Business Insider quoted Fordham professor John Pfaff in an article about Jeff Sessions’s intention to revive the “war on drugs.”
John Pfaff, a law professor at Fordham University in New York who recently published a book on the causes of mass incarceration, told Business Insider in an email that Sessions is probably not trying to specifically revive the “War on Drugs,” but rather looking to justify “harsh punitive responses to crime more broadly.” Incarceration would be an easy sell politically for Sessions and the Trump Administration, even if its an inefficient way of controlling crime, he added.
“Sessions’ insistence that the recent uptick in violent crime is not just a blip but the start of a longer trend (which, to be fair, could be the case — but also may not be so at all) seems to be part of a rhetorical push to make non-prison reforms riskier to adopt,” Pfaff said.
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Pfaff suggested that Session’s comment on marijuana may have “the biggest short-run impact.”