|
the DON JONES
INDEX… |
|||
|
|
GAINS
POSTED in GREEN LOSSES
POSTED in RED 2/12/24... 15,037.86 2/5/24... 15,026.02 |
||
|
6/27/13… 15,000.00 |
|||
|
(THE DOW JONES INDEX:
2/12/24... 38,671.86;
2/5/24... 38,654.42; 6/27/13… 15,000.00) |
|||
LESSON for FEBRUARY
TWELFTH, 2024 – “CRIMERICA #2: – CAMPAIGNTHINGS CASHING IN on CRIME!”
The recent execution, by nitrogen gas, of convicted hit-man
Kenneth Smith has raised new ethnical and scientific questions as well as older
partisan groundstanding and grandstanding about crime
and punishments... communal or capital.
(...or corporal, too, see below)
As noted in last week’s Lesson, Alabama had maintained Smith on
death row until his execution in the gas chamber at Atmore, Alabama three
decades after his conviction of being a killer for hire. An earlier attempt by lethal injection had
failed for medical reasons so a new, unproven means of using nitrogen was
attempted – successfully, to some, less so to others.
Response to the execution was
predictably partisan and draws America into larger questions of how crime, its
prevention, solutions and portrayal will be more at issue in the November 2024
election than it has been for several contests... still perhaps not so
forcefully as some other topics (both social, cultural and “kitchen table”
concerns, as also the age and character of the presumed contestants), but also
having crossover implications for race, economics and equality, migration and
the “science” of death.
And, now that the primary survivors
(President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump... barring strange legal
or medical complications) have been all but coronated
atop their noggins by respective (if not always reputable) factions the
ideological (and financial) struggle is beginning... complicated by the
perceived closeness of the election in less than a dozen key states and the
actual and potential complications of third, fourth and fifteenty-party
campaigns (as augured by the RFK Junior ads on the Superbowl).
“The great drama of politics is that no one knows the outcome of an election until the votes are cast,” contended
David A. Graham in the Atlantic’s review of the 2022 midterm elections. (11/8/22, Attachment One). But some things about elections are pretty
easy to predict—such as Republicans attacking Democrats on crime with a focus
on prevention, detection and punishment, while the donkeys counter by appealing
to those who want to know and address the so called “root causes” of eventhing from homicide down to reckless driving.
“Crime is a devilish problem,” wrote Graham. “Its causes are hard to understand and harder
to influence. The trends run in long cycles, and although policy changes can
alter the trends, they don’t do so quickly or simply. Expecting any candidate,
or any party, to have a genuine answer to crime would be absurd. But crime is
also politically potent, as Republicans grasp, and is thus fertile ground for
attacks both fair and demagogic.”
And often rooted in appeals to racism. Fear of crime drove
white families out of cities and into suburbs starting in the mid-20th century,
and once many white people left urban areas, politicians could easily yoke
Black populations and violence together.
Graham recalls Richard Nixon’s use of the issue in 1968 and 1972,
the elder George Bush and his portrayal of Willie Horton and Donald Trump’s
“heavily racist immigration rhetoric,” in recent years when “defunding the
police” became gospel for the left wing of the Democratic Party.
By contrast, Bill Clinton’s crime approach “culminated in the 1994 crime bill,
a massive piece of legislation” that, Graham contends, contained some measures
that were effective at fighting crime (such as the Violence Against Women Act
and the assault-weapons ban), but also exacerbated racial disparities in drug sentencing and imposed
lengthy mandatory-minimum sentences that took away judges’ and prosecutors’
discretion.
President Joe, nonetheless, has turned the clock back too –
telling Democrats to get tough on crime, (NBC, March 3, 2023. Attachment Two)
when he said he wouldn't allow the Washington, D.C., city government to enact
laws that would lower some criminal penalties.”
"I support D.C. Statehood and home-rule – but I don’t
support some of the changes D.C. Council put forward over the Mayor’s
objections – such as lowering penalties for carjackings,"
the president said on Twitter.
But, noted the
Associated Press, his “inaction on death
penalty” may be among the significant issues in November (Attachment Three) as,
until he dropped out, Gov. Ron DeSantis pressed Trump
hard on the issue, “signing death warrants” for four people – leading both to
promise to fire up Gruesome Gertie (the allowing for executions of convicted child rapists and another letting jurors impose death sentences with
less-than-unanimous votes.electrocution chair) and signing two new death penalty laws – the first allowing for executions of
convicted child rapists and another letting jurors impose death
sentences with
less-than-unanimous votes.
“One juror,” DeSantis said before
his campaign collapse, “should not be able to veto a capital sentence.”
Biden’s silence suggests he would
rather the death penalty not become a campaign issue, the AP suggested. Activists will try to force him to speak about it anyway by
lobbying campaign debate moderators to pose
questions on capital punishment.
Death
penalty foes “are poised to draw attention to what Biden hasn’t done as
president: He has taken no action on or even spoken about his 2020 campaign
pledge to strike capital punishment from U.S. statutes.”
A demonstration that the death penalty issue is far from
academic came last August when federal jurors in Pittsburgh voted to
impose a death sentence
for Robert Bowers for
killing 11 people in a synagogue. It was the first federal death
sentence handed down during
Biden’s presidency.
Trump, who restarted federal executions after a 17-year
hiatus and oversaw 13 in his final six
months as president, wasted
no time making capital punishment a focus in his current, third presidential
run. In declaring his candidacy on Nov. 15, he called for the execution of drug
dealers and pedophiles.
“I will urge Congress to ensure that anyone caught
trafficking children across our border receives the death penalty,
immediately,” he said.
Abraham Bonowitz, director of
Death Penalty Action, says Biden won’t take action to keep his 2020 promise
during the 2024 campaign, because he understands that voters care more about
pocketbook issues than capital punishment. But skittishness by candidates
worried that speaking against the death penalty will damage them politically is
no longer well founded, he added.
The (largely minority) residents of Washington DC have been
pitied as victims and pilloried as perpetrators of violent crime, and when 31 Democrats joined the GOP-led effort to overturn the criminal code reform
which reduces some maximum penalties for violent crimes, it was a surprising
bipartisan intervention in local affairs and Mayor Muriel Bowser, remarked Axios (2/10/23, Attachment Four) “might be fine with that.”
Chicago, like DC, New York and
California, has become a Republican target.
Nothing
focuses the mind of a White House gearing up for re-election like an incumbent
getting only 17% of the vote, as Chicago Mayor Lori
Lightfoot did in the city’s crime-focused mayoral contest.
Veteran Democratic political consultant James Carville, who
was a top strategist to Bill Clinton when he successfully overcame
long-standing perceptions that Democrats were soft-on-crime to win the
presidency during the height of the crack epidemic in the 1990s, said Biden’s
move was a good step, but that the party needed to do more. (NBC, 3/2/23,
Attachment Five)
“It shows you the power this issue has become. Look what
happened in Chicago. Look what happened in San Francisco. Everywhere you turn
around,” Carville said, referring to the ouster of Lightfoot and former San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin in a recall election last year.
“Biden just hung House Democrats out to dry. It’s incompetence bordering on hilarity that they waited
until scores of them walked the plank on this,” said Matt Gorman, a Republican
strategist who has worked on House campaigns. “Crime is only gaining salience
as an issue. It seems that Biden, as he apparently runs for re-election, is
informing his party to wake up.”
Democrats like New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
and California Rep. Pete Aguilar denounced Biden on Twitter for undermining the
capital city’s self-governance, while D.C.’s non-voting House delegate, Eleanor
Holmes Norton, called it “a sad day for D.C. home rule.
“With the nationwide increase in crime, most senators do not
want to be seen as supporting criminal justice reform,” Holmes Norton said in a
statement.
Polls cited by the network affirmed that violent crime was
up in 2022, although more recent syrveys show that it
has leveled off or even fallen. But
highly publicized incidents like the attack on Rep. Angie Craig (D-Mn) in the elevator of her Washington apartment building by
a man with 12 previous assaults on his record or the hammering of Nancy
Pelosi’s husband, Paul.
“There are people that have been, in my view, reckless with
their words over the past few years,” said Craig, a born-again back the blue blue stater. “If we have to
choose as a nation between social justice and public safety, we’ve all lost. We
have to choose both.”
The crime issue is particularly notable in that the same state
and local versus Federal confrontations as have marked, for example, the Maine
and Colorado Trump ballot evictions.
Legislators will introduce bills to crack down
on crime, “with a particular emphasis on addressing the fentanyl
epidemic” predicted Governing.com on Jan. 10th, (Attachment Six) to go
along with the Federalization of abortion, the economy and the struggle over
AI.
For Republicans, the Governing people say, the
right (and Right) approach to fentanyl is a
combination of stricter law enforcement, tougher sentencing laws and tighter
border security. Many lawmakers want to stiffen penalties for possession of
even small amounts of the drug, in a reverse of the recent trend toward
lowering sentences for simple possession.
“Democrats have accepted the need to stiffen
penalties, due not only to the scourge of fentanyl
but the apparently endless emergence of ever-more-potent drugs. Fatalities from
a sedative called xylazine have increased dramatically across the
country, but particularly in the South. A class of opioids
known as nitazenes can be as much as 40 times as powerful
as fentanyl.”
A bill just filed in Kentucky, for example,
would increase penalties
for violent crimes, including the revival of an idea from the late 20th century:
The bill’s three-strikes provision would require life sentences without parole
for individuals convicted of three separate violent felonies.
. “For reformers, there’s going to be a lot of
defense rather than offense,” says Adam Gelb, president of the Council on
Criminal Justice.
“This might be a surprise at a time when homicides are down, in most places,
from their spike during the pandemic. Last year, homicides plummeted by 12
percent, according to AH Datalytics. Despite the drop, however, homicides remain
higher than they were prior to the pandemic.” And although anger about crime
has historically been driven by homicide and other violent crimes, now people
are also mad about property crimes — particularly auto and retail theft – the
latter heavily publicized by media coverage of “smash and grab” mobs.
Sensational media coverage about shoplifting
and other retail crimes — along with the reality of sharply elevated
numbers of auto thefts — “will make property crime more of a
focus than it’s been for many years,” Gelb predicts. Others believe the perception of a crime wave
is going to kill efforts by some state legislatures to give former offenders
out of prison “the chance to apply for jobs and housing without noting their
criminal records.”
Crimefighting has been baked into the Republican platform
for nearly eight years, now, inasmuch as the Party has voted (or consensed, or decreed) that the 2020 platform would be the
same as that of 2016 when Trump was elected, and that 2024 would be also.
Among the usual Republican dragons – heavy on
the culture wars against assisted suicide, gays, minorities and, on the international
level, ChinaChinaChina – especially now that even
Administration security watchers have
noted the rise in President Xi’s cyberhacking
campaigns... official criminality that might be a prelude to war or a
justification for a Congressional declaration.
And there are social and cultural aspects of
crime in the streets.
The Attorney General’s present campaign of harassment against police
forces around the country, has been “unprecedented” the impeacher-ers contend (taking the measure of Merrick for when Mayorkas would be ousted... something which didn’t happen this week – above) and the
migrant plague has evoked the dread “leniency” as applies to rioters. (Republican Platform 2016, Attachment Seven)
But the Elephant Papers from 2020 also included a coda that has come back
to haunt them, a clause reading...
The next president must restore the public’s trust in law enforcement and
civil order by first adhering to the rule of law himself. Additionally, the
next president must not sow seeds of division and distrust between the police
and the people they have sworn to serve and protect.
Uh oh!
The 2020 platform did call for “caution in the creation of new “crimes”
but... no doubt impacted by the plague, the RNC chose to run on the 2016
document... which, one admits, did work.
The deciding factor?
“Nearly
four years ago, the Republican Party, on their way to nominating Donald Trump,
adopted a strict,
conservative platform around issues of gender and sexual orientation in
Cleveland, Ohio, against the efforts by some of the party’s more moderate
faction to soften the language.
The retention has occasioned a backlash from gay
Republicans, many of whom have joined the Log Cabin Club and, with Lincoln’s
birthday on Tuesday, strive to pull the G.O.P. back to its humanitarial,
even libertarian roots.
Almost a year ago (Axios, March 8, 2023, Attachment Nine) House Republicans
launched their “opening salvo against House Democrats over a
D.C. crime law that lowers maximum penalties for some violent offenses”, a
foretaste of Campaign 2024 – being “an early example of the pipeline Republican
are creating between their new House majority, which can force Democrats into
tough votes on wedge issues, and their campaign apparatus, which can whack them
with those votes in 2024 ads.”
The attack ads
targeted “15 vulnerable House Democrats who voted against a resolution last
month blocking the D.C. crime law from taking effect.”
Axios reported that
House Democrats were “incensed at Biden for waiting until after the House vote
to say he (wouldn’t) veto the resolution, giving swing-seat House Democrats
less cover to vote for it and bolster their tough-on-crime credentials.”
See also Axios, Attachment Four.
So Republicans up and down the ballot a year ago began “working
to retool their message on crime going into 2024 after the party found only
limited success with the issue in the midterms.” (The Hill, 2/27/23, Attachment Ten)
“The efforts come as the party looks to regain ground
following the GOP’s disappointing midterm elections last year,” Hilltopper Julia Manchester wrote.
Republicans in the Empire State picked up three House seats,
including the one held by then-Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
Chairman Sean Patrick Maloney (N.Y.).
And then there was George Santos...
Anyway, Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin, who lost, but came closer than expected to Gov.
Kathy Hochul “...ran a one-issue campaign on the
issue of crime,” said one House Republican strategist. “Every day he was at a
metro stop or a corner store where somebody got shot or mugged.”
“That’s just a great case study in how effective the message
can be,” the strategist added.
Corey Grable, an Independent who
is running for president of New York City’s Police Benevolent Association, told
HillTV that policies promoted by the left flank of
the Democratic Party, including calls to defund the police, have put the party
on the wrong side of the issue.
“Republicans have used crime to tie the majority of
Democratic candidates to the left-leaning flank.
“It’s the clearest and easiest way for Republicans to tag Democrats
to the fringe of the party,” said the House Republican strategist.
Democrats
are worried... not only on the capture of the crime issue by Republican
candidates, but inasmuch as fear of crime could damage, even destroy American
democracy despite facts showing an actual decline in offenses since the
pandemic ended, according to the Council on
Criminal Justice, although rates remain higher than pre-pandemic levels. Still,
the rate of homicide in major cities was about half that of historic peaks in
the 1980s and early 1990s.
One consequence, said Udi Ofer, a professor at Princeton University and the former
deputy national political director of the American Civil Liberties Union, has
been a “kneejerk reaction” causing “an exponential growth in incarceration” in
the US. About 300,000 people were in prisons and jails in 1973, but by 2009
that number had grown to 2.2m – making the US the largest incarcerator in the
world. (Guardian U.K., May 14, 2023, Attachment Eleven)
As ever,
according to GUK, racism has played its role in bolstering the profile of the
police in states where the death penalty still thrives. A 2003 report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that in 2001
“an estimated 16.6% of adult black males were current or former State or
Federal prisoners”. Just 2.6% of adult white males had been incarcerated.
Some
progress has been made in the last two decades. By 2020 the number of people in
jail or prison was down to 1.2 million – meaning the US still has the fifth highest
incarceration rate in the world – but the obsession with tackling crime,
through measures including more arrests, more prosecutions and more
imprisonments, could see a reversal – perhaps as a consequence of the “rhetoric
and fearmongering over crime has led, in part, to an
expansion of “stand-your-ground” laws in the US. In the past 10 years, 14
states in the US have added some form of the law, which can rule that people
determined to have acted in self-defense can escape prosecution for actions up
to and including murder.
“The
murder rate in the 25 states that voted for Donald Trump has exceeded the
murder rate in the 25 states that voted for Joe Biden in every year from 2000
to 2020,” thinktank Third Wau reported in January. Third Way also found that in 2020 murder rates “were 40%
higher in Trump-voting states than Biden-voting states.
“There’s a
lot of impact going on right now.”
OnTheIssues.org. (Attachment Twelve)
is a nonpartisan explication of “every political leader on every issue” which
derived these responses to current issues from the most recent Republican party platform (a rehash of 2020, itself a rehash of 2016 –
upon which Donald Trump swept to victory).
PRECIS:
Republicans: Oppose Democratic police oversight bill.
Republicans sponsored a bipartisan bill to fund suicide prevention and mental
health support services for law enforcement officers.
Democrats: Restrict police use of force and increase public
oversight. Bill held officers liable in lawsuits,
banned no-knock warrants and stopped military surplus acquisitions.
Source: CampusElect on 2020 Major
Party positions , Aug 30, 2020
Criminals behind bars cannot harm the public
Liberals do not understand this simple axiom: criminals
behind bars cannot harm the general public. To that end, we support mandatory
prison sentencing for gang crimes, violent or sexual offenses against children,
repeat drug dealers, rape, robbery and murder. We support a national registry
for convicted child murderers. We oppose parole for dangerous or repeat felons.
Courts should have the option of imposing the death penalty in capital murder
cases.
Best way to deter crime is to enforce existing laws
We agree that the best way to deter crime is to enforce
existing laws and hand down tough penalties against anyone who commits a crime
with a gun. This approach is working.
More victims rights and harsher
penalties for certain crimes
·
Measures
proposed include “No-frills
prisons” that make the threat of jail a deterrent to crime. (If necessary, repeal the Eighth Amendment?)
·
Increased penalties and resources to
new drugs such as Ecstasy. (Lock up
those “mushroom moms”.)
Also proposed, as a sop to the
liberals (especially minority groups) are “community-based diversion programs for first time,
non-violent offenders” and
“effective” programs of rehabilitation, “where appropriate.”
Death penalty is an effective deterrent
Can’t argue with that. Dead people don’t
kill.
“(Stop) federal judges from releasing criminals because of
prison overcrowding, (make) it harder to file lawsuits about prison conditions,
and, with a truth-in-sentencing law, (push) states to make sure violent felons actually
do time.”
The Democratric take by ontheissues (Attachment Thirteen) presents the contrary
viewpoints – these being...
POLICING:
Restrict police use of force and increase public oversight.
Bill held officers liable in lawsuits, banned no-knock
warrants and stopped military surplus acquisitions.
Add protections for victims of domestic violence and sexual
assault.
Break the school-to-prison pipeline that too often relies on
arrests & law enforcement to address misbehavior that ought to be handled and
deescalated within the school. A growing number of states have recognized it is
unjust--and unjustifiable-- to punish children and teenagers as harshly as
adults. We believe that if you aren't old enough to drink, you aren't old
enough to be sentenced to life without parole. The federal government will
incentivize states to stop incarcerating kids.
Ban chokeholds, new standards for "no-knock
warrants" and permit deadly force only when necessary and a last resort to
prevent an imminent threat to life. Americans must feel safe when they are
asleep in their own homes. We will work to establish "no-knock
warrants" standards. “The risk of
mistakes and unintended consequences is too great.”
Poverty is not a crime, and it should not be treated as one.
Democrats support eliminating the use of cash bail and believe no one should be
imprisoned merely for failing to pay fines or fees, or have their driver's
licenses revoked for unpaid tickets or simple violations.
[At the 2016 convention
preparation], we (Bernie Sanders et. al.)were victorious in including amendments in the platform that
made it the policy of the Democratic Party to fight for:
·
Abolishing the death penalty, ending
mass incarceration, and enacting major criminal justice reforms;
·
Establishing a path toward the
legalization of marijuana;
·
Ending disastrous deportation raids,
banning private prisons and detention centers, and passing comprehensive
immigration reform.
