Keep on Keeping On: Maintaining Momentum for Criminal Justice Reform During the Trump Era

Abstract

President Donald Trump and his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, have swiftly and starkly distinguished their criminal justice rhetoric and policies from those of their predecessors. President Trump and Attorney General Sessions have traded on racist stereotypes and notions that criminals have been emboldened in recent years in the wake of the Obama Administration’s purported lenience in law enforcement and sentencing. In doing so, the Trump Administration has heightened the imperative for criminal justice reform, particularly for policies designed to reduce the numbers of people in jails and prison, the most urgent civil rights and racial justice issue of the past forty years.