association of U.S. Assistant Attorneys said in a letter to Mr. Holder in January. “Instead we consider the current federal mandatory minimum sentence framework well constructed and worth preserving.” In August, Mr. Holder unveiled his “Smart on Crime” initiative, seeking to “reserve

“Lou Dobbs Tonight: Transcript” Justice Delayed: (Because of Bush) Ramos & Compean could be in prison for 2 more months Outrageous President Bush, Administration, and Mexican government collusion and corruption against our border patrol agents January 21, 2009 # This was Lou Dobbs first broadcast this week. SEGMENT INTRO: Former Border Patrol agents Ramos and Compean, their sentences commuted, but they may be in prison for another two months. There is rising anger at the continued imprisonment of former Border Patrol agents Ramos and Compean two days after President Bush commuted their sentences. And there is outrage at the Mexican...

Two Texas border guards sentenced each to about a dozen years in prison have had their sentences commuted by former President George W. Bush in one of last official acts. But the campaign on their behalf is not yet over. In 2005 Border Patrol agents Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos shot drug smuggler Osvaldo Aldrete Davila in the buttocks as he fled across the Rio Grande, away from an abandoned van load of marijuana, according to Associated Press reports. The two men, who did not report the shooting and tampered with evidence by picking up spent shell casings, were convicted...

Note: This commentary was delivered by Prison Fellowship President Mark Earley. In 2003, a federal court found Freddy Booker guilty of possessing approximately ninety-two grams of crack cocaine. Under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, that conviction called for seventeen to twenty-two years in prison. Instead, the judge sentenced Booker to thirty years. Booker appealed his sentence to the Supreme Court, and last week the Court ruled in his favor. The result is a chance to re-visit our approach to crime and punishment. Chuck Colson has told “BreakPoint” listeners before about the injustices caused by the sentencing guidelines: In the name of...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Published on Tuesday, September 23, 2003 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Printer-friendly version -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL JOHN ASHCROFT is not only on a collision course with civil libertarians in this country because of his implementation of the Patriot Act, but he is well on his way to colliding with at least one conservative Supreme Court justice. Ashcroft's Justice Department is compiling data on judges who give lighter sentences than federal guidelines prescribe. The new policy requires prosecutors to notify officials in the Justice Department whenever a federal judge issues sentences below these guidelines. But Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, a person no one...