Bad Omens: Reform rollbacks in Washington D.C. are a warning sign for state-level advocates

Bills in Congress that repeal bail reform, worsen mandatory minimums, and further criminalize youth threaten to undo decades of criminal legal system reform in D.C.

by Sarah Staudt, March 4, 2026

Because it is not a state, Washington D.C.’s criminal legal system operates in a uniquely vulnerable situation. Although historically, D.C. has largely developed and enforced its own laws regarding pretrial practices and sentencing, the federal government retains the ultimate statutory authority to change D.C.’s laws unilaterally, without the input of the people who live there. Recently, about a dozen bills targeting D.C.’s justice system have moved through federal House committees, and several have passed the House. These bills seek to undo decades of successful reform in D.C. and return its justice system to failed 90s-style tough on crime policies that are widely disfavored by D.C. residents.

Federal officials target D.C.’s criminal legal system because for the most part, they don’t have the ability to set local criminal justice policy in states. As the Trump administration and conservatives in Congress seek to turn back the clock on decades of successful criminal legal system reform, D.C. provides a window into which parts of the system are likely to be targeted by conservative forces in the future, including in state legislatures where these kinds of policy changes could impact millions of people.

In this piece, we’ll examine three of the efforts to change D.C.’s criminal legal system: threats to bail reform, reinstatement of mandatory minimums, and efforts to treat more youth as adults. We also take a look at similar efforts in various state legislatures to roll back reforms. The collective impact of these proposed policy changes would be to expand jail and prison populations, along with racial disparities, without any public safety benefit.

Pretrial practices: returning to an ineffective cash bail system

The “District of Columbia Cash Bail Reform Act of 2025” (or HR 5214) would undo one of the most successful and unusual aspects of D.C.’s criminal legal system: the fact that it does not use cash bail. D.C. virtually eliminated the use of cash bail in an overhaul of its criminal system in 1992. Since then, it has replaced cash bail with a risk-based detention system, in which a pretrial services agency assesses a person’s risk level and makes a recommendation regarding release to a judge, who then decides if the person should be released pretrial. HR 5214 would require mandatory pretrial detention for certain crimes, and would require the use of cash bail for others — most notably for various “public safety or order crimes” often associated with protest arrests, like obstruction of justice, rioting, and destruction of property.

D.C.’s current risk-based pretrial system is atypical but successful. Similar systems are in place in the federal courts and New Jersey, which also rarely use cash bail, and Illinois has completely eliminated cash from its pretrial system. In fiscal year 2025, 89% of people charged with crimes were released without cash bail (the remainder were mostly held in D.C.’s jail without the ability to pay to be released). Of the people released, 88% were not re-arrested during their pretrial period and 88% attended all their court dates. Only 0.5% of people were re-arrested for a violent crime. These outcomes hold true even when people charged with violent crimes are released; in 2025, only 9 people initially released for a violent crime were then re-arrested for a new violent crime while on pretrial release.

There is no evidence that using cash bail improves public safety or promotes appearance in court. States and municipalities that have eliminated or reduced their use of cash bail have seen their crime rates stay steady or fall, and have not seen a rise in failures to appear. Cash bail causes people to be jailed unnecessarily, which likely reduces public safety in the long run, since jailing someone for any length of time makes it more likely that they will be rearrested in the future.

The federal government has no power to force states and municipalities to use cash bail the way it can in D.C. However, state legislatures around the country have shown a willingness to entrench the failed system of cash bail into their criminal legal systems. Ohio and Wisconsin have both enshrined the use of cash bail in their state constitutions in recent years, despite the lack of evidence that cash bail does anything to ensure public safety. And around the country, states have attacked charitable bail funds, making it harder for poor people to pay cash bonds.

Advocates facing campaigns to reinstate cash bail can focus on some key points. First, bail reform isn’t driving crime in the states that have eliminated cash bail. Violent crime in Illinois fell 7% and property crime declined 14% after reforms. In New Jersey, violent crime dropped 20% after reforms and court appearance rates remained high. Nationwide studies have found no link between bail reform and rises in crime. Second, Money bail does immense harm to communities. There is no evidence that money bail reduces re-arrest or failure to appear rates. Meanwhile, it extracts money from poor communities while primarily benefitting a $2 billion private bail bonds industry.