We will crack down on the gang violence and drug crime that
devastate so many communities, and we will increase drug treatment, including
mandatory drug courts and mandatory drug testing for parolees and probationers,
so fewer crimes are committed in the first place.
But also fight to increase the number of community police.
We will toughen the laws against serious crime.
The Clinton-Gore administration took office determined to turn the tide
in the battle against crime, drugs, and disorder in our communities. They put
in place a tougher more comprehensive strategy than anything tried before, a
strategy to fight crime on every single front: more police on the streets to
thicken the thin blue line between order and disorder, tougher punishments -
including the death penalty - for those that dare to terrorize the innocent,
and smarter prevention to stop crime before it even starts. They funded new prison cells, and expanded
the death penalty for cop killers and terrorists. (DNC 2000)
“America is the land of the free, and yet more of our people
are behind bars, per capita, than anywhere else in the world. Instead of making
evidence-based investments in education, jobs, health care, and housing that
are proven to keep communities safe and prevent crime from occurring in the
first place, our system has criminalized poverty, overpoliced
and underserved Black and Latino communities, and cut public services. Instead
of offering the incarcerated the opportunity to turn their lives around, our
prisons are overcrowded and continue to rely on inhumane methods of punishment.
Instead of treating those who have served their time as full citizens upon
their return to society, too many of our laws continue to punish the formerly
incarcerated, erecting barriers to housing, employment, and voting rights for
millions of Americans.” (Democrats.org Attachment Fourteen)
A growing number of states have recognized it is unjust—and
unjustifiable—to punish children and teenagers as harshly as adults.
(Democrats.org) believe(s) that if you aren’t old enough to drink, you aren’t
old enough to be sentenced to life without parole. It is past time to end the
failed “War on Drugs,” which has imprisoned millions of
Americans—disproportionately Black people and Latinos—and hasn’t been effective
in reducing drug use. Democrats support policies that will reorient our public
safety approach toward prevention, and away from over-policing—including by
making evidence-based investments in jobs, housing, education, and the arts
that will make our nation fairer, freer, and more prosperous.
Private profit should not motivate the provision of vital
public services, including in the criminal justice system. Democrats support
ending the use of private prisons and private detention centers, and will take
steps to eliminate profiteering from diversion programs, commercial bail,
electronic monitoring, prison commissaries, and reentry and treatment
programs... and will “pursue a holistic approach to rehabilitation,” (i.e. the
whole, wholistic Marianne Williamson agenda!),
increasing support for programs that provide educational opportunities, including
pursuing college degrees, for those in the criminal justice system, both in
prison and upon release.
After signing several tough on
crime bills that some Democrats did not support, President Joe, last year, said he wouldn't allow the Washington, D.C., city government
to enact laws that would lower some criminal penalties.
“If Republicans thought President Biden would hand them a
wedge issue for 2024, they thought wrong,” said Democratic strategist Lis Smith, a veteran of former President Barack Obama’s
re-election campaign and an architect of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s rise. “It’s going to be very hard to define him
as soft on crime after he’s denounced defunding the police and reducing
sentences for crimes like carjackings.”
NBC last year (March 4, 2023,) quoted Biden as stating: "I support
D.C. Statehood and home-rule – but I don’t support some of the changes D.C.
Council put forward over the Mayor’s objections – such as lowering penalties
for carjackings," the president said on Twitter.
The White House is planning a “full-throated effort” to
present him as tough on crime to try to chip away at any Republican advantage
on an issue that has put many Democrats on the defensive.
During the 2022 midterm elections,
Republicans appeared to be riding the crime issue to majorities in House and
Senate (until Djonald UnConscious
pushed strange candidates into key elections) specifying key liberal issues
like bail reform.
"(W)e're seeing career criminals
carrying firearms in New York City like we've never seen before,” said Michael Lipetri, New York Police Department's chief of crime control strategies. “That's a recipe for disaster."
But defenders of bail reform looking
at the statistics came to the opposite conclusion.
They said changes
were long overdue, given the dire conditions inside of many jails — such as New
York's Rikers Island — and the fact that cash bail
usually means poorer defendants have to await trial in jail, while wealthier people go free.
"For
a long time, Black and brown communities have been harmed by the policies and
laws connected to our legal system," says New York City Councilmember
Tiffany Cabán, a former public defender and strong proponent
of bail reform. "This is us trying to right some wrongs, and we've done it
in a way that has not had an effect on public safety, and that's what all the
data and research show." (NPR,
Attachment Sisteen “A”)
Despite
protestors' calls for the "defunding" of police in 2020, most
departments retained
or increased their
budgets. But
many also lost officers, who quit or retired in large numbers, especially in big
cities run by Democrats, according to NPR.
"There
is a real attempt at denialism," said Peter Moskos, a former police officer who now teaches at the John
Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. "And I think a lot of that
comes from a movement that was focused solely on reducing mass incarceration,
which is a movement in principle that I support."
Moskos pointed out that the national total of people in jail,
prison or probation has decreased significantly in the past decade, and now
it's time for liberal Democrats to acknowledge and fix instances of reforms
that went too far. “If they don't, he says he fears an overreaction by Republicans.
"It's
a vacuum that will be filled by the Trumpian
right," he says, "and that won't be pretty."
"It's
true that there are people who slip through the cracks, and end up committing
crimes again," disagreed community activist Peter Kerre. But as someone who participated in the Black
Lives Matter protests of 2020, he says, "We've heard about all the people
unjustly locked up, a majority people of color, and to reverse anything without
looking at implications of racism would be just going back to square one."
On the eve of the
midterms, the American Prospect (Attachment Sixteen “B”) said that “...(t)he most effective issue for
Republicans in this midterm is a result of Democratic elites failing to
understand what their diverse base of working-class voters wants.” (That fell before Republican proles failing to support the crazies that Trump imposed on
the party!)
But the postering occasioned by indicents and an upcoming barrage of ads on crime... a
barrage aided by Fox News (unless its divorce from MAGA turns thugly), dramatically increasing its crime reporting – as
predicted for 2024 by Stanley Greenberg of the Prospect, utilizing many charts
and graphs that can be found at the Prospect here.
Why are Democrats not trusted on crime? It’s not rocket
science.
In 2021, Mr. Greenberg created a multiracial and
multigenerational team of pollsters funded by the American Federation of
Teachers and the Center for Voter Information to look at how to raise
Democratic support with all working-class voters. It included HIT Strategies
and Equis Labs.
They conducted the research in the African American,
Hispanic, and Asian American communities. All of those communities pointed to
the rising worry about crime. And they worried more about the rise in crime
than the rise in police abuse. Yet Democrats throughout 2021 focused almost
exclusively on the latter. Clearly, these communities wanted political leaders
to address both.
“I wrote after the 2020 election in the Prospect,” Greenberg recalls, “that we just
witnessed a “race war,” where Donald Trump did everything possible to heighten
racial conflict and focus the country on the “breakdown of law and order” and
rising crime in African American cities. I accepted that Democrats had no
choice but to defeat Trump’s “racist campaign” and “win a mandate to address
racial justice.” I knew that suited Trump’s adviser Steve Bannon,
who was counting on America’s racism to fuel Trump’s Republican Party.
“The battle to defeat Trump’s race war, however, blinded
many from seeing the priorities and needs of working-class African American,
Hispanic, and Asian American voters. Those were the voters who pulled back from
their historic support for Democrats.”
On the website, one can find more race-centered charts and
graphs and polls which, Greenberg maintains, “are a hammer that smash the idea
that America’s elites know what should be the top priority for Democrats in
government.”
The WashPost, however, published
an opinionation by Katrina vanden Heuvel absolving the donkeys of having been asses on crime
and elitism... stating that the GOP spent more ad money railing
about rising crime than about the economy or inflation. (Attachment Seventeen) Pre-election
Washington Post polls showed Republicans with a double-digit advantage on the
issue, far larger than their edge on the economy or immigration.
“In response, Democratic Party operatives began rending
their garments. Paul Begala agonized that “I have never seen a more destructive
slogan than ‘defund the police.’ ” Pollster Stanley B. Greenberg warned that “the 2022 midterms will be remembered as a toxic
campaign, but an effective one in labeling Democrats as ‘pro-crime.’ ” New York
Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall
even recycled Elaine
Ciulla Kamarck and William Galston’s updated version of their infamous 1989 “Politics of Evasion” essay, which argued that the Democratic brand was poison,
and that the party “is in the grip of myths that block progress toward
victory.”
The only hope, these voices said, was to do a Bill Clinton:
“Pander on the issue. Take it away from Republicans. Clinton ended up supporting the death penalty and calling for putting another 100,000 police officers on the street. (Unmentioned, van der
Heuval states, was the “horrific result of his 1994
crime bill, which helped usher in a new era of mass incarceration that he
later apologized for.)
“Then came the election, and the results were clear. CNN exit polls showed that voters ranked inflation as the top factor
in their vote, followed closely by abortion. Only 11 percent mentioned crime.”
The crime scare “did make a difference in some races,” the opinionator admitted, but... overall... she deduced that
the critical young voter demographic (if they show up in
November) are “scarred by mass murders in schools, (and) care deeply
about gun policy.” If moderate Democrats want to address the “poisoned”
Democratic Party brand, “they might best look in the mirror and stop echoing
Republican fearmongering in their desire to discredit
progressives.”
Again, if the asses
turn out to vote.
An issue that swings both ways, as they say in
Brooklyn, courtesy of the Brookings Institute last year (Attachment Eighteen,
Jan. 27, 2023) – namely: whether the violence on the streets will be replicated
at and around the polls, at and around Election Day.
For the midterm contests, and all of their despicability
and drama, the answer was “no”.
“Despite fears
that the 2022 U.S. midterm elections would see a reprise of January 6-like
political violence, the elections occurred with no mobs storming state capitals
or other attacks,” Brookings declared, in a treatise by a man called Daniel L. Byman.
Before the 2022
election, government agencies like the Department of Homeland Security and the
National Counterterrorism Center warned of the risk of election-related
violence. Polls found that one in 10 Americans believed violence was justified
right now, and that figure rose to one in five of Republican-voting men, and Byman recalled to memory the “brutal attack on Paul Pelosi,
husband of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, at his San Francisco home...
“(E)ven local school board
races became far more threatening,” the treatise treated the situation and,
making the situation more disgusting, if not always more dangerous: “hundreds
of election deniers were on the ballot, creating worries that losers at the
polls would incite violence rather than accept political defeat.”
But as winners like AOC, MTG and George Soros celebrated
their victories while losers slunk away like frustrated skunks, no cities
burned, no Registrars of Voters were shot, no windfall descended for lawyers.
True... “organized groups like the Proud
Boys and Oath Keepers prepared for and planned violence,” Byman
acknowledged – but with the eyes of Texas (and New York, and Idaho and both the
states and cities of Washington) upon them, Djonald UnSocial (temporarily) banned from social media and so many
of their leaders incarcerated, votes were counted, results accepted (if
grudgingly) and the emphasis on hostility shifted to the survivors
themselves. Kitchen-table terrorists
debated, went to bed and woke up angry, Republicans threw out Speaker K-Mac and
fought with each other, Democrats fought with each other and real wars in
Ukraine, the Mideast and elsewhere across the globe, sucked up human venom and
left American partisans spouting words, but at a loss for deeds.
But violence
could return in 2024, Byman warns, “especially if Trump or another figure willing to incite
violence is on the ballot...” (as now seems all but
certain, depending on Djonald’s digestive system and
the legal system) “.. but law enforcement, if it
remains vigilant, will be better prepared to reduce the scope and scale of any
threat.”
Comforting.
So the guns and
the knives and the hand grenades have gone back to the usual haunts – the
bedrooms of domestic contestants, the battlefield and the streets of America.
Now, crime and
politics are intersecting in discrete (if not always discreet) quarters...
especially in the minority of locations where profit, not politics, is driving
the offenses up. In sinkholes like Los
Angeles, New York and Washington itself, the elites fear smash and grab mobs, dognappers and disgruntled lone wolves more than MAGA
soldiers looking for RINOs and Democrats to hang.
So Donald
Himself has rediscovered criminality as something that other people do, and
promises to take over “this
filthy and crime-ridden embarrassment to our nation” that is not only the
Capitol but he Capital.
Washington has legitimately become a national outlier on violent crime, NBC proclaimed (2/4/24, Attachment Nineteen) “making 2023
the city’s deadliest in more than two decades, even as violent crime dropped in
nearly every other city in America.”
”The headlines are piling up of residents shot in DuPont Circle, in a Metro station, outside Nationals Park, and walking home from work. On Monday, a former Trump administration official
was shot seemingly at random while waiting to pick up his wife on K Street,
famously home to many of the city’s white-shoe law and lobbying firms. He died over the weekend,” and many fear that not only is
statehood off the table, but Home Rule, the legislation that let Washington residents elect their
own government for the first time in 1974, “could be in jeopardy.”
A fortnight ago, while campaigning in Las Vegas, Trump vowed
to “take over our horribly run capital” and renovate it so “it’s no longer a
nightmare of murder and crime.”
“We’re going to federalize it. We’re gonna have the toughest
law enforcement in the country. We’re not going to have any more crime and it’s
going to look beautiful,” Trump added.
Just like his wall, scoffers scoffed.
“This is a man-caused problem and it is entirely solvable,” Charles “Cully”
Stimson of the conservative Heritage Foundation told the Peacock.
Liberals would agree on ends, if not means... pointing out
that federal courts
have rolled back strict gun laws that Washington implemented.
“If the Feds wanted to do something about gun crime in D.C.,
they should be doing more to stop the flow of illegal guns into the city,” said
Eduardo Ferrer, the policy director of
the Juvenile Justice Initiative at Georgetown University Law School. “We shouldn’t be punishing our people in D.C.
for a problem that’s essentially been foisted upon us.”
Texas, as usual, has a solution. In the tried and true tenor of Texas law and
Texas justice, the Lone Star State is planning to execute its first malefactor
since the turn of the century on February 28th – singling out a
prisoner, Ivan Cantu, convicted of killing his cousin James Mosqueda
and James’s fiancé, Amy Kitchen, in north Dallas in
2000.
Cantu still maintains his innocence, and celebrated Sister Helen Prejean,
has created a petition to the Court and to the Collin County District
Attorney to demand his execution be delayed.
California is fighting its reputation as a liberal sinkhole
inasmuch as a man who murdered four people in Palm
Springs just over five years ago was sentenced to death Friday.
Jose Larin-Garcia, now 24, was
convicted of four counts of murder last year for the 2019 shooting of
four, including of one juvenile, during what the local Desert Sun
newspaper called “arguably among the most violent nights in Palm Springs'
history.” (Attachment Twenty One)
Posting multiple
testimonies from multiple relatives of the victims, as well as an appeal for
mercy from his mother, the Desert Sun reported that, on a mission to purchase
pills, Larin-Garcia shot and killed the pill pusher and all three of the
people with him in the car before jumping out of the vehicle – only to be found
by police hiding under a truck near the crashed car. He was taken to a hospital, escaped and remained
at large until arrested at a bus stop.
"Jose Vladimir Larin-Garcia,
on February 3, 2019, executed four people. For no reason.
He deserves the greater punishment of death," said Deputy District
Attorney Samantha Paixao before the jury voted on
what sentence to recommend.
The condemned man’s attorney, John Dolan, asked the judge
Friday to take the death penalty off the table “in consideration of Larin-Garcia's age, 19 at the time of the shootings, and
his allegation that the real shooter has yet to be found.” That motion was
denied during the hearing.
"They convicted the wrong person. That was covered in
two trials," Dolan told reporter Christopher Damien.
But DDA Paixao said:
"I'm
glad that justice was served for the families." California has not executed a person since 2006, while 665 people were on death
row in the state last year.
Over on ABC News (October 4, 2023, Attachment Twenty Two)
reporter Ivan Periera surveyed the opinions of the
then-candidates for President (a list somewhat smaller, now) on crime and
justice and then opined that, “...(b)roadly speaking, Republicans want to increase punishments
and policing to address crime while Democrats want to reform the system.”
Those Democrats...
President
Joe denied
accusations that he was beholden to the party progressives, saying: “We should
all agree the answer is not to defund the police. It’s to fund the police.”
Robert
Kennedy Junior, who
dropped out of the primary race to run as an Independent, said he would
“transform” as well as fund the police.
Marianne Williamson called for a rehabilitative approach to
addressing crime, arguing that punitive accountability is “largely
ineffective.”
And
the elephants...
Donald
Trump earned a few plaudits from the left after enacting the First Step Act, a
criminal justice reform law that reduced some mandatory minimum prison
sentences, gave judges the power to sentence nonviolent drug offenders to less
time behind bars and more, such as increasing job training to lower recidivism
rates.
Nikki
Haley has spoken has spoken about "bringing back law and order" to
the country and demanding that prosecutors prosecute according to the law.
Ron DeSantis, according to ABC,
has often said that he “would support law enforcement.” He would not provide specifics but did remind
Don Jones, through ABC, that he also supported recruitment bonuses for new
officers.
Vivek Ramaswamy
(remember?) advocated “faith-based approaches” to combat a “national identity
crisis”.
And there was more... more from Mike Pence, Chris Christie,
Tim Scott, Doug Burgum and Asa
Hutchinson, who “noted that crime in the U.S. is not limited to large
cities.”
Reuters (October 23, Attachment Twenty Three), averred that
the Republican hopefuls “embrace killing
criminals to fight crime.”
“Fentanyl producers in Mexico
should be killed. So too should human traffickers and drug smugglers on the
U.S.-Mexico border. Shoplifters should be shot. Drug dealers
and rapists? Executed.
“Some Republican contenders for their party's 2024
presidential nomination have turned to a blunt policy proposal to tamp down on
crime: killing criminals.”
“Legal experts say some of the proposals the candidates have
put forward are likely illegal and their efficacy is questionable,” allowed
Gram Slattery of the Brits, inasmuch as the death penalty is “generally
unconstitutional for offenses that do not cause the
death of the victim, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled.” Legal scholars and
security officials with experience on the border, furthermore, have affirmed
that shooting smugglers on the border, let alone hungry migrants from Haiti or
Honduras coming to America to look for work in landscaping, is illegal.
No matter!
“In 2020,” Mr. Slattery looks back, “then-President Donald
Trump tweeted that “when the looting
starts the
shooting starts," after
violent protests in Minneapolis against the murder of George Floyd, a Black
man, by a white police officer. Twitter tagged the tweet for "glorifying
violence."
Some 88% of respondents in a September Reuters/Ipsos poll said crime would be an important issue for
determining who gets their vote in the November 2024 general election. Calls to shoot, kill or otherwise injure
criminals, Reuters reported, “appear to be more common
during this Republican primary race than they have been in previous years.”
Still alive and kicking ass at the time of the article,
Florida Gov. DeSantis signed a bill “expanding the
use of the death penalty by, among other measures, allowing its use in cases of child rape, which has not
occurred in the U.S. since 1964.”
James Densley, a criminologist and
professor at Metro State University in St. Paul, Minnesota, solicited for
comments by Reuters, said Trump's message is reckless. "Looters and shoplifters is code for people of
color. If you're having political figures endorse violence, the risk is the
targets will be people of color.
