Hours before the government shutdown began, President Trump scored a rare bipartisan victory when he signed a criminal justice bill aimed at reducing the number of nonviolent offenders in prison.

Now, the shutdown threatens to delay the law’s implementation.

“The timeline in the bill was already ambitious,” said Molly Gill, vice president of policy at FAMM, an organization of families advocating criminal justice reform. “The shutdown isn’t helping.”

One of the first steps in the law is to establish a system for evaluating inmates to determine which ones could be released early without threatening public safety. Under the law, an arm of the Justice Department has until Jan. 21 to help establish a committee tasked with creating that system.

Wyn Hornbuckle, a Justice Department spokesman, and Sheila Jerusalem, a spokeswoman for the National Institute of Justice, declined to answer questions about whether the deadlines would be met. The only Justice Department employees authorized to work during a shutdown are those specifically authorized by law to work on urgent matters, such as national security.

Empty offices and unanswered messages have compounded the confusion over the new law, which is called the First Step Act, as thousands of inmates, and their families, seek information about whether they will be set free.

In addition to creating a system that will allow some low-risk inmates to earn early release, the new law also retroactively increases the number of days inmates receive off their sentences for good behavior. Inmates now get 54 days for each year of their sentence, up from 47, a retroactive change that could potentially free as many as 4,000 inmates, according to The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news website covering the criminal justice system.

Amadi Busiris, 50, who is serving out the tail end of a 30-year sentence for conspiracy to distribute drugs, had been closely following news reports about the bill’s progress from his prison cell, and then more recently from a halfway house in Washington, D.C., where he has been sent to await his release in November.

After the law’s passage, Mr. Busiris believed that he would be able to walk free almost immediately. But when he called his lawyer to start the process, he was told that he would have to wait until after the shutdown, he said.

“The law passed but they are not making any moves,” he said, adding that seven others in Hope Village, the halfway house where he lives, are in the same situation. “We are just stuck.”

But because of the way the law was written, inmates like Mr. Busiris would have had to wait months before being released, even without the government shutdown. The law stipulates that sentences will only be recalculated after the new risk assessment tool is created, a requirement that criminal justice reform advocates say amounts to an error in the way the legislation was drafted.

“It absolutely makes no sense,” said Jack Donson, a former case manager with the Federal Bureau of Prisons who now runs his own consulting firm helping inmates navigate the system. Mr. Donson said the recalculation of time off for good behavior should not have been linked to the new risk assessment system.

George Hartmann, press secretary for Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that portion of the bill was inherited from a version passed by the House, and that Mr. Grassley was aware that questions had been raised about it.

“I wouldn’t necessarily characterize it as a drafting error,” he said. “Senator Grassley definitely has his eye on it and intends to keep working with the administration on a way forward.”

Last week, the Bureau of Prisons sent a notice to inmates explaining that they would have to wait.

“We know that inmates and families are particularly interested in changes regarding good conduct time,” the letter read. “While this change may result in additional credit for inmates in the future, it is not effective immediately, nor is it applicable to all inmates.”

Katie Benner contributed from Washington.

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