Criminal Justice Reform Didn’t End — It Decentralized

(Udi Ofer – Just Security) The first year of the Trump administration has fueled a growing narrative that criminal justice reform is over, undone by federal retrenchment, civil rights rollbacks, and a renewed punitive agenda. But the data tell a more complicated story. While Washington has moved sharply in one direction, state governments have quietly passed bipartisan reforms, suggesting that criminal justice reform in the United States has not collapsed—it has decentralized and grown more incremental. At the federal level, the Trump administration’s actions have marked a clear departure from the reform momentum of the previous decade. Federal civil rights oversight of local police has been gutted, the death penalty reinvigorated, funding for evidence-based crime prevention initiatives withdrawn, due process protections in immigration enforcement curtailed, bail reform efforts attacked, and the federal war on drugs escalated. Taken together, these actions have fueled a growing narrative that the era of criminal justice reform is over. But that narrative is incomplete, and in important respects, incorrect. –  –Criminal Justice Reform Didn’t End — It Decentralized