Professor Chin Comments for ABC-10 on Sessions Memo
Professor Gabriel “Jack” Chin commented for a news report on Sacramento’s ABC-10 regarding U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recent memo to staff directing federal prosecutors to "charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense.” The policy reverses a directive by Obama administration, which had asked prosecutors to avoid charging nonviolent drug offenders with crimes that carried mandatory minimum sentences.
Professor Chin said the reversal could disproportionately impact African Americans. "More offenders and arrestees were white, but more people who wind up being sentenced to prison are African American, so there's been this racial skew in the outcomes of the criminal justice process," Chin said. "And that's diminished in recent years, because of things like the policies that are now reversed."
Gabriel "Jack" Chin is Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Law and holder of the Edward L. Barrett Endowed Chair at UC Davis School of Law. He is a prolific and much-cited criminal and immigration law scholar whose work has addressed many of the most pressing social issues of our time.