President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed ownership of criminal reform because he signed the FIRST STEP Act—a bipartisan federal sentencing and prison reform bill. A month after signing the bill, he proclaimed, “I did criminal justice reform, nobody else. I did it. Without me, you don’t have criminal justice reform.” In fall 2019, he again declared, “I did criminal justice reform, which President Obama could not get approved—which the media never talks about. If President Obama got criminal justice reform done, it would be front-page stories all over the place. I got it done.”1 But these claims fly in the face of nearly every action this administration has taken, most of which are antithetical to reform efforts.
Too often, the full context of the Trump administration’s record on criminal justice reform is obscured by photo ops and public events.2 However, behind the scenes, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) regularly contravenes the efforts of the criminal justice reform movement. Collected here are a list of those anti-reform actions to date: Continue reading.