WASHINGTON (AP) - Attorney General Jeff Sessions wants to return to some decades-old drug and crime-fighting strategies - even as some involved in criminal justice during that time have come to believe those approaches were not that effective.
Sessions was a federal prosecutor in Mobile, Alabama, at the height of the drug war. He supports mandatory minimum sentences, vigorous gun prosecutions and aggressive policing. He says a spike in violence in some cities shows a need to return to that tough-on-crime approach.
David Baugh, a defense lawyer in Richmond, Virginia, who used to be a prosecutor, says some of those tactics have been tried and failed.
A Justice Department spokesman says criminal justice has advanced over the years, and Sessions doesn't plan to throw out lessons learned from past administrations.