"Tough-on-crime policies only amplify systemic racial
biases present in the justice system," Densley
added.
That crime is rampant depends upon
geography, demography and, as always, factors like race, economics and the
community culture (or lack of it), And
reality doesn’t always play well with partisan necessities, or... as Slick
Willie once famously explained... your definition of what “is” is.
According to the World Population
Review, (Attachment “A”), Washington D.C. is the most dangerous state (or
territory) in America, while the remaining top ten
include five red and five blue states.
Maine is, allegedly, the safest.
Migration, too, is driven as much
by crime and corruption as it is by economics.
(World Pop. Review. Attachment “B”)
Those countries sending the most
people to America include some of the worst capitalist, Communist and just
plain crazy nations in the world. Worst
of all is Marxist mess Venezuela...
@excerpt
The United States falls in the
middle of the wolfpack, just behind Iran. Safest of all is Iceland, and most of the
Islamist Gulf States are also crime-free (perhaps due to the bloody punitive
measures endorsed on evildoers).
And, within American demographics,
there are significant variation as to the type and nature of crime. While most Republicans and even many
Democrats would swear that New York is the most dangerous state in the union,
the World Pop Review ranks it among the ten “safest” in terms of violent crime.
Retail theft, however, is a
different matter and, according to Politico (Jan. 29th, Attachment
Twenty Four), Governor Kathy Hochul, a New Yo rk Democrat, is launching a
pre-emptive legal and police strike against retail theft, including shoplifting
and the media-dazzling “smash and grab mobs” proposing new police teams to address the matter, while offering a tax credit for businesses to
help bolster security measures.
“It’s a perception because (retail crime is) happening right
in front of their face,” state Sen. Jessica Scarcella-Spanton,
a Democrat who represents heavily Republican Staten Island, said in an
interview. “You walk into a store and everything is locked up.”
The “perception” only validates, not hides, reality. Shoplifting, Politico reported, has been most
pronounced in New York City, where retailers saw a 64 percent largest uptick in
shoplifting between 2019 and the middle of 2023, according to a study of 24
cities released by the Council on Criminal Justice.
Voters see everyday items under lock and key or social media
videos of thieves picking shelves clean. In New York, Republicans in suburban House districts like Reps. Anthony D’Esposito and Nick
LaLota (not to mention George
Santos) clinched victory in 2022 with a focus on crime and are both facing reelection
challenges this year.
“Violent crime is still up and the fact is when you have
grand theft auto, when you have retail theft happening all around us and people
still seeing that violent criminals are getting off and being released, yeah,
it’s still going to be a major issue,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), who
is facing a competitive challenge, said in an interview.
He’s skeptical that the efforts to address retail theft will
be successful.
“When you’re dealing with $4 billion in retail theft last
year, the way to crackdown on it is to actually enforce the law,” Lawler said.
And further
complicating the issue, liberal Democrats fear that tougher laws and more
policing will lead to overcrowded prisons and racial profiling against migrants
and domestic minorities.
“I think all of us want to see a world and a state in which
no retail theft is happening,” state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, a Brooklyn Democrat, said. “But penalties have not
served as deterrence for wayward behavior.”
The liberals at GUK, taking note of
the same statistics, believe that, since violent crime is falling, (Jan. 17th,
Attachment Twenty Five) and advocating a “lite”
version of defunding the police as opposed to some Republicans who advocate “throwing migrants from
helicopters.”
Citing a Chicago “income pilot
program” GUK asks America to try “Chicago,
for instance, recently began a guaranteed income pilot program, allotting an
unconditional $500 per month to people living in economic precarity,
versions of which have been adopted in other cities, too. Why do we not at
least try new modes of operating to give people the things they need and that will better ensure
they’re shielded from harm: access to both mental and physical health resources,
to housing, to domestic abuse protection, and so on?”
And a pony?
Since the United States already puts a greater percentage of its
population behind bars than almost any other country, the
prisoners’ rights advocacy group VERA contends that: “Too often, the United States
has used police and prisons to deal with problems driven by economic
instability, untreated mental illness, and substance use.” (Sep. 26, 2024, Attachment Twenty Six)
“The message is clear. Voters—especially young voters—are
not interested in failed “tough-on-crime” tactics. They want candidates who are
going to build safer communities through investments in health care, education,
and jobs. They want candidates who agree that the path to public safety is not
responding to crime with police and prisons, but by preventing harm in the
first place.”
But will candidates do so in an election year?
|
Our Lesson: February Fifth through February
Eleventh, 2024 |
|
|
|
Monday, February 5, 2024 Dow: 38,280.12 |
It’s Severe Weather Preparedness Week. And the weather, this week, is severe in
the West where an “atmospheric river” (or, perhaps, a “firehose”)
is drenching California with a foot of rain and 80mph winds and the Los
Angeles river becomes... a river! Numerous landslides and evacuations and rescues,
900,000 powerless and, as it moves into the mountains, icy roads as will
migrate east to the Rockies/ Elsewhere? The fog of unknowing/
U.S. retaliatory strikes kill 85 alleged Iran-backed
terrorists.but the madmen and the mullahs in
Teheran wax fat and happy while proxies in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen are
dispatched. Spokestalker
Jake Sullivan says “there will be more steps.” In Istael and
Ukraine, the wars grind on with diminishing U.S. support. The necessary arms and ammo, as weill as border security funds are killed by Donald
Trump, who openly declares that this will deny President Joe a campaign issue
and House and Senate Republicans sit on their hind legs and “Arf!”
TV-con-mystic Jill Schlesinger says that jobs are disappearing in tech
and finance so the fired workers should look for new careers in the expanding
retail sector where they can stock shelves with Chinese stuff for minimum
wage. The Fed is happy, President Joe
is happy – and there’s the distraction of the Grammies and, on Sunday, the
Super Bowl, Miley wins song of the year, Taylor album of the
year... and will drop another “The Tortured Poet’s” Society and maybe... maybe... fly back from Tokyo to help
Usher at halftime.
King Charles is diagnosed with cancer, leaving the U.K. in the hands
of Prince Bill while Harry hops a plane and (hopefully safely) flies back to
London to see and be seen. |
|
|
Tuesday, February 6, 2024 Dow: 38,431.02 |
It’s Frozen Yogurt Day. And, also,
Ronald Reagan’s birthday.
Former Jersey Guv’nor and former
Presidential candidate Chris Chirstie emerges from
the shadow of his failed campaign to tout his new book, “What Would Reagan
Do?” and warn that Donald Trump is really not conservative enough, just
crazy, and his second term would be “mayhem” aka “The Vendetta Presidency.”
William having escaped Hollywood just in time, travel havoc is
beginning as the chaining storms are being called “historic”. Stories of heroic rescues spread... a dog
here, some humans there.
Having perhaps doomed Israel to conquest by Iran and Europe by Russia,
Congress takes up its most vital task – impeaching DHS Alejandro Mayorkas for inducing Mexicans, Venezuelans, Haitians,
Chinese spies and perhaps some Canadians to cross the border into
America. Sen. Bennie Johnson says
“they want to impeach the man for not doing his job... and they won’t let him
do his job. |
|
|
Wednesday, February 7,, 2024
Dow:
38,677.36 |
It’s the 60th anniversary of the
Beatles’ first concerts in America. Sir
Paul pulls plenty of old photos from his vault and everybody looks so...
young.
House vote to impeach Mayorkas fails 216-214
when dying Rep. Mike Green is wheeled into the Capitol in pajamas and
shoeless to vote “No!” Speaker Johnson
slinks away, avoiding reporters, as angry MAGAs like Matt Gaetz start
plotting his removal. President Joe
tells Congress to get back to work on the real issues and “show a little
spine.” The
NTSB reveals that Boeing was repairing the flying door plane and then forgot
to re-install the bolts. “Sorry!” say spokesthings as more planes are grounded (not that bad a
plight since flights were already being cancelled due to the weather. Credit card debt keeps soaring as Chase
Manhattan opens 500 new branches to exploit it. In
the courts, Mama Crumbly is found guilty, could get sixty years. Former President Trump has a mixed day afte the vote... winning the Nevada primary and having
his ballot exclusion case heard by SCOTUS but failing to impress with his
argument of forever immunity. |
|
|
Thursday, February 8, 2024 Dow: 38,726.33 |
It’s National Pizza Day. (Three days early!)
SCOTUS hears arguments for taking up the Colorado ballot exclusion
case. But it will take time. And, based on testimony on whether to hear,
it looks like Djonald UnBounced
will have a good day – even the liberals are leery of exclusion because
everyone knows that a kick ‘im out verdict will
result in massive partisan repetition.
It’s also rejection station nation... in the USA where Speaker Johnson
rejects his own border deal, his dissatisfied collegues
plot to reject him and, in the Mideast, where Israeli PM Netanyahu rejects
Hamas counter-proposal after they reject his peace for hostages deal. Let the killings continue.
Special Counsel Hur rejects Republican
contention that Biden, like Trump, stole classified documents. He did, but he gave them back when caught
and, besides, he was a “well meaning, elderly” man with memory problems.
Land, sea or air... it’s all the same.
Avalanches and floods continue carrying vehicles and passengers off to
perdition. After gumment
security sorts warn tourists not to
go to the Bahams, Carnival Cruise cruises to the
Bahamas where two tourists are raped by staff of the resort Carnival sent
them to. And two planes collide at
Boston airport after Finnair starts weighting fat
passengers... Prince Harry flying home after FU from Brother Bill and we hope he lands safely.
Heading the other way, Elton John quits the USA and puts a lot of his
memorabilia up for auction. |
|
|
Friday, February 9, 2024 Dow: 38,671.86 |
It’s National Pizza. Save a slice for Trump-appointed Special
Counsel Bob Hur releases his report on Biden’s
stealing classified documents while serving as Vice President. He decides not to prosecute because
President Joe, unlike Trump, did return the papers when caught and because
POTUS is “a well-meaning elderly man with memory problems” which, of course,
immediately becomes a November issue as; Bob Hur
slicing and dicing the President, who doesn’t remember when son Beau (the
honest one) died. Biden and VP Harris issue condemnations but more damage
comes when Joe confused the Presidents of Egypt and Mexico.
Political spindoctors like Dan Abrams and
Jon Karl reflect a guilty verdict with no gratituous
commentary would have been better for Biden. James Carville advises him to
get more “offensive” on Trump.
Israeli PM Netanhayu says President Joe is
not senile, although they have political differences... America telling him not
to launch a ground invasion of Rafah, where over a
million Gaza refugees (600,000 children) have nowhere else to go and are
being told to evacuate to... the sea?
Earthquakes strike Hawai (5.7 Richter) and
Malibu (4.6) causing a lot of fear, but no casualties; stormy weather
persists on the West Coast, but will migrate Eastwards, where above-normal
temperatures may create turbulence. |
|
|
Saturday, February 10, 2024 Dow: Closed |
The Chinese Year of the Dragon chases off
the Rabbit, kicking off a week of holiday celebrations that proceed to Super
Sunday (and hangover Monday) – back to Mardi Gras on Tuesday, Valentines’ Day
and a three day weekend for President’s Day.
Police promise to assail misdemeanants, felons and terrorists alike
and Vegas mobilizes sixty angry K-9s to protect celebrities & begin
dragnets for IUDs and counterfeit merch.
Fighting back against Bob Hur, President Joe
insists: “I’m an elderly man and I know what I’m doing!” Trump gloats,
celebrates visible SCOTUS skepticism of throwing him off the Colorado ballot
(although a district court rules that President’s cannot have perpetual
immunity for acts like inciting riots... meaning another issue will go to the
Supremes. Putting on his MAGA hat, he
implies surviving rival Nikki has been deserted by her husband, then heads
back to this or that court to deal with his own legal problems.
Overseas, Prince Harry settles his legal issues with one gang of
tabloid tormentors with more to come and no reunion with busy Bill. King Charles and Duchess Meg are doing
well, but US DefSec Austin is sick again.
It’s a roller coaster week on Wall Street but the techy
SP500 crashes the five thousand
ceiling, as more and more workers are laid off. Inflation is expected to fall to near zero,
but humanitarians and police are worried that higher and higher rents are
driving more people into homelessness, resulting in anger and increases in
perceived and actual crime. |
|
|
Sunday, February 11, 2024 Dow: Closed |
It’s Super Sunday and, in addition to the
Kansas City/San Francisco showdown, casual or not-at-all football fans are
still eager to know whether Taylor Swift can fly back from Tokyo in time to
watch Travis play and what kinds of new commercials will manifest. Celebrities are everywhere as are talking
heads, predators predicting, gamblers gamblings and
millions of fowl losing their wings.
Although now agreeing with Trump that geriatric Presidential
challengers should undergo cognitife and mental
tests, Nikki Haley says her husband is a soldier deployed overseas, and that
Trump is impugning all of those who serve our country. Undeterred, he tells our cheapest NATO
allies that, if elected, he will make a deal with Glad Vlad
to let him invade and conquer the deadbeats, drawing more outrage here and
abroad. Polls now say 86% of Joneses
say Joe is too old to be President against only 62% for Trump. On
the Sunday talkshows, Democratic Senator and fellow
Dellowaran Coons say his ol’ bro Joe is old, but
not infirm while Gov, Brian Kemp (R-Ga) tells fella
ella-fantaciatists to stop looking in the rear view
mirror (but evades questions about whether he endorses Ol’ 45). |
|
|
The political chaos and economic uncertainty
was rife, but Don Jones turned off the signal and tuned into the noise and,
truth be told, Superbowl Fifty Eight was epic. Taylor returned in time to kiss Travis, but
he did not propose, though halftime performer Usher finally married his long
time boo.
There will be plenty of distractions this week too... Chinese New
Years’. Mardi Gras, Valentines’ Day and the three day Presidential wweekend/ |
|
|
|
CHART of CATEGORIES
w/VALUE ADDED to EQUAL BASELINE of 15,000 (REFLECTING…
approximately… DOW JONES INDEX of June 27, 2013) Negative/harmful indices
in RED.
See a further explanation of categories here… ECONOMIC
INDICES (60%)
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
SOCIAL INDICES (40%) |
|||||||||||||||
|
ACTS
of MAN |
12% |
|
|
||||||||||||
|
World
Affairs |
3% |
450 |
2/5/24 |
+0.1% |
2/19/24 |
456.97 |
457.15 |
France
will forge its Olympic medals out of discarded metal from the Eiffel
Tower. UK’s King Charles diagnosed
with cancer, but out of hospital; Prince Bill will take over many of his
duties. Finnish airlines to begin
weighing fat passengers. |
|||||||
|
War and terrorism |
2% |
300 |
2/5/24 |
-0.1% |
2/19/24 |
296.34 |
296.04 |
Israel ordera a million Gazans to
evacuate NOW!! before
its ground invastion of Rafah. US authorities warn that Chinese cyberhackers will be attacking American utilities,
hospitals and other targets. Terrorist
leader killed in Baghdad drone strike. |
|||||||
|
Politics |
3% |
450 |
2/5/24 |
-0.1% |
2/19/24 |
480.43 |
480.03 |
Partisans rassle over
whether Trump or Biden is the more criminal and/or senile. Trump wins Nevada caucuses. Loser Haley predicts 2024 will go to the
party that “gets rid of its 80 year old candidate.” Congress still can’t pass a bill to help
Ukraine and Israel, so Speaker Johnson begins a rerun Impeachment Part Two
against DHS chief Mayorkas as the usual gang
prepares to remove him and also purge RNC chair Ronnaa
McDaniel@. Even right wing Border
Patrol protests lack of action on bill they supported and Trump helped draft. |
|||||||
|
Economics |
3% |
450 |
2/5/24 |
+0.4% |
2/19/24 |
445.91 |
447.73 |
SP exceeds
5,000 despite mass firings in tech sector; more jobs in healthcare and retail
(TV-con-mystic Jill Schlesinger suggests engineers and coders transit to stacking
shelves at WalMart.) Firings at SnapShot,
Estee Lauder but Uber now thriving,
Lyft failing.
With credit card debt skyrocketing, Chase Manhattan will open 500 new
banks. Inflation on food up 1.3% but
over 5% in restaurants. |
|||||||
|
Crime |
1% |
150 |
2/5/24 |
-0.2% |
2/19/24 |
242.10 |
241.61 |
Active
shooters include a 15 year old Venezuelan migrant shoplifter in NYC, a multi
cop-killer in Tennessee, campus gunslinger at Temple U., Philadelphia, @ Backfiring car causes
hyper cops to fire 23 shots at driver.
The FBI warns against Valentines’ Day romance scammers, the FTC
reports that online scamming (including teenage blackmail) was up 14% in
2023. Killer Mike wins 3 Grammys, then
arrested onsite for assault. |
|||||||
|
ACTS
of GOD |
(6%) |
|
|
||||||||||||
|
Environment/Weather |
3% |
450 |
2/5/24 |
-0.3% |
2/19/24 |
389.52 |
388.35 |
Severe
Weather Preparedness Week begins with Calif. getting over a foot of rain,
causing landslides by the coast, blizzards in the mountains and the revival
of the Los Angeles river. And an
earthquake. Foul weather then spreads
east. Greencologists
say Superbowl 58 will be solar powered, adding “We
have the sun, use it!” |
|||||||
|
Disasters |
3% |
450 |
2/5/24 |
-0.2% |
2/19/24 |
421.68 |
420.84 |
Chilean
wildfire toll into the hundres, many more
missing. NTSB investigating fatal
highway plane crash in Naples, FL, five Marines killed in SoCal
copter crash, Jet Blue planes crash at Boston airport, but no fatalities. |
|||||||
|
LIFESTYLE/JUSTICE
INDEX |
(15%) |
|
|||||||||||||
|
Science,
Tech, Educ. |
4% |
600 |
2/5/24 |
-0.1% |
2/19/24 |
632.13 |
631.50 |
ATT to disconnect
landlines in California, leaving the poor, rural communities, the elderly and
those without cell towers in the lurch... like Joness
in Alabama where thieves cut down and haul away a cell tower, More defects for
Boeing, 50 planes pulled out of service for repairs as NTSB chair John Nance
says Alaska Airlines forgot to put bolts back in cabin door after doing
repairs, causing it to fly away.
Further out there, NASA launches a satellite to map the rising ocean
temperatures. |
|||||||
|
Equality (econ/social) |
4% |
600 |
2/5/24 |
+0.3% |
2/19/24 |
640.00 |
641.92 |
Grammys
(see below) called a night for the women.
Legislators in Missouri hold book burning ceremonies with
flamethrowers to torch bad books. |
|||||||
|
Health |
4% |
600 |
2/5/24 |
+0.1% |
2/19/24 |
467.28 |
467.75 |
Manufacturers
or maybe users of stone kitchen countertops at risk for silicosis. Phillips sleep apnea machines investigated
for killing up to 500. Doctors say
weight loss drugs like Zepbond or Mounjaro also lower blood pressure and a Mediterranean
diet of fish and vegetables will prevent Alzheimers. |
|||||||
|
Freedom
and Justice |
3% |
450 |
2/5/24 |
-0.1% |
2/19/24 |
468.68 |
468.21 |
DC circuit
court says Trump (and all ex-Presidents) retain civil
but not criminal immunity from prosecution.
