page_title: Jeff Sessions
section_title: Crime and security
hierarchical_section_title: Jeff Sessions / Political positions / Crime and security
caption_attribution_description: -Washington, D.C., 13, May 2017. During the 29th annual Candlelight Vigil the names of the offer’s who were killed in the line of duty were read aloud as candles were lit by the thousands in attendance. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security John Kelly spoke on the sacrifice made by law these law enforcement officers and the importance of officer safety. The Attorney General and Concerns of Police Survivors National President Brenda Donner began lighting of candles and U.S. Marshals Service Director David Harlow read the name of DUSM Patrick Carothers, who was killed in November of 2016, while apprehending a violent fugitive. Photo By: Shane T. McCoy / US Marshals
context_page_description: Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 84th United States attorney general from 2017 to 2018. A Republican, Sessions previously served as United States senator from Alabama from 1997 to 2017 before resigning that position to serve in the administration of President Donald Trump.
  From 1981 to 1993, Sessions served as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Alabama. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan nominated Sessions to a judgeship on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama. After allegations of racism were made against him in testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, which Sessions denied, the committee voted against advancing his nomination to the Senate floor; the nomination was later withdrawn. Sessions was elected Attorney General of Alabama in 1994. In 1996, he was elected to the U.S. Senate, and was re-elected in 2002, 2008, and 2014. During his Senate tenure, Sessions was considered one of the most conservative Senators.
context_section_description: In 1996, Sessions promoted state legislation in Alabama that sought to punish a second drug trafficking conviction, including for dealing marijuana, with a mandatory minimum death sentence. Sessions' views on drugs and crime have since softened.
  Sessions supported the reduction (but not the elimination) of the sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and powdered cocaine, ultimately passed into law with the Fair Sentencing Act 2010.
  On October 5, 2005, Sessions was one of nine Senators who voted against a Senate amendment to a House bill that prohibited cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment or punishment of individuals in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government.
  In November 2010, Sessions was a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee when the committee voted unanimously in favor of the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), and sent the bill to the full Senate for consideration. The proposed law would allow the Attorney General to ask a court to issue a restraining order on Internet domain names that host copyright-infringing material.
  In October 2015, Sessions opposed Chairman Chuck Grassley's (R-IA) Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, a bipartisan bill which sought to reduce mandatory minimum sentences for some nonviolent crimes. The United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary approved the bill by a vote of 15–5. According to The New York Times, Sessions, Tom Cotton, and David Perdue "stalled the bill in the Senate and sapped momentum from a simultaneous House effort". Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), a co-sponsor of the bill, has said Sessions was its top opponent.
  Sessions has been a strong supporter of civil forfeiture, the government practice of seizing property when it has allegedly been involved in a crime. Sessions opposes "any reform" of civil forfeiture legislation.
  From March 2018 until the end of his service as Attorney General, Sessions sat on the Federal Commission on School Safety.
caption: Sessions speaking at the 2017 Police Week Candlelight Vigil
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