US seeks to reduce jail terms for petty drug offences

In a major shift in criminal justice policy, the Obama admin- istration will move to ease overcrowding in federal prisons by ordering prosecutors to omit listing quantities of illegal substances in indictments for low-level drug cases, sidestepping federal laws that impose strict mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related offences.

Attorney General Eric Holder, in a speech at the American Bar Association's annual meeting in San Francisco, was expected yesterday to announce the new policy as one of several steps intended to curb soaring taxpayer spending on prisons and help correct what he regards as unfairness in the justice system.

Holder's prepared remarks say "too many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long and for no good law enforcement reason."

Holder is planning to justify his policy push in both moral and economic terms.

"Although incarceration has a role to play in our justice system, widespread incarceration at the federal, state and local levels is both ineffective and unsustainable," Holder's speech says. "It imposes a significant economic burden - totalling US$80 billion in 2010 alone - and it comes with human and moral costs that are impossible to calculate."

Holder was also planning to introduce a related set of Justice Department policies that would leave more crimes to state courts to handle, increase the use of drug-treatment programmes as alternatives to incarceration, and expand a programme of "compassionate release" for "elderly inmates who did not commit violent crimes and have served significant portions of their sentences."