Attorney General Jeff Sessions released a memo yesterday that ordered federal prosecutors ... to pursue the toughest possible charges and sentences against crime suspects, reversing Obama administration efforts to ease penalties for some nonviolent drug violations, the New York Times reported. When Sessions was a federal prosector in southern Alabama in the 1980s to early 90s, he had a reputation for aggressively pursuing drug dealers and users , the Washington Examiner disclosed, citing the work of the Brennan Center for Justice, which reports that drug convictions made up 40 percent of his convictions when he served as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama double the rate of other Alabama federal prosecutors.

The memo reversed a 2013 decision by Attorney General Eric Holder that had directed prosecutors not to report the amount of drugs involved in an arrest if it would trigger mandatory minimums for non-violent offenders who had no ties to drug cartels or gangs and who did not sell to children, NBC News announced. Just as the era of mass incarceration was beginning to slow down, it appears that the brakes have been released. Two weeks ago, three highly-informed people discussed what has been going on with the state of policing in the Land of the Free, and what can be done about it.