Penalty Reform
The 2025 Legislative Session once again saw an unparalleled number of bills introduced that created new offenses or increased existing penalties. Our organization has been dedicated to tracking this one-way ratchet for the past several years and provides needed historical context for legislators and other criminal justice stakeholders.
Penalty bills since JRI
With 94 bills, the 2025 legislative session intensified the upward trend of proposed legislation seeking penalty increases (a sum of all proposed bills that created a new offense, expanded an existing offense, or increased an existing penalty). This trend underlines the issue with Utah’s current piecemeal approach to legislating criminal penalties, since many proposed bills contradicted one another or undid past consensus, data-driven reforms.
Introduced legislation
Passed legislation
Despite our consistent efforts at the Utah Capitol to compromise, mitigate or oppose penalty increases, there were still a record number of bills that passed this session increasing penalties in some way. In comparing bills we were directly involved in with those we did not have the resources to get involved in, our organization found no bills this session that were mitigated without our involvement.
Click here to see our full breakdown of penalty bills since JRI:
Our push for a statewide criminal justice policy
For the past several years, UDAA has advocated for a more comprehensive and collaborative approach to state criminal justice policy by Utah’s elected leaders. Due to our consistent efforts at the Legislature, and the alarming number of penalty bills introduced this year, the latter half of the session saw real progress being made to increase state coordination on criminal justice policymaking.
Governor Cox released a statement following the end of the 2025 session recognizing the historic number of penalty bills and calling for a more coordinated approach from policymakers. His executive order, which can be read here, creates a state task force that will oversee the formation of a state criminal justice strategy. Between the Governor’s task force and the Legislature’s investment in the collection of criminal justice data, Utah is in a unique position to craft a coordinated top-down approach to drafting and considering criminal justice policy. Our organization advocates for a strategy that builds from the foundation of data collected over the past several years and prioritizes the best public safety outcomes.