Memo Calls on Justice Dept. to Be Confrontational on Major Issues

An internal Justice Department memo distributed this week to top departmental officials urges them to “polarize the debate” on issues such as drugs, AIDS and capital punishment in the closing months of the Reagan Administration.

“We must not seek ‘consensus,’ we must confront,” the memo said. “Of course, we must confront sensibly, in ways designed to win the debate and further our agenda,” it added, offering an “issue-by-issue analysis that, where possible, proposes means of polarization.”

Assistant Atty. Gen. William Bradford Reynolds, who is also counselor to Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, distributed the memo Monday to top department officials, asking them to “give consideration to ways in which your activities can highlight . . . these themes.”

Existence of the memo was reported in Thursday editions of the Baltimore Sun.

The memo recommended that the department “attack” a Supreme Court decision last year that restricted the use of victim-impact statements in death penalty cases. The rationale for capital punishment, it said, is “deterrence, retribution and incapacitation (i.e. decapitation).”

After noting that prison overcrowding is expected to worsen, the memo said the situation would prompt some to urge “alternatives” to incarceration.

“We must take the side of more prisons and, to polarize the issue, we must attack those by name (such as Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.)) who take the other approach,” it said.