Mandatory minimums: resurrecting failed “tough-on-crime” policies

The “Strong Sentences for Safer D.C. Streets Act of 2025” (or HR 5172) would impose a range of mandatory sentences that had previously been removed from D.C.’s criminal legal system. It would require mandatory life without parole sentences for first degree murder, and would remove a provision of D.C. law that prohibits the use of life without parole sentences for juveniles. It also establishes mandatory minimums of at least seven years for a range of serious charges. D.C. already has harsh sentencing structures, and 1 in 5 sentences imposed in D.C. is a mandatory minimum.

More than 30 years of evidence has shown that mandatory minimums do not improve public safety. They fail to reduce crime, gun possession, drug use, or overdoses. They also intensify racial disparities. Mandatory minimum sentences remove a judge’s discretion to consider the individual facts and circumstances of each crime when setting a sentence. By doing so, they place more power in the hands of prosecutors, who can make initial charging decisions that carry mandatory minimums, coercing accused people into pleading guilty. This power imbalance has been shown to result in longer sentences for Black people because they are more likely than white people to be charged with mandatory minimum crimes.

Although efforts around the country to reinstate or extend mandatory minimums are being challenged by organizations like Families Against Mandatory Minimums, some states have recently passed sentencing reforms that have the same effect, requiring that people spend longer in prison. Arkansas, Louisiana, and Tennessee have all enacted punitive “truth in sentencing” laws that are projected to massively grow their prison populations and likely require billions in new spending. Louisiana did so in conjunction with ending parole for most people, vastly extending the amount of time people are likely to spend in prison in the state.

Advocates facing efforts to lengthen sentences are sometimes in a difficult position because the crimes being targeted for longer sentences are often particularly heinous. But they can remind lawmakers that mandatory minimums don’t work, and that they also create a massive waste of government resources imprisoning people who judges did not want to sentence to such long sentences. “Fiscal notes” — analyses of potential criminal legal reform bills’ monetary impact, usually conducted by legislative analysts within the government — regularly conclude that efforts to expand mandatory minimums cost millions. In addition, victims of crime by and large do not support long sentences: a nationwide survey of crime survivors conducted by the Alliance for Safety and Justice found that only 16% agreed with the statement, “When there are longer prison sentences, crime goes down.”

Ignoring science and common sense: treating youth as adults

Crime committed by children and youth is at historic lows in D.C. and elsewhere in the country. Nonetheless, the U.S. House and Senate have advanced a set of three bills that would harshen penalties for youth in D.C., treating more of them as adults:

• HR 5140 would “lower the age” that a minor may be tried as an adult, from 15 or 16 for serious cases to 14 years of age.
• S 2815 would repeal D.C.’s youth-focused “Second Look” provision, which allows reconsideration of sentences for people who committed crimes before age 25 after they have been in prison for 15 years.
• HR 4922 would remove requirements to consider alternatives to incarceration, consider youth brain development in sentencing, and seal records for people between 18 and 24 years old.

Jeanine Pirro, a close Trump ally and the current U.S. Attorney for D.C., defended these laws, claiming, “I know evil when I see it, no matter the age.” This language harkens back to damaging “super predator” rhetoric from the 1990s, which falsely painted the picture of youth — particularly Black youth — who were irredeemably evil or callous toward human life.

These depictions of youth who commit crime are no more true now than they were three decades ago. On the contrary, both common sense and neuroscience show that brain immaturity is the primary driver of delinquent behavior; as people age and their brains mature, their likelihood of committing crime declines. Most youth (63%) who enter the justice system for delinquency never return to court on delinquency charges. Even among youth charged with serious crimes, research shows that only 9% continued to commit serious offenses over the next three years. Incarceration creates a roadblock to outgrowing delinquency, holding youth back from maturing psychologically and making it more likely that children will be rearrested in the future.

