How the second Trump administration is making the criminal legal system harsher, less transparent, and less fair

Sections
Defunding programs that support public safety and rehabilitation
Encouraging the use of extreme sentencing and harsh law enforcement tactics
Making prisons and jails even worse
Eliminating oversight and transparency
Using the justice system to reward Trump's friends and punish his enemies
More resources

The second Trump administration has made drastic changes in almost every policy area, and people understandably want to know how the criminal legal system has been affected. Importantly, the federal government only has direct control of a small slice of America's carceral system. But while it can't set explicit policy that impacts state prisons, local jails, and non-federal law enforcement, the Trump administration is using its bully pulpit and control over federal spending to push these agencies to conform to its "priorities."

Since taking office, the Trump administration has taken actions to eliminate oversight of prisons and law enforcement, make conditions behind bars even worse, expand the use of harsh sentences and law enforcement tactics, and undermine programs proven to reduce incarceration and make communities safer. Meanwhile, President Trump has used his executive powers to ensure his friends and supporters are treated with leniency, while critics of his administration are finding themselves targeted by investigations and prosecutions.

the White House Can they do that?A primer on the power in the criminal legal system

On this page, we've curated and summarized some of the most impactful actions by the administration to alter the criminal legal system. Notably, because we're not experts on immigration and policing, we have intentionally chosen not to list all of the administration's actions in those areas. Readers interested in changes in immigration detention should check out our "crimmigration" resource roundup as well as our reports Following the Money of Mass Incarceration and Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie. Readers interested in policing can refer to our roundup of data resources on police misconduct. Additional resources are listed at the bottom of this page.

Defunding programs that support public safety and rehabilitation

Rejecting decades of evidence about what works to reduce crime, the administration has pulled funds from hundreds of community-based programs doing crucial work. And beyond these cuts, the Trump administration has also gutted funding for a range of social welfare programs. These policies will hurt public safety by keeping more people in poverty and will inevitably lead to more people warehoused behind bars.

  • The administration cut more than $800 million in Office of Justice Programs grants. These cuts largely impacted nonprofits working on evidence-based public safety projects such as community violence prevention, diversion, programs for at-risk youth, victim services, substance use treatment, and programs targeting gun violence. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act later sealed the fate of many of these programs by prohibiting Byrne-JAG grants, a crucial source of federal justice funding, from being used for violence prevention.
  • The Department of Housing and Urban Development issued new policies that severely curtail funding for permanent supportive housing, supplied through HUD's Continuum of Care grants. The policies pressure municipalities to respond to homelessness with forced treatment and work requirements for people receiving services, and impede "Housing First" programs that offer housing on a no-strings-attached basis. Housing is an urgent need for people coming out of jail and prison, and Housing First has proven successful at reducing arrests and incarceration when tailored to justice-involved people. HUD's budget proposal to Congress for 2027 doubles down on these harmful policies, eliminating Continuum of Care grants entirely.
  • The One Big Beautiful Bill Act issued sweeping cuts to Medicaid and implemented work requirements, which will likely strip many formerly incarcerated people (who struggle with high unemployment rates) of health insurance. The cuts also put pressure on states that have recently begun using Medicaid funds to get people insured prior to leaving prison, causing many states to pause their work on these programs. Expanding health insurance saves lives among people recently released from incarceration, and has been shown to reduce arrest rates.
  • In 2025, the administration fired more than 10% of the staff of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the small federal office that tackles mental health and addiction problems. In 2026, SAMHSA canceled thousands of congressionally-appropriated grants for mental health and substance use programs, totaling at least $2 billion. Both the firings and the cuts will impede programs helping people at risk of incarceration. An estimated 49% of people in state prisons have a substance use disorder, while 43% have been diagnosed with a mental disorder.
  • The Office on Violence Against Women, which is tasked with disbursing grants for violence and abuse prevention, has withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in grant funding.
  • The administration ended the "Fresh Start" program that had helped students, including those in prison, bring existing student loans into good standing so that they could qualify for Pell Grants. This move undermines the First Step Act, which restored Pell eligibility to incarcerated people.

Encouraging the use of extreme sentencing and harsh law enforcement tactics

Rather than pursuing strategies to prevent harm and keep people out of the criminal legal system, the Trump administration has followed the path that created the nation's mass incarceration crisis in the first place: extreme sentences and harsh law enforcement tactics that have ballooned prison and jail populations, and destroyed communities.

