Brennan Center produces focused piece providing "A Federal Agenda to Promote Safety and Justice"

Yesterday, the Brennan Center for Justice published this new 10-page report titled "A Federal Agenda to Promote Safety and Justice." The report, authored by Hernandez Stroud and Rosemary Nidiry, is crafted with the Trump administration and the current Congress in mind, and here are a couple paragraphs from its introductory section:

This agenda presents crucial, targeted measures the Trump administration and Congress should champion over the next four years to prevent crime, reduce incarceration, improve oversight, save taxpayer dollars, and promote the successful reentry of formerly incarcerated people.  The recommendations include ways to improve the federal criminal justice system, where the president and Congress can exert the most direct influence, as well as funding measures to shape policies at the local, state, tribal, and territorial levels.  Some proposals require legislation, while others can be achieved through executive action. Many have been implemented on a small scale in recent years, yielding promising results that merit expansion.

During his first term, President Trump signed the groundbreaking First Step Act of 2018, which comprised a spate of criminal justice reforms.  Among other things, it addressed unfair sentences and offered second chances to people in prison.  Now the president and Congress can build on that legacy and make the criminal justice system work better for all.

Some of the specific proposals that follow seem realtively realistic, while others strike me more as wishful thinking.  But the document serves as one notable accounting of what a progressive criminal justice reform organization may view as sensible reform priorities in 2025 and in the years to follow.