The efforts to roll back D.C.’s youth-focused reforms are not unique. Despite youth crime being at all-time lows, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry called a special legislative session to deal with “out of control” youth crime. It resulted in the repeal of Louisiana’s 2019 “raise the age” law, essentially reverting to the state’s previous practice of treating all 17 year olds as adults, regardless of how minor their charges were. North Carolina also repealed its “raise the age” law and now treats all 16 year olds as adults, despite state-sponsored reports that found that raising the age had not raised recidivism rates.

What is happening in D.C. is relevant to the whole country. Even as state criminal legal systems stay relatively insulated from the policy directives of the Trump administration, the situation in D.C. can give state-level advocates some sobering clues about the full scope of the conservative agenda to roll back decades of successful criminal legal system reforms. We hope that advocates will put pressure on their own congresspeople and senators to resist these harmful changes.

Hunger as punishment: How states restrict SNAP benefits for people on probation

A patchwork of statutes and administrative choices limits access to the food assistance program SNAP for some people on probation.

by Aleks Kajstura, February 24, 2026

Making sure people have food to eat is one of the most important ways to support them when they’re on probation. But there is a legislative patchwork across the U.S. that prevents and deters people on probation from receiving vital federal food assistance, known as SNAP benefits.¹ This patchwork means that some people on probation in some states can’t afford to purchase basic foods, with serious consequences for their health, their family’s health, and their ability to comply with their conditions of probation. We analyzed state SNAP laws and applications in all 50 states and found that 39 states have some kind of probation violation-related disqualifications for SNAP benefits. This includes states that explicitly ban people with probation violations from participating in the program, as well as states that discourage eligible people from applying by adding irrelevant questions about probation to their SNAP application.

These variations in SNAP eligibility arose because the federal law that created the program disqualifies people with certain drug convictions from receiving benefits. Under the law, states can opt out of these federal eligibility rules and allow people who have convictions to access SNAP.² However, many states have chosen a misguided middle path, maintaining a carve-out that denies benefits to some people on probation. The most common of these disqualifications is for people with “probation violations.”³ These disqualifications have two negative effects: first, they directly disqualify people who have a probation violation, and second, they indirectly discourage many more eligible people from even applying.

In this briefing, we highlight restrictions on SNAP benefits for people with probation violations, their impact, and how advocates are pushing back. First, we explain the scope of the impact — the country’s rampant use of probation, its overlap with high levels of poverty and food insecurity, and how states differ in expanding or limiting SNAP access with policies related to probation violations. Then, we show how increasing SNAP access to people on probation will improve public safety. Finally, we dive into the legal framework and present several possible solutions, highlighting how advocates are working to expand access to SNAP in Connecticut. We also include a state-by-state appendix of probation violation-related SNAP disqualifications.

Millions of people on probation are affected by SNAP restrictions

Food insecurity is rampant in the U.S.; 41.7 million people — nearly 1 in 8 Americans — receive SNAP benefits. Meanwhile, the number of people on probation in the United States (2.9 million) is even bigger than the total number of people behind bars.

Many people on probation depend on SNAP to feed themselves and their families, and they face questions on their SNAP applications about whether they are on probation and whether they have any violations. In many states, people with probation violations are disqualified from SNAP. However, because these applications often threaten harsh consequences for misrepresentations or mistakes,⁴ simply asking about probation violations has a chilling effect on all people on probation, likely keeping people from applying even when they are eligible.

This chilling effect has a broad impact on the probation population because so many people who are on probation are also poor. Over half of people on probation earn under $20,000 per year, which is below the SNAP income eligibility cap of $22,352. A breakdown by race and gender reveals stark differences in people’s access to even that meager income: For example, 70% of all women, and 81% of Black women on probation in particular, make less than $20,000 a year. In other words, limiting access to SNAP has a disproportionate impact on women on probation.⁵

States are split on whether a probation violation actually disqualifies someone from receiving SNAP benefits. For our analysis, we grouped states into two general categories: those that have probation-related roadblocks for SNAP eligibility, and those that don’t. We found that:

• 11 states don’t have any probation-related disqualifications.
• 39 states have or threaten probation-related disqualifications. Of those 39 states:
  • 21 states have a statutory disqualification for people on probation, either through a partial opt-out from the federal drug offense disqualifications or by separately adding disqualifications for probation violations.
  • 18 states don’t have any statutory probation violation disqualifications, but ask about probation violations on their SNAP application anyway — even though the answer is irrelevant to eligibility.