  • On his first day in office, the president signed an executive order that ended the moratorium on the federal death penalty. Following the order, Attorney General Pam Bondi authorized federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in at least two dozen cases. Bondi also facilitated the execution (pursuant to a state sentence) of one of the men on federal death row whose sentence had been commuted to life without parole by former president Biden.
  • In July 2025, President Trump signed a bill into law that permanently classifies all fentanyl-related substances as Schedule 1, blocking the ability to use the substance for research that could lead to new overdose medications. The bill (the HALT Act) also institutes and expands mandatory minimum sentences for fentanyl, doubling down on a strategy that has driven mass incarceration.
  • Former Attorney General Bondi issued a memo directing federal prosecutors to "charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offenses," focusing on offenses punishable by death or long mandatory minimums. The Brennan Center notes that this policy will likely swell the federal prison population without improving public safety.
  • The administration used a 30-day takeover of D.C.'s police force, and a federal-state-local "task force" in Memphis, Tennessee, to demonstrate its vision for policing in America. Both cities saw dramatically ramped-up traffic enforcement and aggressive policing of low-level offenses, as well as sweeping arrests for immigration violations. In D.C., 80% of the 1,100 people who were arrested and whose cases went to superior court were charged with misdemeanors, traffic offenses or had outstanding warrants. In Memphis, as of March 2026, the Task Force had logged over 7,300 arrests - 6,400 arrests for firearm violations and over 800 for controlled substances. Tennessee Lookout noted in October that the majority of arrests were for nonviolent offenses.
  • The president signed an executive order in which he pledged to use legal and fiscal measures to push cities to respond to homelessness with increased involuntary commitment. The order signaled a shift away from using federal funds to support harm reduction, safe consumption sites, and "housing first" programs, and toward programs promoting "accountability" and "self-sufficiency." In 2026, the Justice Department followed up by launching a "Model Cities Initiative" that will distribute $300 million in federal grants to cities implementing "comprehensive and innovative strategies to reduce crime [and] restore law and order." Cities applying for the money are urged to align with the administration on "enforcing prohibitions on urban camping and loitering" and forcibly hospitalizing people with mental illness or addiction "to the fullest extent of the law."
  • President Trump also signed an executive order that threatens federal funds for state and local governments that have implemented policies ending the use of cash bail. Similar proposals were also filed in the House and Senate. Separately, the president signed an executive order that specifically attempts to force changes to Washington, D.C.'s bail reform policies. The administration has also supported state-level efforts to increase pretrial detention, both through reinstating cash bail and making more offenses ineligible for bail.

Making prisons and jails even worse

President Trump has pursued changes to the Federal Bureau of Prisons -- the only prison system his administration directly controls -- that will make conditions more dangerous, particularly for LGBTQ incarcerated people. The administration has also forced other changes that will worsen conditions for people in prisons and jails nationwide, as well as for their families.

  • President Trump's Department of Justice canceled $16 million in funding for the Prison Rape Elimination Act Resource Center, which works to help prisons and jails prevent and address sexual violence behind bars, and supports incarcerated victims of sexual violence. While the funding has since been partially restored, the PREA Resource Center is now focusing solely on auditing facilities, and has stopped its other work helping prisons train workers to respond to and prevent sexual assault. The cuts are already impacting prisons.
  • The administration has taken aim at protections for transgender and other LGBTQ people behind bars. On his first day in office, President Trump signed executive orders ending gender-affirming healthcare for people in federal prisons, and mandating that trans women be held in men's prisons. The order was blocked but litigation is ongoing. In December 2025, the president ordered the DOJ to stop using standards designed to protect LGBTQ people under the Prison Rape Elimination Act. (Trump later ordered similar changes for people in ICE custody.) The Bureau of Justice Statistics has also proposed significant changes to its surveys of people in jails and surveys of victims of sexual crimes in prisons, eliminating questions about individuals' gender identities.
  • In October 2025, the president's appointees to the Federal Communications Commission increased the price caps on voice and video calls from prisons and jails. The order partially rolled back rates approved by the FCC in 2024. Since the order, many jails and prisons have raised their rates to the new caps, creating new financial stress for people with loved ones behind bars.
  • On his first day in office, President Trump rescinded an order from the Biden administration that prohibited the Federal Bureau of Prisons from entering into new contracts for the operation of private prison facilities. While the BOP has not entered into new contracts for private prisons since the order was rescinded, it remains a possibility, particularly given the number of new contracts between ICE and companies like GEO Group and CoreCivic.