Mommy Crumbly convicted of letting her son have the gun he shot up
school with. “Are there any questions,
now, what bad parenting can do?” ask pundits. |
|||||||
|
MISCELLANEOUS
and TRANSIENT INDEX |
(6%) |
|
|
|
|||||||||||
|
Cultural
incidents |
3% |
450 |
2/5/24 |
+0.5% |
2/19/24 |
517.42 |
520.01 |
Superbowl 58 celebs include Usher and Taylor’s
dropping new albums, the latter’s race from Tokyo to Vegas, tickets at $9,000
for the cheap seats has Swifties and even seasoned
Vegas sports gamblers going gaga. ...more
Monday next. Major networks combine
and collude for single sports streaming that will eliminate many fans. Swift also wins her fifth Grammy for Album
of the Year– other winners and celebrants include Miley
(best song) and performances by Joni Mitchell, Celine Dion, Tracy Chapman and
Billy Joel for the old folks. Elton
John going back to England and auctioning off a lot of his memorabilia (like
the fancy glasses). RIP Toby “Shoulda
been a Cowboy” Keith, 911 hero Bob Beckwith, former Spinner Henry Fauborg@, Happy birthday to 116 year old Edith
Ciccarelli. |
|||||||
|
Misc. Incidents |
3% |
450 |
2/5/24 |
+0.7% |
2/19/24 |
504.96 |
508.49 |
Holiday
celebrations for China (New Years), New Orleans (Mardi Gras), lovers
(Valentines’ Day) and all Americans (Superbowl). With a three day Presidents’ weekend
following! Fast food chains like Micky D, finding that price gouging kills sales, offer
discounts and Buffalo Wild Wings will give away free leftover chicken to
customers. |
|||||||
The Don
Jones Index for the week of January 29th through 4th, 2024 was UP 11.84 points
The Don Jones Index is sponsored by
the Coalition for a New Consensus: retired Congressman and Independent
Presidential candidate Jack “Catfish” Parnell, Chairman; Brian Doohan,
Administrator. The CNC denies,
emphatically, allegations that the organization, as well as any of its officers
(including former Congressman Parnell, environmentalist/America-Firster Austin Tillerman and
cosmetics CEO Rayna Finch) and references to
Parnell’s works, “Entropy and Renaissance” and “The Coming Kill-Off” are
fictitious or, at best, mere pawns in the web-serial “Black Helicopters” – and
promise swift, effective legal action against parties promulgating this and/or
other such slanders.
Comments, complaints, donations
(especially SUPERPAC donations) always welcome at feedme@generisis.com
or: speak@donjonesindex.com.
THE ATLANTIC
CAUGHT BETWEEN THE ELECTORALLY
DISASTROUS AND THE MORALLY MONSTROUS
Democrats can’t find a message on crime they believe in.
By David A. Graham NOVEMBER 8, 2022
The great drama of politics is that no one knows the outcome
of an election until the votes are cast. But some things about elections are
pretty easy to predict—such as Republicans attacking Democrats on crime. Yet
Democrats seem to have no answer to the attacks being lobbed at them in the
final weeks of the midterm campaign, just as they are only now awakening to the fact that it might be wise to have an economic message for
voters.
Crime is a devilish problem. Its causes are hard to
understand and harder to influence. The trends run in long cycles, and although
policy changes can alter the trends, they don’t do so quickly or simply.
Expecting any candidate, or any party, to have a genuine answer to crime would
be absurd. But crime is also politically potent, as Republicans grasp, and is
thus fertile ground for attacks both fair and demagogic. (Just because you
don’t have a simple, quick answer doesn’t mean you can’t claim you do.) In key
races, Republicans have accused Democrats of being soft and ineffective on
crime. They’ve attacked incumbents for presiding over rising violence and challengers for having supported cuts in police spending. In Illinois, the
gubernatorial hopeful Darren Bailey even rented a Chicago apartment far from his farm as a way to
spotlight crime.
Read: What’s really going on with the
crime rate?
The Democratic Party’s situation is tougher. The pollster
Stan Greenberg has found that worry about rising crime under Democrats is a
more potent fear than any other issue this cycle. As the party in power in
Washington, it has to play defense. Any message has to satisfy swing voters and
older Black voters worried about crime without alienating younger and more
liberal voters who want changes to the justice system. The simplest answers are
likely to undercut the party’s stated commitment to social justice and greater
racial equality, and its conclusion that crime is best treated through root
causes. The party is left without a message—much less an actual policy—that
steers between being electorally disastrous and morally monstrous.
Because this is politics, facts matter, but they’re not always paramount. Still, the actual data are worth surveying. Violent crime,
including murder, increased sharply in 2020, although property crime decreased. The situation in 2021
is much less clear. FBI data released in October show that violent crime was
roughly flat last year (with a drop in robberies canceling out an increase in
murders), but those numbers are not considered reliable, thanks to a change in the way the FBI gathers numbers that
has left out statistics from many agencies. Preliminary data gathered by other
organizations suggest a small decrease in murders and shootings in 2022,
but also an uptick in property crimes.
Whatever the case, Americans are freaked out about crime. A
Gallup poll released last week found that 78 percent of Americans say crime is
increasing nationwide, matching the figure from 2020. (The
all-time record, 89 percent, was set in 1992, when crime, in fact, hit its
recorded high.) For the first time since 2016, a majority of Americans
say they worry a “great deal” about crime. Less than a quarter are satisfied
with crime policies—a 50 percent drop from 2020. More than seven in 10 say crime will be very or extremely important in their
vote for Congress.
Democrats defending their record and critics of the
criminal-justice system—two groups that have some overlap but also sharp
disagreements—sometimes downplay crime and insist that people shouldn’t be so
fearful. They correctly note that even after the 2020 spike, crime remains well
below the worst levels of the late 1980s and early ’90s. They also correctly
say that fears of crime are often driven more by the media and their bias for
negative and lurid stories than by actual increases in crime.
Ideology drives coverage decisions too: The Washington Post finds that although all three of the big cable-news channels
have been covering crime more in recent weeks, Fox News has far outpaced its
rivals. One result is that views on crime are heavily polarized—Gallup’s finding that Americans see increased crime is driven largely
by Republicans. Since 2020, the percentage of Republicans who say that crime
has risen in the U.S. has increased from 85 percent to 95 percent. Over the
same period, the percentage of Democrats who say the same has fallen from 74
percent to 61 percent, suggesting that ideology shapes their impression that
crime is dropping.
David A. Graham: Nothing seems to be reducing
crime in Memphis
The apologists also argue—once again, with good reason—that
messaging around crime, whether in the press or from conservative
politicians, is often rooted in appeals to racism. A recent, almost amusingly naive New York Times article reported, “As Republicans seize on crime as one of their leading
issues in the final weeks of the midterm elections, they have deployed a series
of attack lines, terms and imagery that have injected race into contests across
the country.” Although the ads are worth noting, the phenomenon is hardly new.
Richard Nixon used the threat of urban crime—that is to say, crime putatively
committed by Black people—as a key campaign issue in 1968 and 1972. The George
H. W. Bush strategist Lee Atwater infamously employed the case of William
Horton to attack the Democratic nominee, Michael Dukakis, in 1988. And in 2016,
Trump’s heavily racist immigration rhetoric focused squarely on crimes
committed by unauthorized immigrants.
A staple of these attacks is a connection between urban
areas and crime. Fear of crime drove white families out of cities and into
suburbs starting in the mid-20th century, and once many white people left urban
areas, politicians could easily yoke Black populations and violence together.
Cities tend to have more consistent and easily accessed data, as well as more
media attention, but violent crime has risen nearly as steeply in rural areas as in urban ones, The Wall
Street Journal reported in June. During a gubernatorial debate in
Oklahoma last month, the Democrat, Joy Hofmeister,
drew jeers and dismissal for saying that the violent-crime rate in the Sooner State is
higher than in California or New York, but she was right. (Perhaps it is no
accident that Hofmeister is polling close to the
Republican incumbent, Governor Kevin Stitt, in a
deeply conservative state.)
Yet even if all of these rebuttals to concerns are true,
crime really has jumped from the recent historic low. Besides, voters can’t
simply be argued into giving up the way they feel, and few issues strike as
directly at people as the fear that they or their loved ones might become victims
of crime. In 2021, I reported that although Americans were concerned about rising
crime nationwide, they tended to say that crime in their own neighborhoods
remained about the same. Now, however, 56 percent of Americans tell Gallup that
crime is up in their area—the highest since the pollster started measuring this
sentiment, in 1972. (The violent-crime rate in 2020, the most recent year for
which data are available, was almost 400 per 100,000 people; in 1992, it was
roughly 760 per 100,000 people, but only 54 percent said crime was rising in
their neighborhood.)
Individual Democrats have tried to find their own ways to
talk about this. Representative Val Demings, who is
running for the U.S. Senate in Florida, has drawn on her career as a police
officer.
But the Democratic Party writ large has not found a message. Stan
Greenberg writes
in The American Prospect that by the fall, the issue had become so dire that he
advised candidates to not even bring it up: “To be honest, Democrats were in
such terrible shape on crime at this late point, I said, speak as little as
possible or mumble. Nothing they’ve said up until now was reassuring and
helpful.”
In 2020, the challenge was that one portion of the party supported
“defunding the police”—a vague phrase that encompassed everything from full-on
abolition to experiments such as unarmed mental-health responders, and that
was wildly unpopular with voters—while another, led by Joe Biden, did not. By this March,
when President Biden used his State of the Union address to say, “Fund them.
Fund them. Fund them,” the backlash within the Democratic Party was minimal.
Even with this intramural debate quieted, Democrats have no
effective messaging to voters. In a letter to colleagues last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
offered some tips on how to talk about public safety, suggesting that
candidates discuss the 2021 stimulus package and the 2022 spending bill, both
of which provided money for local law enforcement. But those bills are arguably a Democratic liability
overall,
and bone-dry recitations of bills that people don’t view as having stopped
crime from rising seem unlikely to have much effect. (Pelosi also said that
Democrats should spotlight bills the House has passed to ban assault weapons
and mandate safe gun storage. This might actually be popular—according to
Gallup, no fear has risen more sharply over the past year than that of a child
being harmed at school—but neither initiative has become law.)
This isn’t to rag on Pelosi in particular. Immediate
solutions are in short supply. Scholars and police have no consensus on why
crime declined so much from the 1990s until recently, and they have only
provisional answers to why it’s started rising again. Many cities want to hire
more police, but even when they have the funding to do so, recruits are in
short supply. Reducing the number of guns on the streets would have a major
effect, but it is politically impossible. Liberals tend to gravitate toward
explanations for crime that focus on root causes, such as education and
economic opportunity—but those are difficult and slow to fix, which makes them
difficult to translate into pithy electoral slogans.
One example does exist of Democrats finding a way to win on
crime: the 1992 election, when Bill Clinton emphasized crime by turning against
core Democratic constituencies. (He famously accused the author and rapper
Sister Souljah of being racist against white people.)
It was extremely politically effective, and Clinton was able to win the
presidency and grab back historically Democratic white voters who had defected
to Ronald Reagan’s Republican Party.
Read: Rorschach's crime bill (no, not the guy in
the mask from Marvel)
Aping Clinton would be unlikely to work so well today. Many
of those voters seem to be permanently lost to the Trump movement and white identity politics. Although Black voters tend to be generationally divided on
crime and policing (older voters are more hawkish; younger ones are skeptical),
the white voters who remain in the Democratic Party lean very liberal on social
issues. Clinton also benefited from Democrats being out of power in 1992; two
years later, voters rejected the party and ushered in the Republican
Revolution.
More important, Clinton’s crime approach culminated in the
1994 crime bill, a massive piece of legislation that, although it contained
some measures that were effective at fighting crime (such as the Violence
Against Women Act and the assault-weapons ban), also included others that have
not aged well. For example, the bill exacerbated racial disparities in drug sentencing and imposed
lengthy mandatory-minimum sentences that took away judges’ and prosecutors’
discretion. By 2020, the law was anathema to the Democratic Party.
Returning to a simplistic tough-on-crime approach would be
unconscionable today. One lesson of 2020, which is already being forgotten in some quarters, is how deeply flawed the
criminal-justice system is. Simply giving it more resources and hoping for the
best might produce a short-term drop in violent crime, but it would also be
unsustainable and unjust, as the scholar Patrick Sharkey has
argued.
Democrats won’t figure out how to square electoral
imperatives on crime with moral ones in time for the 2022 election, and they
will suffer for it at the polls. But the problem isn’t going away, so they’ll
have plenty of opportunities to keep working at it.
NBC
BIDEN BUCKS LIBERALS AND TELLS
DEMOCRATS TO GET TOUGH ON CRIME
It shows how powerful the issue has become, says James
Carville, who helped Bill Clinton counter soft-on-crime attacks during the
1990s crime
By Alex
Seitz-Wald and Carol E. Lee March 4, 2023, 7:00 AM EST
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s decision Thursday on a local crime law sends a national message to
fellow Democrats about how he believes they should address Republican criticism
of the nation's rising crime rates.
Democrats have focused predominantly on police reform since
the George Floyd protests reignited a national debate over race and law
enforcement three years ago. But rising violent crime rates and growing
perceptions of unease in major cities have prompted a chorus of party
strategists and officials to call for a tougher approach to counter Republican attacks.
Biden — who has a history of pushing for stauncher crime
laws — has tried to straddle the Democratic divide but was forced this week to
choose sides when he said he wouldn't allow the Washington, D.C., city
government to enact laws that would lower some criminal penalties.
“If Republicans thought President Biden would hand them a
wedge issue for 2024, they thought wrong,” said Democratic strategist Lis Smith, a veteran of former President Barack Obama’s
re-election campaign and an architect of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s rise. “It’s going to be very hard to define him
as soft on crime after he’s denounced defunding the police and reducing
sentences for crimes like carjackings.”
Nothing focuses the mind of a White House gearing up for
re-election like an incumbent getting only 17% of the vote, as Chicago Mayor Lori
Lightfoot did Tuesday in the city’s crime-focused mayoral contest.
The Washington, D.C., bill offered a slew of complications.
The Democratic-controlled city council passed a sweeping criminal reform
measure but then the mayor, also a Democrat, vetoed it. The council overrode
her veto.
But D.C.'s unusual existence as not fully independent of the
federal government means that Congress can quash any law change. A
Republican-led bill got the support of about 30 Democrats in the House and is
now expected to pass the Senate with a handful of Democrats, forcing Biden to
either sign or veto it. Democrats, who have increasingly pushed for D.C. to be
left to rule itself, called on Biden to veto the
measure on the grounds that it isn't the federal government's place to
determine local criminal law. But Biden didn't acquiesce.
"I support D.C. Statehood and home-rule – but I don’t
support some of the changes D.C. Council put forward over the Mayor’s
objections – such as lowering penalties for carjackings,"
the president said on Twitter.
The White House is planning a full-throated effort to
present him as tough on crime to try to chip away at any Republican advantage
on an issue that has put many Democrats on the defensive.
THE AP
BIDEN’S INACTION ON DEATH PENALTY
MAY BE A TOP CAMPAIGN ISSUE AS TRUMP AND DESANTIS LAUD EXECUTIONS
FILE - President Joe Biden speaks at Auburn Manufacturing
Inc., Friday, July 28, 2023, in Auburn, Maine. Capital punishment could emerge
as a major campaign issue in the U.S. presidential race for the first time in
30 years, with top GOP rivals Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis
already one-upping each other by touting tougher, more far-reaching death
penalty laws. Meanwhile, death penalty foes are poised to draw attention to
what Biden hasn’t done as president: He has taken no action on or even spoken
about his 2020 campaign pledge to strike capital punishment from U.S. statutes.
(AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
FILE - Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov.
Ron DeSantis speaks during a campaign event, Monday,
July 31, 2023, in Rochester, N.H. Capital punishment could emerge as a major
campaign issue in the U.S. presidential race for the first time in 30 years,
with top GOP rivals DeSantis and Donald Trump already
one-upping each other by touting tougher, more far-reaching death penalty laws.
Meanwhile, death penalty foes are poised to draw attention to what Democrat Joe
Biden hasn’t done as president: He has taken no action on or even spoken about
his 2020 campaign pledge to strike capital punishment from U.S. statutes. (AP
Photo/Charles Krupa, File)
FILE - Republican presidential candidate and former
President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally, Saturday, July 29, 2023,
in Erie, Pa. Capital punishment could emerge as a major campaign issue in the
U.S. presidential race for the first time in 30 years, with top GOP rivals
Trump and Ron DeSantis already one-upping each other
by touting tougher, more far-reaching death penalty laws. Meanwhile, death
penalty foes are poised to draw attention to what Democrat Joe Biden hasn’t
done as president: He has taken no action on or even spoken about his 2020
campaign pledge to strike capital punishment from U.S. statutes. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File)
FILE - Defendant Robert Bowers takes notes during a
sentencing hearing that will determine if he gets a life sentence or the death
penalty, Monday, July 31, 2023, in federal court in Pittsburgh. A jury decided
Wednesday, Aug. 2, that Bowers, the gunman who stormed a synagogue in the heart
of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community and killed 11 worshippers, will be sentenced
to death for perpetrating the deadliest antisemitic
attack in U.S. history. Capital punishment could emerge as a major campaign
issue in the U.S. presidential race for the first time in 30 years. (Dave Klug
via AP, File)
FILE - A sign is displayed at the federal prison complex in
Terre Haute, Ind., Aug. 28, 2020. Capital punishment could emerge as a major
campaign issue in the U.S. presidential race for the first time in 30 years,
with top GOP rivals Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis
already one-upping each other by touting tougher, more far-reaching death
penalty laws. Meanwhile, death penalty foes are poised to draw attention to
what Democrat Joe Biden hasn’t done as president: He has taken no action on or
even spoken about his 2020 campaign pledge to strike capital punishment from
U.S. statutes. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File)
BY MICHAEL TARM
Updated 6:35 PM EST, August 4, 2023
CHICAGO (AP) — Capital punishment could emerge as a major
campaign issue in the U.S. presidential race for the first time in 30 years,
with top GOP rivals Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis
already one-upping each other by touting tougher, more far-reaching death
penalty laws.
Meanwhile, death penalty foes are poised to draw attention
to what Democrat Joe Biden hasn’t done as president: He has taken no action on
or even spoken about his 2020 campaign pledge to strike capital punishment from U.S. statutes.
A demonstration that the death penalty issue is far from
academic came Wednesday when federal jurors in Pittsburgh voted to impose a death sentence for Robert Bowers for killing 11 people in a synagogue. It’s the first federal death sentence handed
down during
Biden’s presidency.
Trump, who restarted federal executions after a 17-year
hiatus and oversaw 13 in his final six months as
president, wasted
no time making capital punishment a focus in his current, third presidential
run. In declaring his candidacy on Nov. 15, he called for the execution of drug
dealers.
South Carolina wants to restart executions with firing squad, electric
chair and lethal injection
Could Ohio be the next state to use nitrogen gas in executions? A new
method would end a 5-year halt
Will other states replicate Alabama’s nitrogen execution?
In a July campaign video, Trump added another category of
criminals he said deserve death.
“I will
urge Congress to ensure that anyone caught trafficking children across our
border receives the death penalty, immediately,” he said.
While the Justice Department announced a moratorium on
federal executions in 2021, it’s a temporary pause. Nothing precludes a pro-death penalty candidate
elected next year from quickly resuming them.
Florida Gov. DeSantis has put
capital punishment on his agenda, too.