Some of the states with the highest rates of people on probation — including Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Minnesota, and New Jersey — either bar people with probation violations from accessing SNAP entirely or at least ask about probation violations on their applications.

Combatting food insecurity is key to public safety

Ostensibly, the purpose of probation is to help people become successful members of society, and food security is a key component of this goal. Food security lowers crime rates and reduces recidivism, leading to improved public safety, all while spending fewer taxpayer dollars on incarceration.

Food insecurity is likely rampant among people on probation. Although there are no studies that specifically look at the number of people on probation who experience food insecurity, studies have been conducted regarding formerly incarcerated people. Twenty percent of formerly incarcerated people report suffering from food insecurity — double that of the general population — with even higher rates among women and Black people. While we don’t have food insecurity data specifically on children of people on probation, we know that they are more likely to experience food insecurity than children of non-incarcerated parents. Over a quarter of people on probation are parents living with their children, so ensuring SNAP access for their households means fewer children going hungry.

Furthermore, meeting people’s basic needs reduces crime. One study found food security was linked to increased neighborhood safety and social cohesion, and lower violent crime rates. Studies have also linked lower rates of recidivism directly to SNAP access, explaining that “[b]locking the formerly incarcerated from basic nutrition assistance […] leaves them more vulnerable to food insecurity and may put them at risk of returning to illicit activity to meet their basic needs. Some research suggests that full eligibility for SNAP may significantly reduce the risk of recidivism for newly released people with drug offense convictions.”

When governments ensure that people have food, it not only reduces crime but makes it easier for people to meet their probation requirements in the first place, and thus avoid incarceration for probation violations. Indirectly, having access to adequate food makes it easier to succeed at work or school, which are standard conditions of probation. More directly, having supplemental income for food helps people to meet the financial obligations of probation, such as fines, fees, restitution, and monthly supervision fees.⁷

Reforming SNAP eligibility in Connecticut and beyond

Ensuring food security through SNAP is so impactful that advocates in Connecticut are fighting for change. The state has over 32,000 people on probation, but limits their eligibility and access to SNAP benefits.

Connecticut has chosen to opt-out of the federal SNAP disqualifications for people convicted of drug offenses, but the state preserves a few carve-outs nonetheless. One such caveat is that Connecticut requires that people on probation be “satisfactorily serving” their sentence in order to be eligible for SNAP benefits.

In applying this law, Connecticut’s application for SNAP benefits asks:

“Do you or any member of your household have a probation or parole violation?”

The form leaves no room for nuance; the only answer options are checkboxes for “Yes” or “No.” Yet neither the Instructions (W-1EINST) nor the Rights & Responsibilities pages (W-0016RR) in the SNAP application packet provide any guidance on what constitutes a “probation violation” for the purposes of the form. The vagueness of the form, and the severe penalties for getting the answer wrong lead many people who are eligible for SNAP not to risk applying.

Chicks Ahoy Farm, a Connecticut nonprofit that focuses on increasing the number of women and BILPOC farmers in Connecticut, is working to fix this. The organization works to strengthen youth and families’ access to farming, agriculture, conservation, and environmental stewardship, while fixing the state’s broken social safety net. Their member-led community organizing group, Cultivating Justice, is leading the F.R.E.E. CT campaign, which works at the intersection of food justice and criminal justice to dismantle barriers in Connecticut’s social safety net that impede successful community reentry for justice system-impacted individuals. Their current campaign is focused on reforming probation to limit the impact of technical violations and ensure SNAP access. The easiest way to restore SNAP access for people on probation is to change the current statutory language governing SNAP eligibility. In Connecticut, the current statute requires that people on probation are “satisfactorily serving” their sentence in order to be eligible for SNAP benefits. Fixing this problem requires deleting a single word:

“A person convicted of any offense under federal or state law, on or after August 22, 1996, which (1) is classified as a felony, and (2) has as an element the possession, use or distribution of a controlled substance, as defined in Subsection (6) of 21 USC 802, shall be eligible for benefits pursuant to the temporary assistance for needy families program or the supplemental nutrition assistance program pursuant to the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008, if such person has completed a sentence imposed by a court. A person shall also be eligible for said benefits if such person is satisfactorily serving a sentence of a period of probation or is in the process of completing or has completed a sentence imposed by the court of mandatory participation in a substance abuse treatment program or mandatory participation in a substance abuse testing program.”

