For the past few months, criminal law reform activists have been losing their minds over the fact that crime has become a huge issue in the midterm elections for three reasons.
First, while violent crime rates have increased over some of the lowest crime years in decades, they remain far lower than they were in the bad old days of the 1990’s crack epidemic.
Second, violent crime rates are no higher in blue states than red, and in most cases, they are substantially higher in red states like Oklahoma than blue like New York and California.
Three, the increase in violent crime has been blamed on criminal law reforms and progressive prosecutors when the statistics make it overwhelmingly clear that there is no correlation. Indeed, stats show just the opposite, that violent crime is higher in jurisdictions where there are tough-on-crime prosecutors.
And yet, crime has become a huge issue in the midterms, seized upon by Republican candidates and, largely ignored or denied by Democrats. Even in one of the safest blue races around,
House rating change: Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D) moves from Lean D to Toss Up at @CookPolitical as Dems admit the DCCC chair is now in serious danger in #NY17. Full analysis: https://t.co/89bvezbNuw pic.twitter.com/ncljBkSfZw
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) October 24, 2022
And his opponent has been working this hard.
This trend has been attributed to many things by activists, from media reporting that crime is out of control when it’s not to putting whatever the latest act of horrific violence on the front page so as to create the appearance of rampant crime. Others argue that much of the fault lies with the activists for pounding away at ridiculous nonsense Defund the Police, Abolish Prisons, denying that crime is happening at all or being social justice or racial apologists for crime when people are clearly being harmed.
Yet another issue which hasn’t received much attention is that the nature of violent crime may be changing. Back in the bad old days, crime was connected to drugs and had an understandable motive. Much of the crime that makes the 6 o’clock news seems to be random violence, some nutjob killing some person for no apparent reason on a subway platform or punching an old woman on the street who just happened to be walking by. When violence become untethered from motive, like revenge or financial, it means it can neither be avoided nor anticipated, and that gives rise to a different type of concern than stay away from street corners where crack was sold.
Crime has become one of the dominant fears driving the campaigning and voting in the upcoming midterm elections. It’s obvious why the Republicans are playing the crime card, as it works for them and both fear of crime and the perpetual assumption that more cops, more prosecutions and longer sentences are the way to prevent crime, even if these fixes have been tried for decades and produced only full prisons and no change on the street.
Has the window of opportunity to reform criminal law slammed shut, and we’re now heading full steam to the old tough-on-crime days that served only to get more kids tossed against walls for no good reason? Why is the perception that violent crime is now out of control driving the midterm campaigns? Have the reforms put into place by activists with far more passion than understanding of the legal system given rise to this swing in the pendulum, or would this have happened anyway?
Violent crime is certainly up, even though not connected to whether states are blue or red, but still far below its worst days. Yet, people believe the sky is falling, just as they have with any number of issues over the past few years. Is this about crime at all, or about our need to be hysterical about something horrible and crime is just the latest flavor of hype?
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