By Eric Tucker
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The number of federal drug prosecutions has dropped in the last year, but the cases that are pursued involve more serious crimes, the Justice Department announced Monday.
Federal prosecutors also are charging drug criminals less frequently with crimes carrying rigid mandatory minimum punishments, Deputy Attorney General Sally Quillian Yates said in an interview with The Associated Press. Fewer than half of all drug cases in fiscal year 2015 involved charges with a mandatory minimum sentence, in which punishments are closely tied to drug quantity, according to new data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
Justice Department officials see the new data as support for their “Smart on Crime” initiative, which then-Attorney General Eric Holder announced in 2013. The goal of that effort was to give prosecutors greater discretion in charging decisions and sentencing recommendations so that Justice Department resources and decades-long prison sentences could be reserved for major drug kingpins or more dangerous drug offenders.
“The data that we’re releasing reveals that Smart on Crime is more than just a paper policy,” Yates said. “It’s really a whole new approach to criminal justice.”
Before implementation of Smart on Crime, Yates said, prosecutors were required to charge defendants with the maximum offense possible.
“There are some defendants that need the max, but what Smart on Crime does is it entrusts prosecutors to make charging decisions that take into account more than just drug quantity,” while also encouraging judges to fashion more proportional punishments.
The statistics show that a 6 percent drop in federal drug cases from fiscal year 2014 to 2015. But the percentage of defendants who were armed and played leadership roles in the crime rose during that same period.
Though some prosecutors had expressed concern that they’d lose leverage in plea negotiations without the threatened hammer of a mandatory minimum sentence, the Justice Department says drug defendants are still cooperating with the government, and pleading guilty, at the same rate as before.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press