This bill establishes an annual reporting requirement for the Attorney General, in coordination with other agencies, to provide Congress with comprehensive data on current and historical gang activity across the United States.
Ashley Hinson
Representative
IA-2
The Gang Activity Reporting Act of 2025 mandates the Attorney General, in coordination with federal agencies and local law enforcement, to submit an annual, detailed report on gang activity to Congress. This report must track gang growth, criminal methods, resource allocation, and enforcement statistics, including drug and firearm seizures. The goal is to provide accurate, up-to-date data to inform effective, evidence-based policy against rising violent crime.
New Act Mandates Annual Federal Gang Activity Report, Including Juvenile Arrest Data and Fentanyl Seizures
The new Gang Activity Reporting Act of 2025 is straightforward: it’s a data cleanup operation aimed at giving Congress a clearer picture of gang activity across the country. Essentially, this bill requires the Attorney General, in coordination with the FBI and the Secretary of Homeland Security, to produce a detailed annual report on gangs. The first one is due fast—within 150 days of the law taking effect. The stated goal, according to the bill’s findings (SEC. 2), is to update information, as the federal government is currently relying on gang threat assessments that are over a decade old, which is like trying to navigate rush hour traffic with a 2011 map.
The Data Deep Dive: What Feds Have to Track
This isn't just a quick memo; the report is mandated to be comprehensive. It requires tracking the growth of local, national, and transnational gangs over the past ten years, detailing changes in their membership and location. For anyone concerned about how federal dollars are spent, the bill requires the agencies to report exactly how much they’ve allocated to gang investigation, prosecution, and containment over the last five years (SEC. 3). This means we should get a much clearer idea of the resources dedicated to this specific area of law enforcement.
Real-World Statistics and Juvenile Data
One of the most detailed sections mandates specific enforcement statistics from the last full fiscal year. This includes the number of gang-related arrests and trends over the last five years. More granularly, the report must specify the number of juveniles arrested for gang activity and the number of firearms seized from them. It also requires reporting the weight of fentanyl, methamphetamine, and other synthetic opioids seized during gang operations, again, including those involving juveniles. For parents and community leaders, this data could provide the specifics needed to argue for certain prevention programs or resource allocation at the local level.
The Transparency Question
While the bill aims to improve data collection and transparency, there’s a key provision that could limit public and congressional oversight. The Attorney General, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the FBI Director are given the authority to classify all or part of the report if they deem it necessary. This means that while Congress is asking for more data to make informed policy, the final, detailed report could be locked down, potentially limiting public accountability on how these vast resources are being used and what the actual impact of federal anti-gang initiatives has been. The bill also requires an assessment of whether state-based reporting issues are messing up the federal data, which is a necessary check if we want to ensure the resulting policies are actually evidence-based and not built on shaky numbers.