There’s a Lot to Learn About Crime. Trump’s Orders Are Making It Harder to Get Answers.

By Jill Castellano
The Marshall Project
https://www.themarshallproject.org/

The administration so far has cut funds for tracking bad cops, shootings and violent extremism, cancelled crime prevention grants, and more.

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The Trump administration is quickly trying to reshape America’s criminal justice system.

Last week, Attorney General Pam Bondi cancelled hundreds of Department of Justice grants centered on crime prevention to shift its focus toward illegal drug enforcement and the eradication of DEI policies. On Monday, the president signed executive orders to limit police reform and rescind consent decrees that hold police agencies accountable. And recent reporting details how the department’s Office of Civil Rights is transitioning from enforcing civil rights laws to bringing cases against universities and cities passing liberal policies, leading hundreds of attorneys to resign in protest and effectively gutting the division.

But all the news about what these directives are doing can distract from what exactly they’re undoing by rapidly curtailing public access to information about crime and criminal justice.

In the early days of the Trump presidency, government agencies began deleting web pages that promoted “gender ideology” or diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. As reported by the Journalist’s Resource, pages about gender-based violence and structural racism were taken down and remain offline. The Bureau of Prisons removed from its website its “Transgender Offender Manual,” which outlined policies for interacting with transgender people who are incarcerated. Plus, an overview of definitions and data on hate crimes is no longer accessible on the National Institute of Justice’s website, although some of the material exists on other Justice Department webpages.

Though each change may be minor on its own, together, they interfere with the public’s understanding of the causes of violence, successful crime prevention strategies and the workings of the criminal justice system. Ultimately, without access to this kind of information, it becomes harder to hold the government accountable for its policies around policing and incarceration.

The information ecosystem wasn’t perfect under the Biden administration, either. Around 2020, methodology changes and bureaucratic reshuffling led to significantly less reporting on deaths in custody, a problem that continued throughout Biden’s presidency. In 2022, the Federal Bureau of Investigation finished switching systems for collecting crime data. The Marshall Project reported that 6,000 of 18,000 police agencies did not transition in time, leaving a gaping hole in a primary resource for national crime statistics.

The Trump administration, however, has gone beyond bureaucratic hiccups by actively impeding access to public information. In March, the White House removed an advisory declaring gun violence a public health issue and listing statistics on shootings. According to Mother Jones, major layoffs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have threatened the future of the dataset known as “WISQARS,” which tracks information on gun violence injuries and deaths and has become a critical resource for researchers.