A more expansive option available to states is simply opting out entirely of federal disqualifications linked to drug offenses. States can exercise the federally-permitted opt-out provision, as Delaware does:

Pursuant to the option granted the State by 21 U.S.C. § 862a(d)(1), an individual convicted under federal or state law of a felony involving possession, distribution or use of a controlled substance shall be exempt from the prohibition contained in 21 U.S.C. § 862a(a) against eligibility for food stamp program benefits for such convictions.

In addition to these legislative changes, we recommend that advocates be vigilant in working with the state agency responsible for administering SNAP in the state. Even if the law changes to remove probation disqualifications or totally opt the state out of the drug conviction disqualifications, the state may still continue to ask the question on their forms, either because they are unaware of the law change or because they believe that federal regulations require them to do so. But because the question itself is a deterrent to applying for SNAP, it’s important that the application form is updated quickly and accurately to reflect the law.

States need to follow sound policy and create clear, straightforward laws that ensure that people on probation have access to SNAP. Expanding SNAP access to people regardless of probation-related violations will improve public safety and improve the lives of people on probation and their families. Solving the problem is an easy legislative fix — and in some cases, simply an administrative one. States across the country should follow the lead of the 11 states that ensure access to SNAP regardless of conviction or probation violation status.

How is your local government collaborating with ICE? Here’s how to find out — and push back

From the deputization of local police to holding people on behalf of ICE, here are some ways your county might be working with federal agents — and what you can do to push back.

by Regan Huston and Jacob Kang-Brown, February 23, 2026

As the Trump administration’s deportation agenda unfolds, federal agents have assaulted communities across the U.S. Most news coverage has focused solely on agents’ presence on the ground, but what’s less talked about is the key role that local jails and law enforcement have played — even in sanctuary cities.

Hiding in Plain SightHow jails help Trump’s deportation agenda

The reality is that your county might be working with federal agents in quiet ways that are fueling Trump’s deportation campaign. Here, we outline how to find out whether your local government is collaborating with ICE and what you can do push back.

What does collaboration between local governments and federal agents look like?

In our 2025 report, Hiding in Plain Sight, we showed that Trump’s deportation agenda isn’t possible without the cooperation of local jails and police. In general, there are three formal ways they collaborate.¹

287(g) agreements

These are the most widely-known forms of cooperation with federal agents. Most of the time, ICE forms an agreement with local law enforcement agencies, allowing for the deputization of local officials. This means local police and sheriffs can act as immigration enforcement agents, and start doing ICE’s dirty work within their own communities.

States like Florida and Georgia require this collaboration, and they’ve seen much higher rates of immigration-related arrests because of it. Blocking these agreements helps reduce ICE arrest rates, and communities are safer for it.

ICE detention

Local jails provide ICE with both detention space and people to arrest.

Many jails have contracts that enable them to rent out beds to the federal government to detain immigrants. These contracts are a perverse way for sheriffs to rake in millions of dollars each year, and are voluntary. Local governments can and should cancel them, like Glendale, Calif. did last year.

In addition to contracted capacity, ICE relies on jails to hold people until they can make an immigration arrest. This means that instead of releasing people when they’re supposed to, jails can hold someone for additional days if ICE asks them to do so. Then, a federal agent will come and arrest them. These “holds” are the result of police sharing information with federal agencies about who has been arrested. It is important to note that this, too, is entirely voluntary. Jails are not required to honor ICE’s requests to hold people for this extra time, and because this also adds to crowded jail conditions, they arguably should refuse.