After not authorizing state executions for three years, DeSantis signed death warrants for the recent executions of
four people — two before and two after he declared his candidacy on May 24.
He has also signed two death penalty laws since April, one
allowing for executions of convicted child rapists and another letting jurors impose death
sentences with less-than-unanimous votes.
“One juror,” DeSantis said, “should
not be able to veto a capital sentence.”
Biden’s silence suggests he would rather the death penalty
not become a campaign issue. Activists will try to force him to speak about it
anyway by lobbying campaign debate moderators WHO?@ to pose questions on capital punishment.
“We’d like Biden to articulate his position and say it out
loud,” said Abraham Bonowitz, director of Death
Penalty Action.
Bonowitz’s group will also call on Biden to order the demolition of
the federal death chamber, a small building on the grounds of a prison in
Indiana, as proof that he’s serious about permanently ending federal
executions.
According to Gallup, support for the death penalty has
fallen from nearly 80% in the mid-1990s to around 55% in recent years. As
support waned, it faded as a campaign issue.
Among the last times it featured prominently was in 1988,
during George H.W. Bush’s successful race against Michael Dukakis. Bush
spotlighted Dukakis’ lifelong opposition to capital punishment. In 1992, Bill
Clinton emphasized his support for it in defeating Bush.
Declaring such support has long been a way for politicians
to send a broader message — that they’re tough on crime.
Trump has mastered that, said Lee Kovarsky,
a death penalty scholar at the University of Texas at Austin.
“So much of his
campaign and government style centers on strength and masculinity — to punish
without compromise,” he said. “It’s a damaging combination.”
Trump established himself as the most prolific execution
president since Grover Cleveland in the 1890s when U.S. executions restarted
during his 2020 campaign and continued into the lame duck period after his defeat.
William Barr, Trump’s attorney general, argued in his 2022
book that the executions were legally and morally right. He said they delivered
long delayed justice to victims of brutal killings, many of them children.
Trump’s record may have partly inspired DeSantis,
said Melanie Kalmanson, a Florida attorney who writes
the Tracking Florida’s Death Penalty blog, noting: “It seems that there’s some
sort of competition between the two” on capital punishment.
The four Florida executions this year brought the total
under DeSantis to six. The most recent on June 15 was of Duane
Owen who
was convicted in the fatal stabbing of 14-year-old Karen Slattery and the
killing of Georgianna Worden, 38.
DeSantis granted a May 22 stay so Owen could undergo mental health
exams. Three days later, the day after DeSantis
announced his run, he lifted the stay.
The bill lowering the juror-vote requirement to eight made
Florida the state with the lowest threshold. He backed the change after jurors failed to reach unanimity to impose a death sentence on Parkland school shooter
Nikolas Cruz, who killed 17.
DeSantis hopes the law he signed allowing for capital punishment for
the rape of children will invite the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse its 5-4
finding in 2008 that executions for most crimes not involving murder violate
prohibitions against “cruel and unusual” punishment.
Despite his full-throated endorsement of capital punishment,
DeSantis doesn’t have Trump’s knack for wooing voters
who respond to over-the-top, anti-crime rhetoric, Kovarsky
said.
“That space is already occupied by Trump,” he said.
As a U.S. senator, Biden enthusiastically supported capital
punishment, leading passage of a 1994 crime bill that greatly expanded the
number of federal capital crimes.
“We do everything but hang people for jaywalking,” he
boasted then.
Only in 2016 did the Democratic Party platform first call
for the abolition of capital punishment. Biden made his opposition explicit in
2020.
Many expected Biden to fulfill his campaign pledge within
days of his inauguration, perhaps by commuting all federal death sentences to
life. He didn’t. And he’s taken no executive action since.
Biden may calculate his continued silence is a prudent
strategy because even those frustrated by his inaction wouldn’t dare back
Republicans.
“I am not at risk of voting for Donald Trump,” Kovarsky said.
Bonowitz says Biden won’t take action to keep his 2020 promise
during the 2024 campaign, because he understands that voters care more about
pocketbook issues than capital punishment. But skittishness by candidates
worried that speaking against the death penalty will damage them politically is
no longer well founded, he added.
“That,” he said, “should also make it safe for politicians
to say what they really believe and stand by it.”
FROM AXIOS
D.C. mayor
stands by as Congress intervenes in crime law
Feb 10, 2023
Congress is closer
to overturning a D.C. law for the first time since 1991, after the House on
Thursday approved blocking controversial reforms to the city’s criminal code.
And Mayor Muriel Bowser might be fine with that.
Why it matters:
In the end, 31 Democrats joined the GOP-led effort to overturn the criminal
code reform, which reduces some maximum penalties for violent crimes. It was a
surprising bipartisan intervention in local affairs at a time of heightened
Republican pressure on the District.
NBC
CHICAGO MAYORAL CANDIDATE’S LAW-AND-ORDER PLATFORM SHOULD HAVE DEMOCRATS
‘STANDING AT ATTENTION’
MARCH 2, 2023 12:01
Next week the president will ask for an increase in funding
for his Safer America Plan, aimed at crime prevention and policing, in his 2024
budget proposal, according to a White House official. Biden is also expected to
continue publicly emphasizing his record on crime issues.
The White House is more broadly preparing to intensify its
criticism of Republicans on crime, with plans to highlight some GOP efforts to
cut the Justice Department’s Community Oriented Policing Services, or COPS
program; oppose an assault weapons ban; and defund the FBI. The White House
plans to argue that by proposing that federal spending return to 2022 levels,
for instance, Republicans would cut funding for programs that fight crime.
The effort will look similar to how Biden talked about crime
while campaigning during last year’s midterm elections, the White House
official said.
"Congressional Republicans need to commit here and now
to joining with President Biden — not obstructing him — in fighting the rising
crime rate he inherited," said White House spokesperson Andrew Bates.
"Their years’ long campaign to slash law enforcement funding in the name of
ideology couldn’t be more at odds with the country.”
Biden’s decision blindsided congressional Democrats, most of
whom had recently voted to let the D.C. law stand — especially since the
administration indicated last month that the president would take the opposite
position — and is being widely seen through a political lens.
“It’s smart politics. He was running into a buzz saw,” South
Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham told reporters at the Capitol. “You
don’t want to get left of the D.C. mayor.”
Veteran Democratic political consultant James Carville, who
was a top strategist to Bill Clinton when he successfully overcame
long-standing perceptions that Democrats were soft-on-crime to win the
presidency during the height of the crack epidemic in the 1990s, said Biden’s
move was a good step, but that the party needed to do more.
“It shows you the power this issue has become. Look what
happened in Chicago. Look what happened in San Francisco. Everywhere you turn around,”
Carville said, referring to the ouster of Lightfoot and former San Francisco District
Attorney Chesa Boudin in a recall election last year.
Crime largely disappeared from national politics while rates
were at historic lows during much of the the 2000s
and 2010s, but Carville said the politics changed when crime rates started to
tick back up during the pandemic, even though they’re still nowhere near as
high as they were in the 1990s.
“This is a front and
center issue, and it’s one that we should, by any measure or statistic, be
ahead of — but we’re not,” he said of Democrats.
Biden’s move put himself in the uncomfortable position of
receiving praise from Republicans and criticism from House Democrats, the vast
majority of whom are now on the record voting against overturning the
controversial criminal measure, which could be used against them in GOP attack
ads.
“Biden just hung House Democrats out to dry. It’s incompetence bordering on hilarity that they waited
until scores of them walked the plank on this,” said Matt Gorman, a Republican
strategist who has worked on House campaigns. “Crime is only gaining salience
as an issue. It seems that Biden, as he apparently runs for re-election, is
informing his party to wake up.”
The Republican-controlled House passed the measure to
overturn D.C.’s law with the support of only 31 out of 212 Democrats in the
chamber.
Democrats control the Senate, but issues related to D.C. get
a special fast-track to a floor vote and several upper chamber Democrats — and
not just usual suspects like West Virginia’s Joe Manchin
— said they would vote with Republicans to overturn the law.
Democrats like New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
and California Rep. Pete Aguilar denounced Biden on Twitter for undermining the
capital city’s self-governance, while D.C.’s non-voting House delegate, Eleanor
Holmes Norton, called it “a sad day for D.C. home rule.
“With the nationwide increase in crime, most senators do not
want to be seen as supporting criminal justice reform,” Holmes Norton said in a
statement.
Tellingly, however, few national Democrats gave
full-throated defenses of the crime law itself, focusing instead on D.C.’s
ability to govern itself without federal intervention.
Violent crime is up nationwide and in major cities,
Democrats’ main support base, as downtowns struggle to recover from the
pandemic.
Last fall, Gallup found that a record 56% of Americans reported crime had gone up in their area — the highest
uptick since the pollster first started asking the question in 1972. A follow-up survey in January found that 72% of Americans expected crime
to continue to rise this year.
Residents of urban areas reported a 15 percentage point drop
in their perceived quality of life over past year in deep-blue New Jersey,
according to a new Monmouth University poll, while suburbanites said their quality of life remained
stable.
In the nation's capital, home to both the local and federal
lawmakers considering the crime law, homicides were up 30% over last year.
Last month, Rep. Angie Craig, a Minnesota Democrat, was attacked in the elevator of her Washington apartment building
by a man with 12 previous assaults on his record.
In an interview with a local radio station last week, Craig criticized
some reformist Democrats on crime, pointing to, as an example, a failed 2021 ballot measure in Minneapolis to abolish the city’s police department
and replace it with a new agency.
“There are people that have been, in my view, reckless with
their words over the past few years,” she said. “If we have to choose as a
nation between social justice and public safety, we’ve all lost. We have to
choose both.”
GOVERNING.COM
STATE
LAWMAKERS WILL BE RUSHING TO ADDRESS CRIME, AI, HOUSING AND A HOST OF OTHER
ISSUES – INCLUDING GROWING BUDGET GAPS – AHEAD OF ELECTIONS THIS YEAR.
By Jared Brey, Alan Greenblatt, Zina Hutton, Carl Smith Jan.
10, 2024 •
The bills are starting to come due for a number of states.
Tax collections dwindled consistently throughout 2023, as measured in
inflation-adjusted dollars. Now some states are starting to feel the pinch.
On Monday, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey announced cuts of more than $600
million to health and social service programs to address a $1 billion
shortfall. Arizona enjoyed a record surplus last year, but now it faces a
shortfall of roughly $1 billion. And California went from a $100 billion
surplus to a $68 billion shortfall in just a few months. About half the nation's population lives in states that face at
least a near-term shortfall.
With hundreds of billions in extra federal funding from the pandemic just about
having run its course, now is a good time for states to take a pause, suggests
Jonathan Williams, chief economist for the conservative American Legislative
Exchange Council. Over the past couple of years, lawmakers were able to enjoy
nothing but good times — cutting taxes while also raising
spending. But “overall, from a fiscally responsible standpoint, it’s probably a
healthy thing that states are going to need to do some belt-tightening,”
Williams says.
It won’t all be austerity. Despite the fiscal pressures in some states, most
begin the year in good shape, having built up their rainy-day funds to record
levels. “The states are in a strong fiscal position,” says Tim Storey, CEO of
the National Conference of State Legislatures. “There are a few warning signs,
a few lights beeping on the dashboard, but overall states are in a very good
position to weather whatever the economy throws at us.”
Storey says it’s not looking like a year when social issues are likely to
dominate legislative debates as much as they have in the recent past. Although
at least two dozen bills restricting transgender rights have been introduced in
Missouri alone, state Senate President Caleb Rowden
says he does not plan to devote floor time to them this year. When it comes to
abortion, most states have decided by this point whether to preserve rights, or
restrict or ban the procedure.
Still, abortion will remain a live issue in states such as Florida where
abortion rights measures are expected to appear on the ballot. And red states
from Utah to Kentucky are eager to ban DEI, or diversity, equity and inclusion
programs, at least from universities.
Have we mentioned it’s an election year? Partially for that reason, legislators
will introduce bills to crack down on crime, with a particular emphasis on
addressing the fentanyl epidemic. Finding ways to
tighten the border and address the flow of migrants is now not just a concern
for Republicans but increasingly for Democrats as well.
Legislators will cover a broad range of perennial topics, such as energy and
climate, while also tackling tech issues including AI, privacy and cryptocurrency. They’ll also be delving into some areas
that have traditionally not been much of a concern for states, including
international issues from China to Gaza that were traditionally left to the
feds.
While housing is primarily a local concern, state lawmakers view it as a
near-universal problem that demands their attention. “It’s almost like you
can’t build fast enough,” says Bob Duff, majority leader of the Connecticut
Senate. “Every community needs to be a part of the housing solution, especially
affordable housing.”
As the 2024 legislative sessions get underway, here are some of the top issues
lawmakers will be facing:
Artificial intelligence has been around since the 1950s, but its sudden
emergence as a consumer product and its potential to disrupt nearly every
activity and industry has state lawmakers scrambling to address it. A dozen states have already enacted laws demanding agency research of
AI and its use and consequences, while half the states have introduced bills to
address its application both in government and the broader economy.
AI has incredible potential for handling data, automating repetitive tasks and
generally making many functions easier for humans to handle. But lawmakers at
this point are rushing to get ahead of possible downside risks. President Joe
Biden issued an executive order laying out guidelines for “safe, secure and
trustworthy use” of AI in October, while the European Union reached agreement on a sweeping set of policies last
month.
In September, California Gov. Gavin Newsom directed state agencies to develop guidelines for
state use of generative AI. This month, state Sen. Bill Dodd introduced a bill
that would require state agencies to alert users when they are interacting with
AI, while encouraging the state to invest in AI education and build capacity
for its usage in the workforce.
Many of the conversations center on AI’s impact on everyday people — such as
the case of teens facing exploitation from
generated images.
Expect to see further legislation like last year’s bill in New York banning explicit deepfakes
of people.
But the push for regulation is expanding into the political sphere. States
including Florida, New Hampshire and South Carolina are considering legislation
to limit or bar use of manipulated videos known as deepfakes
around elections. “I think AI will be used in presidential election
campaigning,” says Michael Ahn, a public policy
professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston. “There will be active
collection and usage of voters’ information for more effective political
campaigning. However, that will come with potential privacy violations.”
The question of who owns the data used in AI has made for a lively set of legal
challenges. Elected officials will be concerned with putting limits on public
information. But tech experts say they should not rush to hamper tools that are
still being developed. “There is likely an equal, if not greater risk of
unintended consequences from poorly conceived legislation than there is from
poorly conceived technology,” Daniel Castro of the Information Technology and
Innovation Foundation said in response to the EU package. “And, unfortunately,
fixing technology is usually much easier than fixing bad laws.”
—Zina Hutton
Budgets
The flood of federal funds that brought double-digit growth and record
surpluses to state budgets in recent years is receding, but fiscal 2024 state
budgets generally reflected a return to business as usual with modest growth in
spending.
States have long been aware that federal aid would have an end date, says
Kathryn White, director of budget process studies for the National Association
of State Budget Officers (NASBO). They have largely used fiscal recovery funds
for one-time investments, or investments that could strengthen their fiscal
resiliency. Even so, the combination of reduced federal aid and decreased tax
revenue could create challenges.
NASBO expects rainy-day fund balances to be higher at the end of fiscal 2023
than the year before, but for total balances (rainy-day funds plus general fund
ending balances) to decline in 2023 and 2024. State tax revenue is anticipated
to decline by 0.3 percent in fiscal 2023 and 0.7 percent in fiscal 2024, but
a Pew analysis found that in most states revenues remain higher than
they were pre-pandemic.
Meanwhile, there are continuing pressures on spending. The volatility of the
insurance market is a big concern, says Shayne Kavanaugh,
senior research manager for the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA).
Protection against cyber attacks — or natural disasters such as extreme heat events, wildfires, floods and
hurricanes — could become unaffordable, if not unobtainable, for some
jurisdictions. Inflating medical costs are another wild card.
Pressure is growing for bigger investments in affordable housing, support
services for immigrants and technology upgrades. Salary increases may be
necessary to rebuild a depleted workforce. Local governments will need to
adjust as federal funds for schools and child care wind down.
The budget process depends on building productive conversations around
conflicting interests, says GFOA’s Kavanaugh.
Political conflict at the national level has already changed the tenor of
conversations in state and local governments, and he’s concerned that this will
only get worse as political battles intensify in this election year. “That’s
not going to bode well, he says, “for wise or savvy
decisions about budgets or in public finance generally.”
—Carl Smith
Crime
Taking a tough-on-crime stance, whether on the campaign trail or filing legislation, has become common again in state legislatures.
A bill just filed in Kentucky, for example, would increase penalties for violent crimes, including the revival of an idea from the late 20th
century: The bill’s three-strikes provision would require life sentences
without parole for individuals convicted of three separate violent felonies.
After gaining great currency in the wake of the 2020 murder of George Floyd,
the idea of restricting or penalizing police behavior is now just about
moribund. Eliminating cash bail — not requiring defendants to post bail to get
out of jail before trial — is another idea that’s become a non-starter. Last
year, Illinois became the first state to eliminate cash
bail,
but advocates of that approach admit it’s a tough sell elsewhere. “For
reformers, there’s going to be a lot of defense rather than offense,” says Adam
Gelb, president of the Council on Criminal Justice.
This might be a surprise at a time when homicides are down, in most places,
from their spike during the pandemic. Last year, homicides plummeted by 12
percent, according to AH Datalytics. Despite the drop, however, homicides remain higher than
they were prior to the pandemic. And although anger about crime has
historically been driven by homicide and other violent crimes, now people are
also mad about property crimes — particularly auto and retail theft.
The scope of retail theft has sometimes been overblown — the actual data is fairly mixed — but media coverage has been heavy and many lawmakers
are anxious to address it. Last year, a half-dozen states passed laws increasing penalties for organized retail
crime. This year, many bills will seek to lower felony theft thresholds.
Previously, several states had raised the dollar amount in value thieves had to
take before facing felony charges, but the momentum now has swung the other
way.
Raising felony theft thresholds was an important component of the broader
criminal justice reform movement, which seeks to reduce levels of
incarceration. But sensational media coverage about shoplifting and other
retail crimes — along with the reality of sharply elevated numbers of auto
thefts —
will make property crime more of a focus than it’s been for many years, Gelb
predicts. “These theft events have the potential to derail two decades of
criminal justice reform,” he says.
In 2023, several states adopted compassionate release policies or clean slate
laws, giving former offenders the chance to apply for jobs and housing without
noting their criminal records. But reformers recognize that it’s going to be
harder this year than it’s been for some time to overcome the desire among
lawmakers to crack down on murderers, thieves and drug dealers.
—Alan Greenblatt
(David Kidd/Governing)
Education
In 2024, several education issues will carry over from 2023, including school
choice debates and parental rights arguments around book banning and preferred
names/pronouns — as well as increased potential for lawsuits around these
topics. For school administrators, workforce shortages remain a key concern.
Legislators are not only worried about having enough adults working in schools,
but figuring out ways to get kids to come back at a time when chronic
absenteeism has become a serious problem.
At the end of 2023, public schools reported difficulty hiring qualified
teacher’s candidates,
with retention suffering as well, partially due to salaries. Teachers went on strike last year in Los Angeles and Clark County, Nev., among
other jurisdictions, with more strikes likely in 2024. “In the United States of
America, teacher pay has just barely kept up with inflation, so their buying
power isn’t growing,” says Sylvia A. Allegretto, senior economist at the
left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research, who has published
research on the “teacher pay penalty.” “Teachers will leave because there are opportunities that
may have better pay in the private sector.”
