評論
打印
In an upstairs room in the building housing the U.S. Attorney’s office,
在聯邦檢查官辦公室所在建筑樓上的一個房間里，
a group of white people sat in a semicircle, surrounded by framed photographs of their dead loved ones.
一群白人圍坐成半圓形，周圍是他們離世親人的帶框相片。
Sessions sat before them, listening to their pleas for more help from the federal government.
塞申斯就坐在他們前面，聽他們希望聯邦政府給予他們更多幫助的訴求。
“‘Just say no,’ it won’t work with this drug,” said a stocky man named Dennis,
“‘說不就是了，’這種藥不管用的，”一位名叫丹尼斯的矮胖男子說到，
whose 24-year-old daughter died of a fentanyl overdose.
他24歲的女兒因為過量攝入芬太尼離世了。
After hearing the stories, Sessions had a question.
聽完大家的故事后，塞申斯提了一個問題。
“How many of your children had treatment before they died?”
“你們有多少人的孩子是離世前接受過治療的?”
Seeing nearly all the hands raised, he nodded grimly.
看到幾乎所有的人都舉起了手，塞申斯冷冷地點了點頭。
“Well, we need treatment,” he said, “but it is true that for a lot of people it doesn’t work.”
“嗯，我們需要治療，”他說，“但確實，很多人治療了也不起作用。”
What does work, according to Sessions, is arresting people and locking them up.
真正起作用的，根據塞申斯的說法，是逮捕那些人并把他們關起來。
He has stuck to this stance, forged by his work as a prosecutor in the 1970s and ’80s, even as the mainstream consensus has shifted.
他一直堅持這一立場，這一立場是他在上世紀七八十年代擔任檢察官期間逐漸樹立起來的，盡管主流輿論已經發生了轉變。
In recent years, most experts have come to view the war on drugs as a counterproductive failure,
近年來，大多數專家都認為禁毒戰爭是一場適得其反的失敗的戰爭。
and a bipartisan movement for criminal-justice reform seeks to soften the harsh and unequal penalties it imposed.
兩黨共同發起的刑事司法改革運動也在試圖減輕這場戰爭推行的嚴厲而不平等的懲罰。
The reformers have made considerable headway at the state level.
改革者已經在州一級取得了可觀的進展。
Texas has closed eight prisons and saved millions of dollars without seeing crime rise.
德克薩斯州關閉了8所監獄，節省了數百萬美元的同時并沒有看到犯罪率上升。
In the ’80s and ’90s, “we put a lot of people in prison, but there’s no evidence that made us any safer,”
八九十年代的時候，“我們把很多人都關了起來，但并沒有證據顯示我們因此更加安全了，”
says Koch Industries’ Mark Holden, who has led the conservative Koch brothers’ push on the issue.
科氏工業集團領導了保守的科氏兄弟在這一問題上的舉措的馬克·霍爾頓說。
(Koch Industries, th(r)ough a subsidiary, is an investor in Meredith Corporation, TIME’s parent company.)
(科氏工業集團，通過一家子公司，成了《時代周刊》的母公司梅雷迪斯的投資方。)
Under Obama, the Justice Department investigated local police departments, exposing systematic mistreatment of minorities,
奧巴馬執政期間，司法部調查了當地的多個警察部門，揭露了他們對少數群體實行的有系統的虐待，
and secured agreements, known as “consent decrees,” to reform their practices.
達成了多項協議，即所謂的“同意法令”，以改革他們的行為。
Attorney General Eric Holder launched a “smart on crime” initiative, urging federal prosecutors to use discretion in seeking harsh sentences.
當時的司法部長埃里克·霍爾德還發起了一項名為“智能司法”的倡議，敦促聯邦檢察官們在謀求嚴厲判決時使用自由裁量權。
Reform efforts have helped reduce the federal prison population from 220,000 to 180,000 in the past five years.
過去五年里，在改革的努力下，聯邦監獄的犯人人數從22萬減到了18萬。
To Obama’s progressive supporters, these changes were among his greatest strokes of racial progress.
對支持奧巴馬的進步者來說，這些改變是他在種族進步方面做出的最大舉措之一。
But in the view of Sessions and his supporters, including many in law enforcement, the reformers have it backward.
但在塞申斯和他的支持者(包括執法部門的許多人)看來，改革派不但沒有給種族問題帶來進步，反而引起了倒退。
Under Obama, Sessions believes, the DOJ sent all the wrong signals, demoralizing police officers and soft-pedaling the dangers of drugs.
在奧巴馬的領導下，塞申斯認為，司法部發出的所有信號都是錯誤的，他們不僅打擊了警察的士氣，還淡化了毒品的危害。
In speeches, he cites the shrinking prison population not as a breakthrough but as a worrisome trend.
在多次講話中，他都表示監獄人口的不斷減少非但不是一種突破，反而是一種令人擔憂的趨勢。
“We’ve got some space to put some people!” he told the chiefs in Nashville.
“我們有地方安置部分罪犯！”他告訴納什維爾的酋長們。
Sessions believes today’s low crime rates are a direct result of “proactive policing” and harsh sentences, and that dialing them back is causing crime to rise.
塞申斯認為，如今的低犯罪率是“積極的警務工作”和嚴厲判決的直接結果，取消這些措施將會導致犯罪率上升。
According to the FBI, the violent crime rate rose 7% between 2014 and 2016, and the murder rate rose 20%, following years of decline.
根據美國聯邦調查局的數據，2014年至2016年期間，暴力犯罪率上升了7%，謀殺率上升了20%，而此前數年的犯罪率一直呈下降趨勢。
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