By a vote of 16-5, and amid protests from some senators that the bill would likely face hurdles too high to pass, the Senate Judiciary Committee backed the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, a package to reduce some of the strictest federal sentencing rules along with reforms for the federal prison system. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday warned the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee to not approve a draft criminal sentencing reform bill that he claims would reduce sentences for “a highly dangerous cohort of criminals.”

In a letter seen by Reuters, Sessions told Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman and fellow Republican Charles Grassley that he feared passage of the legislation would be “a grave error.”

Grassley’s committee is slated to make edits to the draft bill at a hearing on Thursday, before it can be sent to the full Senate for a possible vote. "I believe, as I said last week, that's a subject upon which I think we can get a presidential signature and pass it into law," Cornyn said. Prior to the vote Attorney General Jeff Sessions wrote a letter to Grassley, obtained by CNN, stating the Department of Justice opposes the bill and warning it would increase violent crime and hamstring federal law enforcement. The bill, backed by Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Democratic Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, reduces mandatory minimum penalties for nonviolent repeat drug offenders, eliminates the three-strike mandatory life in prison rule and gives judges discretion to sentence certain low-level offenders below the 10-year mandatory minimum.
The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee backed the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, a package to reduce some of the strictest federal sentencing rules along with reforms for the federal prison system, by a vote of 16–5.