Classrooms have become a major battleground in the culture wars. Ten states now
require schools to alert parents when a student uses a different name or
pronoun. Republican lawmakers are pushing for increased parental rights when it
comes to curriculum, as well as putting limits on the way history gets taught,
due to their concerns about longstanding liberal “indoctrination” in schools.
Last year, Democratic Govs. Gavin Newsom of California and J.B. Pritzker of Illinois signed bills banning book bans, but
these continue to proliferate in schools and libraries across the country.
Publishers themselves are pushing back against book bans. Last month, Penguin
Random House, the nation’s largest publisher, filed a federal lawsuit challenging an Iowa law that bans books with
depictions or descriptions of sex acts, claiming it’s too broad. In South
Carolina, the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) filed suit against a ban against an anti-racism book in Pickens
County.
In other words, passing legislation may only be the beginning of legal battles.
“We need to follow court cases, the lawsuits around controversial policies,”
says Julie Marsh, an education professor at the University of Southern
California. “The intent for some folks (is) that these cases could ultimately
reach the Supreme Court.”
—Zina Hutton
(David Kidd/Governing)
Energy and
Climate
Last year was the hottest on record, 1.4 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial
levels and uncomfortably close to the 1.5 degree threshold scientists
have warned us not to cross. There were more billion-dollar climate
and weather disasters in the U.S. in 2023 than in any previous year. COP28, the December meeting of parties to the Paris
Agreement, was largely seen as a failure — but states and localities still have opportunities
to lead.
The $369 billion devoted to clean energy in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act
(IRA) was the biggest commitment America has ever made to climate mitigation. In
October, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced the selection of 16 states that will receive $7
billion over the next eight to 12 years to create seven regional hydrogen hubs.
The IRA includes as much as $100 billion in tax credits for hydrogen
production, but there are unresolved disagreements about how “green” the hydrogen must be to receive the
biggest credits.
Other IRA opportunities include $7 billion in grants to help low-income communities access solar power. DOE has $8.5 billion for home energy rebate programs and $400 million to help states implement building codes that improve
resilience and efficiency. Climate pollution reduction grants have already gone
to several jurisdictions, and $4.6 billion more is available, as is $2 billion for environmental justice. Large awards have been made
to projects in the Colorado River Basin from the $4 billion in the IRA’s
drought mitigation program.
States are also benefiting from private-sector reaction to the IRA. A tracker from the nonprofit Energy Innovation shows
state-by-state distribution of more than $100 billion in private manufacturing
investments in response to its tax credits and other incentives. These
encompass more than 130 projects and 81,000 new jobs.
Support for sustainable energy sources is not universal. The Pew Research Center reports that 87 percent of 10 Republican-leaning
respondents think the U.S. should use a mix of fossil fuel and renewable energy
sources. Fifty-seven percent of Republicans believe the U.S.
should never stop using oil, coal, and natural gas. In 2023, U.S. oil
production hit an all-time high of 13.2 million barrels of crude a day,
millions more than Saudi Arabia or Russia.
Meanwhile, the nuclear industry is in flux. California’s two nuclear power
plants have been granted five more years of operation. A $7 billion cost overrun for a new reactor in Georgia angered
consumers and underscored the industry’s dependence on subsidies. Some in the
industry are pushing for nuclear power to be eligible for tax incentives
designed for hydrogen production.
Climate impacts that are already here — extreme heat events, floods, drought,
stronger hurricanes and wildfires — have made adaptation and resilience major
concerns throughout the country. These include responses ranging from stricter
zoning for flood-prone areas, updating building codes in fire-prone areas,
reimagining stormwater systems and deconstructing
urban heat islands.
—Carl Smith
Fentanyl
Prior to the pandemic, annual deaths from drug overdoses in the U.S. were
already a dreadful 65,000 per year. By 2023, that number had nearly doubled,
to more than 110,000. Roughly 70 percent of those deaths are due to fentanyl, the powerful synthetic opioid.
Fentanyl is now the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45.
Although everyone can agree the death toll is horrific, there is no consensus
about how to address it. For Republicans, the right approach to fentanyl is a combination of stricter law enforcement,
tougher sentencing laws and tighter border security. Many lawmakers want to
stiffen penalties for possession of even small amounts of the drug, in a
reverse of the recent trend toward lowering sentences for simple possession.
Individuals selling or trafficking fentanyl would
face substantially longer sentences.
Many Democrats have accepted the need to stiffen penalties, due not only to the
scourge of fentanyl but the apparently endless
emergence of ever-more-potent drugs. Fatalities from a sedative called xylazine have increased dramatically across the country, but
particularly in the South. A class of opioids known
as nitazenes can be as much as 40 times as powerful as fentanyl.
The fact that synthetic opioids are
so readily available means that a supply-side approach is doomed to failure,
some Democrats and public health officials believe. Even if it were
possible to cut off supply from China and Mexico, there would be plenty of
domestic production. Last year, law enforcement seized more than 360 million
doses of fentanyl across the country. Still, the drug
remained plentiful.
Rather than relying entirely on law enforcement, what’s needed is treatment,
including both medication and therapy, says Jill Rosenthal, director of public
health policy at the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank. “Just like we would approach
heart disease by identifying who’s at risk and who needs treatment, we need to
do the same thing with opioids, because it’s a health
issue,” she says.
There seems to be one area where both conservatives who want harsher penalties
and progressives who favor a public health approach can agree: fentanyl test strips. Fentanyl is often mixed with
other drugs — including counterfeit prescription pills — but the test strips allow users and others to detect
its presence and reduce their risk of overdose. On Jan. 1, new laws took effect
in Illinois that allow trained overdose responders to use fentanyl
strips and pharmacists and retailers to sell them over the counter.
Last month, Pennsylvania’s Legislature passed a bill requiring acute care
hospitals to test for fentanyl and xylazine when administering emergency room drug screenings.
“Testing for fentanyl can mean the difference between
life and death for someone who has unknowingly been poisoned with it,” said GOP
state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who sponsored the bill.
—Alan Greenblatt
Health
States face health challenges on many fronts. A shortage of health-care and
public health workers serves to undercut all their efforts. Some states are
exploring how they can have more authority over health-care markets and temper
the influence of consolidation and private equity on costs. And states are
still dealing with the “unwinding” of expanded Medicaid coverage enacted during
the pandemic.
Total Medicaid enrollment is slowing down since its pandemic peaks. Fewer
patients mean slowing rates of total spending growth in the enormous program.
But it is still growing — projected to grow 3.4 percent in the current fiscal
year, down from nearly 10 percent in fiscal 2022. However, due to the end of
the increased federal match, state spending on Medicaid will continue to grow.
State spending will increase by 17 percent in the current fiscal year,
according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The pandemic drove home the life-and-death importance of modernizing public health
data systems. Estimates of what state and local governments need to bring this
infrastructure up to speed range from almost $8 billion over the next five years to almost $37 billion over the next 10, including $11 billion to make
systems interoperable. State efforts to move this forward are beginning to
include attention to data points that reflect social determinants of health.
Prescription drug pricing is a continuing concern. State policymakers at both
the legislative and agency levels are honing in on the practices of prescription
drug managers, including spread pricing — which means charging a policyholder
or plan more for a medication than they’ve paid for it.
Even putting aside abortion, reproductive issues are likely to receive
increased attention. Maternal mortality rates in the U.S. are far higher than in any other industrial country — and rising.
They are three times greater for Black women. Beginning in 2024, states will
be required to report data regarding the quality of maternal care provided
to those enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. A
need to do more to screen for and prevent sexually transmitted diseases came
into focus in 2023. There’s also increased attention on contraception, perhaps
because of the abortion wars.
States will explore how Medicaid allowances for health-related social needs can
be blended with other programs to address housing shortages. A number are
seeking approval to allow incarcerated people to enroll in Medicaid, to avoid
lapses in coverage when they are released.
—Carl Smith
(David Kidd/Governing)
Housing
Long considered a local concern, especially for big cities, housing is now a
growing priority for state lawmakers. No state has enough affordable rentals for the lowest-income renters. Meanwhile, potential
homebuyers are feeling priced out due to higher interest rates, increased
construction costs and simply being priced out. Last year, state legislators
introduced well over 2,000 bills related to housing and homelessness, according
to the National Conference of State Legislatures – nearly double the number in
2022. “We know that the ultimate goal is to build more housing,” says Bob Duff,
majority leader of the Connecticut Senate. “We’re about 95,000 units shy of
where we need to be on our housing stock.”
Last year, several states adopted broad-based policy measures aimed at making
housing more affordable, more accessible and easier to build. Most of the
state-level efforts focus on supply-side constraints — things like zoning
regulations, limits on density and permitting rules — which don’t fall neatly
into the typical red-blue political divide. States with major packages of
reforms include liberal stalwarts such as Washington, which passed a series of
bills allowing duplexes and fourplexes in many areas
currently restricted to single-family housing, as well as allowing accessory
dwelling units on many lots. But they also include the so-called Montana Miracle, with the GOP-dominated Legislature passing legislation
similar to Washington’s.
Such policy achievements are partly the outgrowth of years of advocacy by the
YIMBY movement (short for Yes In My Back Yard), which
positions itself as a countervailing force to local homeowners who often oppose
new construction in their neighborhoods. The movement is built on the theory
that high housing costs are tied directly to onerous building regulations. As
more pro-construction laws are adopted, a growing body of research will put
that theory to the test. Even as many states make progress on housing reform,
other states, both red and blue, have struggled to get legislation passed,
given the complicated but well-organized coalitions that oppose state overrides
of traditionally local decision-making.
At the local level, leaders continue to experiment with ideas such as easing
parking mandates to reduce building costs. Many of the boldest initiatives of
the pandemic era, including eviction moratoriums and direct cash assistance to
low-income renters, have expired. But renters continue to organize for stronger
protections, including rent control, bans on discrimination against holders of
housing vouchers and rules requiring landlords to offer “just cause” for
evictions. In some cities, organized tenants are a growing political force in
their own right.
—Jared Brey
(David Kidd/Governing)
Immigration
Federal policies and systems determine the growth of the immigrant population
and the pace at which cases are resolved. Congress is
currently debating both security measures and spending, but this may end up
being a year when campaigning on immigration issues takes precedence over real
action. That means states will be working hard to fill policy and service gaps.
Encounters between Border Patrol agents and migrants at the U.S./Mexico border
— which include both apprehensions and expulsions — have reached record highs. Authoritative data regarding the outcome of these encounters isn’t
available past 2021, but changes in federal policy have greatly increased the number of people entering the country with
uncertain, temporary status. More are crossing the border who
have been observed by agents (or technology) but not apprehended.
The Migration Policy Institute estimates there are more than 12 million
unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. Past studies have found that more than 6 in 10 didn’t cross a
border illegally, but overstayed their visas. Migration from South America and
the Caribbean is increasing, including greater numbers from countries that
don’t have a long history of mass immigration to the U.S., such as Nicaragua,
Ecuador and Venezuela.
Chicago’s Office of New Americans offers services including legal assistance, language
access and help for undocumented students. It’s an example of a trend in other
cities. But states and cities are struggling to meet the costs of providing services
and housing to migrants, especially jurisdictions known for pro-sanctuary
policies.
States have long held that the federal government should do more to reimburse
the costs resulting from its policies. Relief funds that have helped meet
housing emergencies are disappearing, and some cities are using their own
facilities to provide shelter. Mayors of cities including Chicago, Houston and New York complain they’re overwhelmed by newcomers and have
called on the Biden administration for more support. "This is a national
problem that should not fall on the backs of local cities," New York Mayor
Eric Adams said last month.
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, ordered the National Guard to border
communities in December. “Yet again, the federal government is refusing to do
its job to secure our border and keep our communities safe,” Hobbs said. “With
this executive order, I am taking action where the federal government won’t.”
The complaint about federal inaction, of course, has been louder and more
persistent from Republican governors who are concerned not just about the
number of individuals crossing but the lethal drugs some of them carry. Last
year, Florida enacted a sweeping law imposing penalties on companies that hire
undocumented workers; blocked local governments from issuing identification
cards to them; increased penalties for human smuggling; and required hospitals
to collect data on costs for caring for undocumented immigrants.
A Texas law scheduled to take effect in March would make it a state crime for
people to enter the state illegally from other countries. The Justice Department has sued to block the law.
Progressives aren’t happy about the tougher stance some Democrats are taking,
or the administration’s willingness to negotiate on some GOP demands. “We
shouldn’t be scapegoating immigrant lives,” Delia Ramirez, a Democratic congresswoman from Illinois, complained last
month. Pro-immigrant groups note that migrants help address workforce shortages
and point out that mistreatment of undocumented migrants
remains a problem, from substandard wages and dangerous working conditions
to violation of child labor laws.
More people are working across borders because they fear they could die if they
stay where they are, from starvation, war, murder or natural disasters,
suggests Theresa Cardinal Brown, senior adviser for immigration and border
policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. Many bills that made it through state
legislatures in 2023 were intended to foster inclusion of immigrant populations, from extending tuition
programs to expanding access to driver’s licenses, regardless of status.
Still, the political momentum on this issue appears to be swinging the other
way. Because the Biden administration has “refused to secure the border,” Texas
GOP Gov. Greg Abbott said on Jan. 6, “Texas has, and we will continue, to erect
barriers, repel migrants, [and] bus and fly migrants to New York, Chicago, and
other places like that."
—Carl Smith
International
Affairs
Laura Capps gets asked all the time about the war in Gaza. This is surprising
to her because she’s not a federal official, but rather a county supervisor in
Santa Barbara County, Calif. “The last time I checked, our county doesn’t have
a State Department, but I’m getting asked about it everywhere I go,” she says.
In a strange way, the nationalization of American politics means state and even
local politicians are being asked to react to international events — or are
eagerly rushing to do so. Numerous liberal cities have adopted resolutions
calling for a cease-fire in Gaza, while the conservative American Legislative
Exchange Council (ALEC) has crafted a model resolution for states to issue in support of Israel.
The war in Gaza is not the only international issue state lawmakers are taking
on. Last year, several states passed resolutions expressing support for Taiwan. But when it comes to China, some state lawmakers don’t
think resolutions are enough. In November, a federal court blocked a Montana law that banned the use of TikTok
in the state, due to its Chinese ownership, but a solid majority of states have
barred TikTok from government devices.
Last year, Montana and several other states also enacted laws restricting Chinese nationals from
buying property.
A law in Florida, for example, bars them from owning property within 10 miles
of military bases or critical infrastructure such as airports. “We’re going to
see more of these bills going forward,” says Jonathan Williams, executive vice
president of ALEC. “On China-related items, this is going to be one of the most
active sessions in recent memory.”
The old saw that partisanship stops at the water edge was barely ever true, but
it formerly was the case that state and local officials rarely felt the need to
weigh in on international questions. To the extent that they had a foreign
policy, it was all about promoting trade. China’s money used to be green enough for any state, but
not anymore. Especially for politicians with national
ambitions.
On the presidential campaign trail, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis
and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, both Republicans, have been trading
barbs about which of the two of them used to be friendlier to China. “There is
not another governor in this race that hasn’t worked to recruit Chinese
companies,” Haley said in November. “Every governor has done the same thing,
just like every one of you has Chinese products in your home.”
—Alan Greenblatt
Mental
Health
The COVID-19 pandemic helped peel back the lid on a nationwide mental health
crisis that had been building for years. While mental health is an urgent
priority, it also intersects with many other key policy concerns, from
homelessness to public health, policing and public safety, workforce
policy and gun violence. Voters in California will decide whether to approve a
$6 billion bond issue to fund behavioral health housing and treatment settings
on the March ballot.
Mental health challenges have grown across the board, but particularly among
young people. According to a widely cited report from the federal Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention earlier
this year, 57 percent of teen girls said they felt “persistently sad or
hopeless,” with 30 percent saying they’d seriously contemplated suicide.
Advocates are now pushing states, cities and counties to provide more
school-based mental health services. Twenty states have added mental health
education to their curricula since 2016, according to the National Alliance on
Mental Illness (NAMI).
A major step forward at the federal level was the passage in 2020 of the
National Suicide Hotline Designation Act, which established 988 as a universal
hotline number for suicide and mental health crises. Congress left much of the
work of implementation up to states, notes Stephanie Pasternak, NAMI’s director
of state affairs, including the establishment of emergency call centers and
response teams. In setting those up – and fielding millions of calls – states
have run into serious workforce challenges, as has been the case with other
areas of service. NAMI is now pushing states to pass a monthly fee on phone lines to pay for crisis response, similar to the ones that
fund 911 emergency services. Eight states have passed such fees thus far.
In terms of response, more and more lawmakers have come around to the belief
that law enforcement agencies aren’t the best equipped to address mental health
challenges, says Debbie Plotnick, a state advocacy
leader at Mental Health America. New telehealth
regulations are making it easier for people to access mental health treatment
as well. But there’s been regression in some areas in Plotnick’s
view, including crackdowns on street homelessness in some places. That’s an
issue that should be addressed with housing policy, she says.
“What is difficult is building out the infrastructure to make sure that mental
health needs are attended to before people reach the crisis stage,” Plotnick says. “Most policymakers are looking at crisis as
the point where they need to do intervention.”
—Jared Brey
(David Kidd/Governing)
Pensions
Pensions remain a trillion-dollar problem. States have improved the health of
their pension plans over the past decade, but many remain badly underfunded.
Last year, pensions enjoyed an average return on their investments of 7.5
percent. Partly as a result, average funding ratio for state and local pensions
is projected to increase to 78.1 percent, up from 74.9 percent, according to
the Equable Institute. Although the funding shortfall went down last year, it
still stands at $1.44 trillion.
At this point, no state is deep in the danger zone — meaning none are unable to
meet their current obligations. (Several were at risk of this just a few years
ago.) But even though states have increased their pension contributions
collectively by 7 percent a year since 2008, 21 states are still not making
contributions large enough to keep their funding gaps from growing, according
to the Pew Charitable Trusts.
The share of state and local government spending devoted to pensions now
exceeds 5 percent, which is markedly higher than it was at the dawn of the 21st century.
“Ultimately, pension funds are on a better trajectory than they were before the
global financial crisis” of 2008, says Jean-Pierre Aubry,
Associate Director of State and Local Research at Boston College’s Center for
Retirement Research.
That being said, states still need to prepare for future periods of
instability, making plans that take into account economic downturns. “A very
promising practice that now half the states are doing is stress testing, asking
what will pension plans look like if investments do worse than expected,” says
David Draine, Pew’s principal investigator for public
sector retirement systems. “Now states are able to plan for what a bad
[financial] time might result in, and make policy changes to avoid excessive
risks – or realize that the test is showing you that your current policies are
sustainable, and that you're in great shape.”
States have been moving new hires into defined-contribution plans, along the
lines of 401(k)s, leaving fewer employees left in the
old defined-benefit pension programs. Although intended as a cost saving
measure, there are now challenges for states that have few active employees
left to pay into the old system. As states wrestle with workforce shortages,
this is an area where at least some policymakers are exploring a restoration.
Last summer, Kentucky Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear
called for a defined-benefit plan for state troopers. “There was a mass exodus
of troopers and officers when the defined benefits were taken away,
understandably,” Beshear said. “A pension is a promise that I will always keep.”
