The Political Dynamics of Justice Reform in The U.S.

“After hearings and briefings and votes and re-votes, finally, this hundred-page bill, this
huge lift, which matters so much for kids, is actually going to be passed in a bipartisan
and bicameral fashion,” said Marcy Mistrett, CEO of the Campaign for Youth Justice, an
advocacy group. “In the current political environment, that’s a really big deal.”
The passage of the juvenile reform bill just as the First Step Act moves toward a vote
comes at a pivotal time for federal oversight of local youth court systems. The legislation
is a new version of a law that first passed in 1974 but expired in 2007. In the decade
since, racial disparities in juvenile justice have dramatically worsened, and the Trump
Justice Department has taken a quiet but decisive turn away from its mandate to try to
reduce such inequality.
According to a Marshall Project report in September, a little-known DOJ agency called
the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention has, under Trump appointee
Caren Harp, cut back on its data-gathering and monitoring of states’ attempts to fight
racial inequity.
But under the newly passed juvenile justice bill, that office will now face significantly
increased congressional oversight, said Republican congressman Jason Lewis of
Minnesota, who along with Bobby Scott of Virginia, a Democrat, spearheaded the
House version of the legislation.
The underlying purpose of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act is to
use the promise of federal money to ensure four “core protections” for children in states’
youth justice systems. These include not locking kids up for age-based “status offenses”
such as truancy, running away and curfew violations; removing them from adult jails,
with few exceptions; always keeping them separate from adult inmates; and making
states research and address racial disparities.
But earlier versions of the law contained a loophole: Juveniles charged as adults could
be held in adult jails pretrial. As a result, according to a recent UCLA study, more than
32,000 youth spend time in adult facilities each year.
The new bill would require that problem be fixed within three years, although it would
still contain a “rural exception” letting jurisdictions with no juvenile detention facility hold
kids in their adult jail for a period of a few hours while they await transportation
elsewhere.
Despite the bipartisan support for these changes, the legislation has been caught up for
years in disputes over details. Its current version, for instance, contains a section
providing shelters and outreach programs for runaway and homeless children, which
some senators said should be more robust or be contained in a separate bill. But they
reached a compromise.
The bigger obstacle was Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, who nearly
single-handedly held up the bill for more than two years because he felt that judges
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