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In an upstairs room in the building housing the U.S. Attorney’s office,
在联邦检查官办公室所在建筑楼上的一个房间里，
a group of white people sat in a semicircle, surrounded by framed photographs of their dead loved ones.
一群白人围坐成半圆形，周围是他们离世亲人的带框相片。
Sessions sat before them, listening to their pleas for more help from the federal government.
塞申斯就坐在他们前面，听他们希望联邦政府给予他们更多帮助的诉求。
“‘Just say no,’ it won’t work with this drug,” said a stocky man named Dennis,
“‘说不就是了，’这种药不管用的，”一位名叫丹尼斯的矮胖男子说到，
whose 24-year-old daughter died of a fentanyl overdose.
他24岁的女儿因为过量摄入芬太尼离世了。
After hearing the stories, Sessions had a question.
听完大家的故事后，塞申斯提了一个问题。
“How many of your children had treatment before they died?”
“你们有多少人的孩子是离世前接受过治疗的?”
Seeing nearly all the hands raised, he nodded grimly.
看到几乎所有的人都举起了手，塞申斯冷冷地点了点头。
“Well, we need treatment,” he said, “but it is true that for a lot of people it doesn’t work.”
“嗯，我们需要治疗，”他说，“但确实，很多人治疗了也不起作用。”
What does work, according to Sessions, is arresting people and locking them up.
真正起作用的，根据塞申斯的说法，是逮捕那些人并把他们关起来。
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.
他一直坚持这一立场，这一立场是他在上世纪七八十年代担任检察官期间逐渐树立起来的，尽管主流舆论已经发生了转变。
In recent years, most experts have come to view the war on drugs as a counterproductive failure,
近年来，大多数专家都认为禁毒战争是一场适得其反的失败的战争。
and a bipartisan movement for criminal-justice reform seeks to soften the harsh and unequal penalties it imposed.
两党共同发起的刑事司法改革运动也在试图减轻这场战争推行的严厉而不平等的惩罚。
The reformers have made considerable headway at the state level.
改革者已经在州一级取得了可观的进展。
Texas has closed eight prisons and saved millions of dollars without seeing crime rise.
德克萨斯州关闭了8所监狱，节省了数百万美元的同时并没有看到犯罪率上升。
In the ’80s and ’90s, “we put a lot of people in prison, but there’s no evidence that made us any safer,”
八九十年代的时候，“我们把很多人都关了起来，但并没有证据显示我们因此更加安全了，”
says Koch Industries’ Mark Holden, who has led the conservative Koch brothers’ push on the issue.
科氏工业集团领导了保守的科氏兄弟在这一问题上的举措的马克·霍尔顿说。
(Koch Industries, th(r)ough a subsidiary, is an investor in Meredith Corporation, TIME’s parent company.)
(科氏工业集团，通过一家子公司，成了《时代周刊》的母公司梅雷迪斯的投资方。)
Under Obama, the Justice Department investigated local police departments, exposing systematic mistreatment of minorities,
奥巴马执政期间，司法部调查了当地的多个警察部门，揭露了他们对少数群体实行的有系统的虐待，
and secured agreements, known as “consent decrees,” to reform their practices.
达成了多项协议，即所谓的“同意法令”，以改革他们的行为。
Attorney General Eric Holder launched a “smart on crime” initiative, urging federal prosecutors to use discretion in seeking harsh sentences.
当时的司法部长埃里克·霍尔德还发起了一项名为“智能司法”的倡议，敦促联邦检察官们在谋求严厉判决时使用自由裁量权。
Reform efforts have helped reduce the federal prison population from 220,000 to 180,000 in the past five years.
过去五年里，在改革的努力下，联邦监狱的犯人人数从22万减到了18万。
To Obama’s progressive supporters, these changes were among his greatest strokes of racial progress.
对支持奥巴马的进步者来说，这些改变是他在种族进步方面做出的最大举措之一。
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(包括执法部门的许多人)看来，改革派不但没有给种族问题带来进步，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.
在奥巴马的领导下，塞申斯认为，司法部发出的所有信号都是错误的，他们不仅打击了警察的士气，还淡化了毒品的危害。
In speeches, he cites the shrinking prison population not as a breakthrough but as a worrisome trend.
在多次讲话中，他都表示监狱人口的不断减少非但不是一种突破，反而是一种令人担忧的趋势。
“We’ve got some space to put some people!” he told the chiefs in Nashville.
“我们有地方安置部分罪犯！”他告诉纳什维尔的酋长们。
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.
塞申斯认为，如今的低犯罪率是“积极的警务工作”和严厉判决的直接结果，取消这些措施将会导致犯罪率上升。
According to the FBI, the violent crime rate rose 7% between 2014 and 2016, and the murder rate rose 20%, following years of decline.
根据美国联邦调查局的数据，2014年至2016年期间，暴力犯罪率上升了7%，谋杀率上升了20%，而此前数年的犯罪率一直呈下降趋势。
译文由可可原创，仅供学习交流使用，未经许可请勿转载。