Kentucky pensions have long been among the nation’s
worst-funded. Discussing the upcoming budget, state House Speaker David Osborne said it would be “appropriate to assume that there
will be significant additional contributions into the pension system.”
— Zina Hutton
Poverty
Childhood poverty dropped dramatically during the pandemic, thanks to an
expansion of the federal child tax credit. Families spend the lion’s share of
their additional cash on essentials such as food, housing, clothes and
transportation. The federal increase, which eliminated complicated eligibility
requirements, expired in 2021, but its impact has inspired a rash of state
interest in adopting their own credits over the last two years.
More states are expected to follow suit in 2024. At least 14 states now have
their own versions of a child tax credit, and 10 more are considering new
proposals. As they take effect, new evidence will inform an ongoing debate
among researchers around the impact of expanded tax credits on employment
rates. “All of a sudden, you have half the states with a child tax credit or an
active proposal,” says Megan Curran, policy director at the Columbia University
Center on Poverty and Social Policy. “That, in the course of a year, is an
amazing policy shift.”
Separately, more states are requiring employers to provide paid sick leave to
workers. Nebraska voters may get a chance to vote on the policy at the ballot
in 2024, after state lawmakers rejected a proposal in 2021. Missouri voters
could weigh in on a similar policy, along with a proposal to increase the state
minimum wage to $15 per hour. Some states, including Colorado, Maryland and
Maine, are working to implement new family and medical leave policies, offering
extended benefits for childbirth or caring for elderly relatives. Others are
starting to offer family leave specifically for educators. The National
Conference of State Legislatures is also watching an increase in state
legislation related to expanding food benefits for children and families and
reducing food insecurity. Meanwhile, at the local level, dozens of cities are
experimenting with guaranteed cash assistance programs, often targeted at
families with young children.
—Jared Brey
Taxes
Both red and blue states have cut tax rates in recent years. The trend of
cutting both personal and corporate income tax rates slowed but didn’t stop in
2023. “It’s a trend that stands out in recent history,” says Jared Walczak, vice president of state projects at the Tax
Foundation. “We’ve never had a period with that many [state tax cuts] in such a
short time and no other issue has caught fire quite like that.”
Many states were flush with surpluses thanks in large part to federal COVID-19
relief payments, and lawmakers sought to return some of that cash to taxpayers.
The effects of their choices will start to become clear over the next few
years. With revenues starting to decline, it’s possible the pendulum of state
tax policy could swing the other direction. One exception could be property tax
rates. With home values spiking, some states could seek to adjust rates to give
homeowners a break. But in terms of income, some Democratic lawmakers are still
pushing to increase taxes on the wealthiest citizens. This year, Massachusetts
will enact its first state budget that includes proceeds from a tax on millionaires
that voters approved in 2022.
In Minnesota, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor majority came close last year to
adopting a so-called worldwide combined reporting rule, a complex change that
would allow the state to collect corporate taxes based on companies’ overall
global profits. It’s a hotly debated concept, with potential drawbacks as well
as benefits for states. Minnesota would have been the only state in the U.S. to
fully adopt it, but other states, including New Hampshire and Vermont, are
considering similar rule changes in 2024. It’s an obscure tax policy that could
either gain steam or fizzle out, depending on economic and political
conditions.
—Jared Brey
(David Kidd/Governing)
Workforce
The United States continues to experience workforce shortages. If every
unemployed person found a job, there would still be 3 million unfilled
openings, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. This ongoing labor shortage, which certainly extends to
the public sector, is being driven by several factors, including
pandemic-related burnout, an ongoing wave of baby boomer retirements in the
public sector and a decline in the number of adults overall who are
participating in the workforce.
Total public-sector employment remains below the level it had reached at the
beginning of 2020, just before the pandemic. Cities, counties and states are
struggling to compete with private-sector employers who are also actively
recruiting and often able to offer salaries that the public sector can’t match.
Earlier this year, the Police Executive Research
Forum found
that resignations were running 50 percent higher than before the pandemic.
Nearly 90 percent of school
districts struggled
to hire enough teachers for the current school year. There hardly seems to be a
job category without challenges. In December, the Board of Corrections in
Arkansas asked Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders to
activate the National Guard to help fill vacancies among prison guards.
Public-sector agencies are now seeking new strategies to broaden the applicant
pool. Aside from raises, bonuses and flexible scheduling to retain current
workers, 2024 will see an increase in skills-based hiring in the public sector, as opposed to demanding college
degrees or other educational credentials, as employers re-evaluate hurdles
blocking applicants from marginalized and underutilized groups, including young
people and racial and ethnic minorities. A particular area of focus will be
bringing in people with transferrable skills and experience from the private
sector or other roles, making sure they get hired at the appropriate levels,
rather than facing a career ladder reset.
Hawaii passed legislation last July to allow military spouses who follow
active-duty personnel to the state to make it easier to use professional
licenses from other states. That idea may well spread to other states this
year, as public-sector agencies seek to better utilize the 13 percent of military spouses who are unemployed.
“One goal should be looking at nontraditional pools of people, maybe veterans,
the Reserves, the National Guard, military spouses,” says Cara Woodson Welch,
chief executive officer of the Public Sector HR Association. “It can be really
hard for any of those groups as they're coming into the workforce. And the
public-sector workforce is one of the premier places that really could use
their services because they're already connected to a sense of mission and
purpose.”
—Zina Hutton
REPUBLICAN
PLATFORM 2016
@USE A
Fair Labor
Standards Act to encourage competitive
employment for persons
with disabilities.
We affirm our support for its goal of
minimizing the separation
of children with
disabilities from their peers. We
endorse efforts like
Employment First that replace
dependency with jobs in
the mainstream of the
American
workforce.
We oppose the
non-consensual withholding
of care or
treatment from people with disabilities,
including newborns, the
elderly, and infirm, just as
we oppose
euthanasia and assisted suicide, which
endanger especially
those on the margins of society.
We urge the Drug
Enforcement Administration to
restore its ban on the
use of controlled substances
for
physician-assisted suicide.
Ensuring Safe
Neighborhoods:
Criminal Justice
and Prison Reform
The men and
women of law enforcement
— whether patrolling our neighborhoods or our
borders, fighting
organized crime or guarding
against domestic terror
— deserve our gratitude
and support. Their
jobs are never easy, especially
in crisis
situations, and should not be made more
difficult by politicized
second-guessing from
federal officials. The
current Administration’s lack
of respect for
them, from White House intervention
in local arrests
to the Attorney General’s present
campaign of harassment
against police forces
around the country,
has been unprecedented. With
all Americans, we mourn
those whom we have lost
to violence and
hatred. To honor their sacrifice, we
recommit ourselves, as
individuals and as a party, to
the rule of law and
the pursuit of justice.
The conduct of
the Department of Justice
has included
refusal to enforce laws, stonewalling
congressional committees,
destroying evidence,
reckless dealing with
firearms that led to several
deaths on both sides
of our border, and defying
a citation for
contempt. It has urged leniency for
rioters while turning a
blind eye to mob attacks on
peaceful citizens
exercising their political rights.
A new
administration must ensure the immediate
dismissal and, where
appropriate, prosecution of
any Department
officials who have violated their
oath of office.
The next
president must restore the public’s
trust in law
enforcement and civil order by first
adhering to the rule of
law himself. Additionally,
the next president
must not sow seeds of division
and distrust
between the police and the people they
have sworn to serve
and protect. The Republican
Party, a party
of law and order, must make clear in
words and action that
every human life matters. Trump!
Two grave
problems undermine the rule of
law on the federal
level: Over-criminalization and
over-federalization. In the first case,
Congress and
federal agencies have
increased the number of
criminal offenses in the
U.S. Code from 3,000 in
the early 1980s to
more than 4,500 today. That
does not include an
estimated 300,000 regulations
containing criminal
penalties. No one, including the
Department of Justice, can come up with accurate
numbers. That
recklessness is bad enough when
committed by Congress,
but when it comes from
the unelected
bureaucrats of the federal agencies,
it is intolerable.
The power of career civil servants
and political
appointees to criminalize behavior is
one of the worst
violations of constitutional order
perpetrated by the
administrative state.
To deal with
this morass, we urge caution
in the creation of
new “crimes” and a bipartisan
presidential commission to
purge the Code and
the body of
regulations of old “crimes.” We call
for mens rea elements in the
definition of any new
crimes to protect
Americans who, in violating a
law, act
unknowingly or without criminal intent. We
urge Congress to
codify the Common Law’s Rule
of Lenity, which
requires courts to interpret unclear
statutes in favor of a
defendant.
The
over-federalization of criminal justice
is one of many
ways in which the government
in Washington has
intruded beyond its proper
jurisdiction. The essential
role of federal law
enforcement personnel in
protecting federal
property and combating
interstate crime should not
be compromised by
diversion to matters properly
handled by state and
local authorities.
We applaud the
Republican Governors
and legislators who
have been implementing
criminal justice reforms
like those proposed
by our 2012
platform. Along with diversion of
first-time, nonviolent
offenders to community
sentencing, accountability
courts, drug courts,
veterans treatment
courts, and guidance by faithbased institutions with
proven track records of
rehabilitation, our platform
emphasized restorative
justice to make the
victim whole and put the offender
on the right path.
As variants of these reforms are
undertaken in many states,
we urge the Congress
to learn from what
works. In the past, judicial
discretion about sentences
led to serious mistakes
concerning dangerous
criminals. Mandatory
minimum sentencing
became an important tool
for keeping them
off the streets. Modifications to
it should be
targeted toward particular categories,
especially nonviolent
offenders and persons with
drug, alcohol, or
mental health issues, and should
require disclosure by
the courts of any judicial
departure from the
state’s sentencing requirements.
The constitutionality
of the death penalty is
firmly settled by its
explicit mention in the Fifth
Amendment. With the murder
rate soaring in our
great cities, we
condemn the Supreme Court’s
erosion of the right of
the people to enact capital
punishment in their
states. In solidarity with those
who protect us, we
call for mandatory prison
time for all
assaults involving serious injury to law
enforcement officers.
We call on the
Congress to make the federal
courts a model for the
rest of the country in
protecting the rights of
victims and their families.
They should be
told all relevant information about
their case, allowed
to be present for its trial, assured
a voice in
sentencing and parole hearings, given
access to social and
legal services, and benefit from
the Crime Victims
Fund established under President
Reagan
for that sole purpose.
Public officials
must regain control of their
correctional institutions,
some of which have become
ethnic and racial
battlegrounds. Persons jailed for
whatever cause should be
protected against cruel
or degrading
treatment by other inmates. Courts
should not tie the
hands of prison officials in dealing
with these problems.
We encourage states to offer
opportunities for literacy
and vocational education
to prepare
prisoners for release to the community.
Breaking the
cycle of crime begins with the children
of those who are
prisoners. Deprived of a parent
through no fault of
their own, youngsters from these
families should be a
special concern of our schools,
social services, and
religious institutions.
The internet
must not become a safe haven for
predators. Pornography,
with its harmful effects,
especially on children,
has become a public health
crisis that is
destroying the lives of millions. We encourage states to continue to fight this
public menace and pledge our commitment to children’s safety
and well-being. We
applaud the social networking
sites that bar sex
offenders from participation. We
urge energetic
prosecution of child pornography,
which is closely linked
to human trafficking.
Combatting Drug Abuse
The progress
made over the last three decades
against drug abuse is
eroding, whether for cultural
reasons or for lack of
national leadership. In many
jurisdictions, marijuana is
virtually legalized despite
its illegality
under federal law. At the other end
of the drug
spectrum, heroin use nearly doubled
from 2003 to 2013,
while deaths from heroin have
quadrupled. All this
highlights the continuing
conflicts and
contradictions in public attitudes and
public policy toward
illegal substances. Congress
and a new
administration should consider the longrange
implications of these trends for public health
and safety and
prepare to deal with the problematic
consequences.
The misuse of
prescription painkillers —
opioids — is a related
problem. Heroin and opioid
abuse touches our
communities, our homes, and
our families in
ways that have grave effects on
Americans
in every community. With a quadrupling
of both their
sales and their overdose deaths, the
opioid crisis is
ravaging communities all over the
country, often hitting
rural areas harder than urban.
Because
over-prescription of drugs is such a large
part of the problem,
Republican legislation now
allows Medicare Part D
and Medicare Advantage
plans to limit
patients to a single pharmacy.
Congressional
Republicans have also called upon
the Centers for
Medicare and Medicaid Services to
ensure that no
physician will be penalized for limiting
opioid prescriptions.
We look for expeditious
agreement between the
House and Senate on
the Comprehensive
Addiction and Recovery Act,
which addresses the opioid epidemic from both the
demand and supply
sides of the problem.
FROM ABC NEWS
RNC MOVES TO KEEP 2016 PLATFORM INTACT THROUGH 2024, CONTROVERSIES AND
ALL
The party’s 2016 platform will remain in effect through
2024.
By Kendall Karson and Meg
Cunningham June 12, 2020, 6:50 PM
Trump to deliver acceptance speech in Jacksonville, Florida
Nearly four years ago, the Republican Party, on their way to nominating Donald Trump, adopted a strict, conservative platform around issues of gender and sexual orientation in
Cleveland, Ohio, against the efforts by some of the party’s more moderate
faction to soften the language.
Now, the Republican National Committee moved this week to
simply allow that 2016 platform to stand for the next four years, instead of
working to approve a new one - a decision that is roiling some Republicans who
argue that the old platform is outdated and not reflective of the current views
of the president or the party.
"The Republican Party is changing," said Charles
T. Moran, managing director of the Log Cabin Republicans, a national
conservative organization that supports gay and lesbian rights. "I know we
say that every year when we talk about the platform. But again, the
demonstrable evidence that we have now is so much more than we've ever had in
the past."
Even the president, after the RNC voted this week, further
muddled the considerations over the party's platform by insisting he prefers a
new one.
"The Republican Party has not yet voted on a Platform.
No rush. I prefer a new and updated Platform, short form, if possible,"
he tweeted on Friday,
In 2016, led by religious conservatives exerting significant
influence over the party’s social planks, Republicans, after some wrangling,
ultimately approved a rigid definition of marriage and family as between a man
and a woman, and incensed some members of the party over homosexuality and
conversion therapy.
The move more broadly signaled the party’s rightward shift
towards the evangelical wing, but certain aspects of the 66-page document,
mainly the party’s more socially conservative positions, fell even to the right
of Trump.
MORE: Republican National Convention: Everything You Need to Know
Despite the more controversial positions inscribed in the
party’s platform, two months before the party is set to hold Trump’s 2020
nominating convention split between two cities due to the limitations of the coronavirus and the incumbent president’s desire for a full
coronation ceremony, the party’s 2016 platform will remain in effect through
2024.
Late Wednesday night, the RNC’s executive committee unanimously
approved procedures outlining the plans for a significantly pared down
convention in Charlotte, N.C., in which only the official business of the
convention will take place. The president’s acceptance speech will be held in
Jacksonville, Fla.,
the RNC announced on Thursday.
Part of the procedures state that only the credentials
committee will meet in Charlotte, and that the two other committees, including
the platform committee, will not convene, meaning that the 2016 platform, with
"no changes," will serve as the party’s platform through the next
four years.
The impetus behind the RNC’s decision to allow for the 2016
platform to remain in effect, rather than attempt to pass a new one, was to
thwart the possibility of a small body of delegates gathering in Charlotte
passing an entirely new platform on behalf of all of the delegates, a
Republican familiar with the decision said.
The rest of the party’s delegates won’t be meeting in
Charlotte, as the Republican said, because of the North Carolina governor’s
current orders to combat the coronavirus.
"So in the absence of the platform committee convening
to pass a new platform, the 2016 one remains in effect," the Republican
said.
MORE: Trump to give nomination acceptance speech in Florida after standoff with
North Carolina
Carrying over the platform from 2016, back when President
Barack Obama was still in office, leaves dozens of criticisms of the
"current administration" and the "current president" -
another consequence of keeping the language from four years ago.
"That same provision of law is now being used by
bureaucrats — and by the current President of the United States — to impose a
social and cultural revolution upon the American people by wrongly redefining
sex discrimination to include sexual orientation or other categories," the
2016 platform states of Title IX, the federal law barring sex discrimination on
college campuses.
In 2016, the party’s platform committee drafted and ratified
a document that drew a hard-line on LGBTQ rights, defining marriage as a union
"between one man and one woman," rebuffing the Supreme Court’s
landmark decision on same-sex marriage by adding "we do not accept the
Supreme Court’s redefinition of marriage and we urge its reversal," and
putting religious freedom above condemning anti-gay discrimination.
"We oppose government discrimination against businesses
or entities which decline to sell items or services to individuals for
activities that go against their religious views about such activities,"
adding that businesses and agencies "should not be forced to choose
between following their faith and practicing their profession."
The platform also included, "We support the right of
parents to determine the proper medical treatment and therapy for their minor
children," which at the time, unsettled the Log Cabin Republicans.
In a letter to members after the draft
platform appeared,
the former president of the group, Gregory T. Angelo, wrote that the tenet is
"an endorsement of the debunked psychological practice of 'pray the gay
away.'"
"There’s no way to sugar-coat this: I’m mad as
hell," he wrote.
But the platform, a formal blueprint of the party’s
policies, priorities, and vision, is largely written for the party’s loyalists
and is functionally non-binding.
Some Republicans, who strongly disagree with elements of the
2016 platform, don't view the move by the executive committee to leave the
platform in place until 2024 as final.
"I still think there's some room for negotiation about
what that's going to look like," Moran told ABC News.
Moran said he does believe that by late August, when the
Republican convention is set to take place, there won't be just a
"wholesale rollover" of the 2016 platform, which he called a
"stink bomb." Instead, he said, there will either be an
"additional document" from the administration or the national party,
or the platform will be nixed altogether. "I mean, we don't have to have a
platform," he said.
"The president clearly does not support the 2016
platform. There's a lot in it that is just, I mean it's worse than the 2012
platform, and it's not just on LGBT issues," he asserted. "There's
stuff in there about Ukraine that Paul Manafort had
shoved in there...I think you saw that there has been a consistent effort from
this administration to reform that."
The RNC did not respond to ABC News' requests for a response
about whether the executive committee vote was final, or if the door is still
open for further updates to the platform including a potential addendum, as
Moran mentioned.
At the same time, the committee touted the president's
achievements for the LGBTQ community, putting distance between Trump and the
platform's guiding principles. On Thursday, the RNC released a memo, timed with Pride month, outlining the president's
"unprecedented steps" for the LGBTQ community, from appointing the
first openly gay person to a cabinet-level position to keeping Obama-era
protections for LGBTQ workers in federal agencies.
Rick Wilson, a GOP strategist and co-founder of the Lincoln
Project, an anti-Trump super PAC, told ABC News that he thinks the platform
will change at Trump's impulse.
"So whatever he does on impulse at the last second is
what's going to happen at the committee," Wilson said. "The platform
should have been recast well before 2016 into something more sensible."
Wilson asserted that although the platform is the official
stance of the party and the presidency, it usually translates little into
policy decisions.
"Platform never means anything. It never means
anything, because it doesn't really ever translate to legislative action. It is
to make interest groups and constituencies inside the parties feel good about
themselves," he said. "There are some things in the platform that are
very backwards. And gay marriage is one of them. Marijuana is one of
them."