U.S. Marshals Service contracts

Advocates have long sought “sanctuary” policies that restrict local governments’ abilities to support federal immigration enforcement. But many sanctuary policies only focus on the civil immigration process — and fail to protect people with criminalized immigration status, a definition that the Trump administration is constantly expanding. So even in places like Illinois, which is a “sanctuary state,” the federal government can circumvent this policy by bringing criminal — instead of the typical civil — immigration charges against people. This change allows the federal government to hold people for immigration offenses in local jails that would otherwise be outside of their network. The federal government does this using contracts between the local jails and the U.S. Marshals Service, which handles pretrial detention for federal criminal cases. (Importantly, many sanctuary policies only block ICE from renting jail space and ignore the U.S. Marshals.)¹

This longstanding loophole transforms what are normally civil immigration matters into more serious federal crimes, and hides the true scale of immigrant detention from public view.

How do I know what is happening in my county?

Monitoring this collaboration can be tricky, and relationships between local governments and federal agents are rapidly changing. To help keep track, the Prison Policy Initiative put together a resource to help you figure out whether, and to what extent, your county may be collaborating with federal agencies.

To check whether your county has a 287(g) agreement as of February 17, 2026, see Appendix Table 1.

To check whether your local jail is used for U.S. Marshals detention and/or ICE detention as of February 5, 2026, see Appendix Table 2.

Remember, these aren’t the only ways that local governments work with the federal government to support their immigration enforcement efforts. These are just the easiest to document. You should inquire with local officials in your community to understand any informal ways they may also be supporting these efforts.

What can I do to push back against this collaboration?

It’s important to remember that for most states, local collaboration with federal agencies is entirely voluntary and President Trump’s deportation agenda cannot happen without state and local officials. We put together some guidance on how you can push back against this cooperation.

Hold sheriffs accountable

Jails are controlled by sheriffs, who for the most part are elected officials. You can ask them to immediately take action and stop working with ICE. Safety Bound put together this toolkit, which offers guidance and examples of the demands you can make of sheriffs to end their collaboration with federal agencies for good.

Put pressure on local lawmakers

You can also put pressure on local lawmakers to end cooperation with federal agencies. For example, when a Delaware police department signed a 287(g) agreement, community members organized and confronted the chief of police, mayor, and town council. Shortly after, local officials rescinded the agreement. The Immigrant Legal Resource Center put together a guide with recommendations for those looking to do the same.

Call on state lawmakers to act

Advocacy at the state level is also essential. You can call on state lawmakers to take a hard stance against working with ICE and ban all law enforcement departments from collaborating with federal agencies on both civil and criminal immigration enforcement. State lawmakers can pass policies to ensure that even if a county does not have a 287(g) agreement, it is not collaborating with federal immigration officials in other ways.

You can also call for state and local lawmakers to end contracts with the U.S. Marshals, closing the loophole that allows ICE to use contracted local jails in sanctuary cities, counties, and states.

Stay informed

As the crimmigration crisis continues to unfold and rapidly change, one of the most important things you can do is stay informed.

Right now, the Department of Homeland Security and ICE are actively trying to expand their existing detention network to include large warehouses, which will undoubtedly harm communities. Learn more about this cruel attempt and how to fight back with Detention Watch Network’s toolkit.

Finally, as immigration detention is not our primary area of expertise, we’ve compiled several resources from experts and organizations directly focused on immigration.

Appendices

Local law enforcement can support ICE and the criminalization of immigration in both formal and informal ways. These tables show information on two of the formal ways that local agencies work with the federal government: by deputizing local officers to serve ICE (Appendix Table 1) or by providing jail space (Appendix Table 2).

Appendix Table 1. Local law enforcement deputization for Immigration policing under 287(g) and date of agreement

Local law enforcement leadership can enter agreements with ICE to deputize officers to work on the Trump administration’s deportation agenda under a program known as 287(g). This table lists any agency that has entered a 287(g) agreement with ICE, and the date the agreement was made.

There are three different models of these agreements. The Task Force Model involves deputized agents joining an ICE task force for a raid or other kind of activity in the community. The other two models, Jail Enforcement and Warrant Service Officer, involve deputized activities in relation to people held in the local jail.

The Jail Enforcement Model trains staff to take on ICE investigative and paperwork duties, like preparing charging documents, issuing a notice to appear, and immigration detainers. This model also allows local police to transfer people to an ICE field office or to actual ICE detention before the 48-hour detainer period ends.

The Warrant Service Officer model has more limited duties, and requires ICE to be more involved. This information is current as of February 17, 2026.