Federal Criminal Justice Reform Reports Shift from 5-Year to 10-Year Cycle, Halving Transparency

This bill proposes a seemingly small, technical change to federal law (Title 18, Section 3634) that has significant implications for transparency in criminal justice reform. Currently, the government is required to issue detailed reports on the implementation and effectiveness of the First Step Act every five years. This legislation simply amends that section to extend the required reporting period from five years to ten years.

The Fine Print: Less Paperwork, Less Oversight

The First Step Act, passed in 2018, is a major piece of bipartisan legislation focused on federal sentencing and prison reform. The required reports track crucial data points: how many people are participating in programs, recidivism rates, cost savings, and whether the law is actually achieving its goals. Doubling the reporting cycle to ten years means agencies like the Department of Justice will have half the administrative burden, which is the only clear, immediate benefit of this change. It saves them time and resources by cutting the required frequency of data collection and reporting.

What This Means for Accountability

For the rest of us, this extended timeline means significantly reduced oversight. Imagine you’re running a small business and you only get performance reviews every ten years instead of every five. Things can go sideways, and you wouldn’t know until much later. The same principle applies here: the public and Congress rely on these five-year reports to see if the First Step Act is working as intended, or if there are serious implementation issues that need fixing.

Pushing the report back to a ten-year cycle effectively means that if there are problems—say, programs aren't being offered equitably, or certain populations are being excluded from benefits—those issues could go unaddressed for an additional five years. For advocacy groups and criminal justice reform advocates who rely on timely data to hold the system accountable, this change severely limits their ability to monitor progress and demand legislative fixes. It slows down the feedback loop necessary for effective policy refinement, making transparency a much slower, less frequent affair.