Eliminating oversight and transparency

President Trump has positioned himself as a defender of law enforcement power from government interference, decrying long-standing mechanisms of oversight as "woke." The president's Justice Department has walked away from a number of investigations and consent decrees with police departments and prisons where reform is badly needed. Meanwhile, the administration's crusade against "DEI" and "gender ideology" has hurt incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, who are caught up in the resulting policy changes.

  • In April 2025, the Department of Justice ordered its civil rights attorneys to pause work on consent decrees with police departments, agreements in which a federal court oversees DOJ-ordered reforms. The DOJ later ended consent decrees in Minneapolis, Louisville, and Albuquerque. It also ended investigations into police forces in Phoenix, Memphis, Oklahoma City, Mount Vernon (NY), and Trenton (NJ), as well as the Louisiana State Police. These consent decrees and investigations would have required police departments to address issues of racial discrimination, violence against civilians, debtors' prisons, and retaliation against police critics, among other injustices.
  • In July of 2025, the DOJ walked away from a lawsuit filed during the Biden administration against the state of Louisiana. The case revolved around the state's continued practice of keeping people locked up for weeks, months, or over a year after they should have been released.
  • President Trump signed an executive order shuttering the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database -- the first-ever national police misconduct database, which helped law enforcement entities ensure they did not hire officers who had a history of misconduct and abuse.
  • The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), the leading source of government data about carceral populations and policies, has proposed significant changes to its surveys of victims of sexual crimes, including eliminating questions about gender identity. BJS also eliminated questions related to gender identity in its surveys of people in jails. Without these data, it will become more difficult to study crimes targeting transgender and gender non-conforming people.
  • President Trump signed an executive order seeking to change the federal government's position on legal cases involving "disparate impact," a key mechanism for rooting out discrimination. While this move was part of the president's campaign against "DEI," it will also impact people with conviction histories, who face rampant discrimination in the job market and other areas of life.

Using the justice system to reward Trump's friends and punish his enemies

The criminal legal system has always been political, with those in power passing laws that target the less powerful, especially Black, brown, and poor people. But the Trump Administration has inserted partisan politics into this system in unprecedented ways. He's provided leniency for his allies, while siccing the Department of Justice on his political opponents and people who criticize him.

While we champion even-handed reforms that make the criminal legal system less punitive, we strongly believe that clemency and leniency should be available for all people ensnared in the system, not just those that elected leaders favor.

  • President Trump has issued pardons and commutations to numerous political supporters and business allies, including a sweeping order issued on his first day in office that granted clemency to everyone involved in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Many of the individuals Trump has pardoned were convicted of white-collar crimes, such as Changpeng Zhao (the founder of crypto exchange Binance), and several were major donors to his campaign.
  • The president has used the Department of Justice to investigate or prosecute many of his critics, including former members of his own administration. Notable prosecutions and investigations include Miles Taylor and Christopher Krebs, former members of his own administration; former FBI director James Comey; Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve Board; New York Attorney General Letitia James (who had brought successful civil fraud charges against Trump); and adviser-turned-critic John Bolton.
  • In April 2026, the Trump administration created an FBI unit to "proactively" target people by viewpoint, including trying to identify so-called "domestic terrorists" motivated by "anti-Americanism," "anti-Christianity," "extremism" on migration, race, or gender, and "hostility towards those who hold traditional views on morality."
  • The president's Justice Department pursued terrorism charges against anti-ICE protesters in Texas, leading to unusually long sentences of 50 years or more. The prosecution framed the protesters as part of an organized terrorist group, even though some did not know each other and were part of separate actions. The Justice Department also pursued felony conspiracy charges against several nonviolent anti-ICE protesters in Illinois, although the prosecution ultimately fell apart.

Other reports and resources

In addition to tracking the daily actions of the Trump administration that make the criminal legal system more harsh, we’ve also produced reports, briefings, and data, that deeper into these issues:



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