Beyond the socially conservative stances within the
document, one of the most controversial aspects came from the Trump campaign.
In 2016, Paul Manafort, then the
chair of the Trump campaign, tucked a controversial change into the Republican
platform during the July convention, regarding the U.S. providing arms to
Ukraine.
The platform revision occurred as the Republican National
Convention got underway in Cleveland. On July 18, party insiders took the
unusual step of watering down its formal position on whether the U.S. should
help protect Ukraine from Russian incursions – a move viewed as a surprising
concession to the Russian government at a time of tension in Ukraine.
The platform change took place during the Republican
convention organized by Manafort, who had previously
worked for a pro-Russian Ukrainian political party.
The president shrugged off the notion that he was involved
in tweaking the platform in an interview with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos
during the summer of 2016.
"I wasn't involved in that. Honestly, I was not
involved," Trump said at the time.
MORE: Mueller asked Trump about 2016 RNC platform change regarding Ukraine:
Sources
Trump was asked by former special counsel
Robert Mueller,
during his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, about
the platform change, according to sources familiar with the president’s
responses, and he responded to the written questions from Mueller’s team that
he was not aware of the platform change to the best of his recollection.
In late May of this year, Axios reported that the president’s son-in-law and senior advisor,
Jared Kushner, was leading an effort by the Trump campaign to win over voters
by seeking to overhaul the GOP’s platform, including some of the language that
appears to be about conversion therapy that was drafted in 2016.
The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment
about the platform.
The decision by the executive committee comes after stalled
discussions between the president and North Carolina's Democratic governor over
restrictions to safely host a large-scale event in the midst of the coronavirus.
Republican officials, who requested Gov. Roy Cooper approve
the party's outline for a safe, yet "full scale" convention, which
involved 19,000 delegates, alternate delegates, staff, volunteers, elected
officials and guests inside the Spectrum Center, were met with a rebuff. The
rift between the RNC and Democratic leaders in North Carolina ultimately led to
the GOP moving the celebration to Florida.
Only about 336 delegates, are expected to appear in
Charlotte, a fraction of the thousands of delegates and alternates at a typical
convention, according to the new procedures approved Wednesday night, and for
those delegates not present, they can designate one of the delegates present as
a proxy to cast their vote for the nominations.
ABC News' Will Steakin and John Santucci contributed reporting.
AXIOS
SCOOP: GOP ADS
HIT VULNERABLE DEMS OVER D.C. CRIME LAW
By Andrew Solender Mar 8, 2023 - Politics & Policy
House
Republicans are out with their opening salvo against House Democrats over a
D.C. crime law that lowers maximum penalties for some violent offenses.
Why it matters:
It's an early example of the pipeline Republican are creating between their new
House majority, which can force Democrats into tough votes on wedge issues, and
their campaign apparatus, which can whack them with those votes in 2024 ads.
Driving
the news: The National Republican Congressional Committee is releasing digital
ads, accompanied by a five-figure ad buy, against 15 vulnerable House Democrats
who voted against a resolution last month blocking the D.C. crime law from
taking effect.
• "173 House Democrats voted to
support reduced sentences for violent crimes. So crazy, even President Biden
won't support the anarchy," the ads say, referring to President Biden
saying he would sign the resolution.
• The targeted Democrats include
Trump-district Reps. Mary Peltola (Alaska) and Matt
Cartwright (Pa.), as well as Rep. Abigail Spanberger
(Va.).
• The others: Chris Deluzio
(Pa.), Dina Titus (Nev.), Emilia Sykes (Ohio), Frank Mrvan
(Ind.), Gabriel Vasquez (N.M.), Hillary Scholten
(Mich.), Jahana Hayes (Conn.), Mike Levin (Calif.),
Seth Magaziner (R.I.), Steven Horsford
(Nev.), Susan Wild (Pa.) and Val Hoyle (Ore.).
What's next: The
Senate is set to vote on the resolution this week, even after the D.C. Council
attempted to withdraw the controversial law and said they would go back to the
drawing board.
Between the lines:
House Democrats have been incensed at Biden for waiting until after the House
vote to say he won't veto the resolution, giving swing-seat House Democrats
less cover to vote for it and bolster their tough-on-crime credentials.
• “It was less than ideal," Rep. Dan
Kildee (D-Mich.) told Axios on Tuesday. "[O]ur hope is that there will be much greater clarity going
forward.”
• "It would’ve been really good to
have a heads up," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the Congressional
Progressive Caucus.
The other side:
"Knowing President Biden's intentions would not have changed my
vote," Rep. Magaziner told Axios
on Tuesday.
• Magaziner
added, however, that "as a general principle, the more communication from
the White House the better."
• Democratic Congressional Campaign
Committee spokesperson Tommy Garcia told Axios that
Democrats have "proven they are committed to public safety – combating gun
violence, funding local policing, and working to improve justice and
accountability at all levels of government."
THE HILL
REPUBLICANS RETOOL CRIME MESSAGE FOR 2024
BY JULIA MANCHESTER - 02/27/23
12:05 PM ET
Republicans up and down the ballot are working to retool their
message on crime going into 2024 after the party found only limited success
with the issue in the midterms.
Last week, likely presidential candidate and Florida
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) traveled to the Democratic enclaves of New York and
Chicago ahead of his expected presidential campaign launch with stops at police
unions. Further south and down the ballot, the Republican State Leadership
Committee rolled out a wave of digital ads in Virginia hitting Democrats over
opposing legislation that would charge drug dealers with homicide. And
former President Trump, who’s running for another White House bid in 2024, has
repeatedly hammered President Biden on the issue.
The efforts come as the party looks to regain ground
following the GOP’s disappointing midterm elections last year.
While the GOP generally underperformed in 2022, Republicans
point to New York where the party made inroads focusing on crime as a top
issue. Republicans in the Empire State picked up three House seats, including
the one held by then-Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Sean Patrick
Maloney (N.Y.).
And despite ultimately losing to Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), then-GOP gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin performed better than expected against the governor.
“Lee Zeldin ran a one-issue
campaign on the issue of crime,” said one House Republican strategist. “Every
day he was at a metro stop or a corner store where somebody got shot or
mugged.”
“That’s just a great case study in how effective the message
can be,” the strategist added.
And Democrats say they too are keenly aware of the potency
of the issue going into the next election.
“Democrats have learned that they need to take that issue
very seriously and I hope, get ahead of it,” said Jon Reinish,
a New York-based Democratic strategist.
Corey Grable, an Independent who
is running for president of New York City’s Police Benevolent Association, told
HillTV that policies promoted by the left flank of
the Democratic Party, including calls to defund the police, have put the party
on the wrong side of the issue.
“As far as the Democrats, I think that unfortunately,
they’ve gotten out on the wrong side of the issue,” Grable
said. “The reality is many of the policies that have been created have actually
had this unintended consequence of actually hurting people that they were
aiming to protect.”
And Republicans have used crime to tie the majority of
Democratic candidates to the left-leaning flank.
“It’s the clearest and easiest way for Republicans to tag
Democrats to the fringe of the party,” said the House Republican
strategist.
But Democrats have employed a tougher-on-crime message in
recent years while also acknowledging police brutality.
In his State of the Union address earlier this month,
President Biden expressed support for police officers but noted the death of Tyre Nichols, an unarmed Black man who died in police
custody last month.
Incumbent Democratic mayors, including Chicago Mayor Lori
Lightfoot, who is running for reelection and is against defunding the police,
also find themselves under pressure on the issue. A WBEZ/Chicago Sun-Times/Telemundo Chicago/NBC5 survey released earlier this month found that 44 percent of
Chicago voters named crime and public safety as their “most important issue,”
followed by criminal justice reform at 13 percent.
Lightfoot has accused some of her opponents of being
supportive of defunding law enforcement on the debate stage and in ads.
Meanwhile, Republicans are also using crime and the
situation at the southern border as a means to talk about the ongoing opioid crisis in the country.
“Crime is the starting point, but once we dig into what
issues the issues of crime [are], this is one where we believe that this is a
top issue that’s going to matter to voters this cycle,” said one Republican
operative.
And polling shows that voters are concerned about the
ongoing crisis.
An Axios-Ipsos
survey released
on Thursday found that 26 percent of voters, a plurality in the findings,
said that they view opioids as the greatest threat to
public health in the U.S. Thirty-seven percent of Republican voters said the
same.
Biden and Democrats have incorporated the opioid crisis into more of their rhetoric, with Biden
addressing the issue at the State of the Union.
“Having the president offering his own solutions which do
have broad, bipartisan appeal about the opioid crisis
I think was a major step in the right direction,” Reinish
said. “Democrats have got to take the bull by its horns.
STARK WARNING OVER REPUBLICANS’ ‘DEHUMANIZING’ RHETORIC ON CRIME
Experts
say party’s ‘tough-on-crime’ approach for 2024 could spark rise in violence and
worsen US mass incarceration
By
Adam Gabbatt Sun
14 May 2023 06.00 EDT
Republican and rightwing rhetoric over the state of crime in
the US could spark a rise in violent incidents and worsen the country’s mass
incarceration problem, experts say, as “tough-on-crime” political ads and
messaging seem set to play a large role in the 2024 election.
Violent
crime was a huge focus for Republican candidates during the 2022 midterm
elections. Republicans spent about $50m on crime ads in the two months leading up to those
elections, the ads pushing a dystopian vision of cities ridden by murder,
robbery and assault, and of Democratic politicians unwilling to act.
As the
2024 contest heaves into view, it is clear that Republicans plan to follow the same playbook.
“Joe Biden
and the defund-the-police Democrats have turned our once-great cities into
cesspools of bloodshed and crime,” Trump said in a recent campaign video.
Trump said
if elected president he would order police forces to reinstate “stop and frisk”
– a police tactic which has been shown to disproportionately
target young
Black men – and said he wanted to introduce the death penalty for drug dealers.
Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who is expected to be
Trump’s closest rival for the Republican presidential nomination, has also
leaned into tough-on-crime rhetoric and policy. Last month, DeSantis signed a law lowering the death penalty threshold in Florida,
allowing people convicted of certain crimes to be sentenced to death if eight
or more jury members recommend it.
“They
think that’s the way to score political victories,” said Udi
Ofer, a professor at Princeton University and the
former deputy national political director of the American Civil Liberties
Union.
“I think
there’s a bit of a kneejerk, and, quite frankly, lazy attitude that
tough-on-crime is the only way to win an election, despite the fact that we
have so much evidence today that shows there are other ways.”
There is
also an element of Republicans, and, Ofer said, some
Democrats, pouncing on an increase in violent crime during the Covid pandemic.
The
Brennan Center for Justice found that the number of murders per 100,000
people rose by nearly 30% nationwide in 2020, while aggravated assault rose by
11.4%. The rate of murder rose in big cities, which tend to vote Democratic and
which are repeatedly demonized by Republicans and the rightwing media. But it
also rose across the rest of the country.
“So-called
red states actually saw some of the highest murder rates of all,” the Brennan
Center said.
Since
that peak, most types of violent crime have now dropped. Crime declined in 35
large cities in 2022, according to the Council on
Criminal Justice, although rates remain higher than pre-pandemic levels. Still,
the rate of homicide in major cities was about half that of historic peaks in
the 1980s and early 1990s.
The 1980s
was when tough-on-crime rhetoric “exploded”, Ofer
said. It culminated in the election of prosecutors who promised more
convictions and longer sentences.
The
impact, Ofer said, was “an exponential growth in
incarceration” in the US. About 300,000 people were in prisons and jails in
1973, but by 2009 that number had grown to 2.2m – making the US the largest
incarcerator in the world.
“This was
a result of hundreds of new laws and practices at the local level, at the state
level, at the federal level, including new mandatory minimum laws, more cash
bail and pre-trial detention, and more aggressive prosecutorial and policing
practices,” Ofer said.
In this
crime crackdown, not everyone was treated equally. Black people have been
historically more likely to be arrested than white people, which led to higher
rates of incarceration. A 2003 report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that in 2001
“an estimated 16.6% of adult black males were current or former State or
Federal prisoners”. Just 2.6% of adult white males had been incarcerated.
Some
progress has been made in the last two decades. By 2020 the number of people in
jail or prison was down to 1.2 million – meaning the US still has the fifth highest
incarceration rate in the world – but the obsession with tackling crime,
through measures including more arrests, more prosecutions and more imprisonments,
could see a reversal.
“We are on
the verge again of seeing the types of policies that devastated particularly
low-income communities of color grow again as it did in the 1980s and 1990s.”
Republicans
have led the charge on crime rhetoric, Ofer said. But
now Democrats are getting in on the act – “we are seeing a growing movement
within the Democratic party pushing for more tough-on-crime policies”, Ofer said.
The
rhetoric and fearmongering over crime has led, in
part, to an expansion of “stand-your-ground” laws in the US. In the past 10
years, 14 states in the US have added some form of the law, which can rule that
people determined to have acted in self-defense can escape prosecution for
actions up to and including murder.
A 2022
investigation by Reveal found that 38 states now have some version of “stand
your ground” – and the laws have proved devastating: a study published in 2022
found that the legislation was linked with an 8-11% increase in homicides.
There are
direct consequences on the ground for people of color, immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community
Stephen
Piggott
Ironically,
given the accusation from the right that Democrats are too soft on crime, it
appears to be traditionally “red states” that have the more serious crime
problem.
“The
murder rate in the 25 states that voted for Donald Trump has exceeded the
murder rate in the 25 states that voted for Joe Biden in every year from 2000
to 2020,” Third Way, a US thinktank, reported in January. Third Way also found that in 2020 murder rates “were 40%
higher in Trump-voting states than Biden-voting states”.
Although
Republicans harangued Democrats over crime in the 2020 midterms, the strategy
seems to have had mixed success. Republicans largely underperformed in those elections, and Ofer pointed
to the success of
progressive prosecutors across
the country as evidence that a tough-on-crime message is not always a
successful route to take.
As well as
the impact on incarceration and violent offenses, the tough-on-crime approach
can also lead to the demonization of certain communities, said Stephen Piggott,
a researcher at Western States Center, a non-profit organization which works to strengthen
democracy.
Republican
talking points about the danger of immigrants and people who live in inner
cities could be behind an increase in attacks on minority groups. “In recent years, there’s been a
real mainstreaming of both violent and dehumanizing rhetoric, and it’s espoused
by elected officials and media personalities,” Piggott said.
“And it’s
really served to kind of normalize this political violence. When you have
individuals with large platforms, like elected officials and media
personalities, and they’re talking about things like an impending civil war, it
could lead to folks kind of taking that to heart and
then acting on it.”
The number
of hate crimes in the US increased by 12% in
2021,
according to the FBI, although the true number is likely to be much higher,
given data from some of America’s largest cities was not included in the FBI’s
report.
About 65%
of the hate-crime victims were targeted because of their race, according to the
report, while 16% were targeted over their sexual orientation and 14% of cases
involved religious bias.
“So there
are direct consequences on the ground for people of color, immigrants, the
LGBTQ+ community,” Piggott said.
“There’s a
lot of impact going on right now.”
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
Fund suicide prevention, mental health services for police
POLICING:
Republicans: Oppose Democratic police oversight bill.
Republicans sponsored a bipartisan bill to fund suicide prevention and mental
health support services for law enforcement officers.
Democrats: Restrict police use of force and increase public
oversight. Bill held officers liable in lawsuits,
banned no-knock warrants and stopped military surplus acquisitions.
Source: CampusElect on 2020 Major
Party positions , Aug 30, 2020
Criminals behind bars cannot harm
the public
Liberals do not understand this simple axiom: criminals
behind bars cannot harm the general public. To that end, we support mandatory
prison sentencing for gang crimes, violent or sexual offenses against children,
repeat drug dealers, rape, robbery and murder. We support a national registry
for convicted child murderers. We oppose parole for dangerous or repeat felons.
Courts should have the option of imposing the death penalty in capital murder
cases.
Source: 2012 Republican Party Platform ,
Aug 27, 2012
The Republican Party and President Bush support a federal
Constitutional amendment for victims of violent crime that would provide
specific rights for victims protected under the U.S. Constitution. We support
courts having the option to impose the death penalty in capital murder cases.
Source: 2004 Republican Party Platform, p. 74 , Sep 1, 2004
Best way to deter crime is to
enforce existing laws
We agree that the best way to deter crime is to enforce existing
laws and hand down tough penalties against anyone who commits a crime with a
gun. This approach is working. Since Project Safe Neighborhoods was instituted
in 2001, hundreds of new federal, state, and local prosecutors have been hired
to target criminals who use guns. Prosecutions are up 68 percent, and the
violent crime victimization rate is down 21 percent.
Source: 2004 Republican Party Platform, p. 74 , Sep 1, 2004
More victims
rights and harsher penalties for certain crimes
An agenda to restore the public’s safety:
·
No-frills prisons that make the
threat of jail a deterrent to crime.
·
Increased penalties and resources to
new drugs such as Ecstasy.
·
An effective program of
rehabilitation, where appropriate.
·
Support of community-based diversion
programs for first time, non-violent offenders.
·
Reform the invented Exclusionary
Rule, which has allowed countless criminals to get off on technicalities.
·
Constitutional amendment to protect
victims’ rights.
Source: Republican Platform adopted at GOP National Convention , Aug 12, 2000
Death penalty is an effective
deterrent
Within proper federal jurisdiction, the Republican Congress
has enacted legislation for an effective deterrent death penalty, restitution
to victims, removal of criminal aliens, and vigilance against terrorism. They
stopped federal judges from releasing criminals because of prison overcrowding,
made it harder to file lawsuits about prison conditions, and, with a
truth-in-sentencing law, pushed states to make sure violent felons actually do
time.
Source: Republican Platform adopted at GOP National Convention , Aug 12, 2000
ONTHEISSUES
FROM DEMOCRATIC
PARTY PLATFORM
More police oversight; stop military surplus acquisition
POLICING:
Democrats: Restrict police use of force and increase public
oversight. Bill held officers liable in lawsuits,
banned no-knock warrants and stopped military surplus acquisitions.
Republicans: Oppose Democratic police oversight bill.
Republicans sponsored a bipartisan bill to fund suicide prevention and mental
health support services for law enforcement officers.
Source: CampusElect on 2020 Major
Party positions , Aug 30, 2020
New protections for domestic
violence/sexual assault victims
MORE POLICING:
Democrats: Add protections for victims of domestic violence
and sexual assault. New protections added to Violence Against
Women Act promoted housing stability and economic security for victims of domestic
violence, sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking.
Republicans: Split on Violence Against
Women Act.
Source: CampusElect on 2020 Major
Party positions , Aug 30, 2020
Too young to drink, too young for life without parole
We must break the school-to-prison pipeline that too often
relies on arrests & law enforcement to address misbehavior that ought to be
handled and deescalated within the school. A growing number of states have
recognized it is unjust--and unjustifiable-- to punish children and teenagers
as harshly as adults. We believe that if you aren't old enough to drink, you
aren't old enough to be sentenced to life without parole. The federal
government will incentivize states to stop incarcerating kids.
Source: Democratic Party Platform adopted at 2020 Convention , Jul 27, 2020
Ban chokeholds, new standards for
"no-knock warrants"
Democrats will establish strict national standards governing
the use of force, including banning the use of chokeholds and carotid holds and
permitting deadly force only when necessary and a last resort to prevent an
imminent threat to life. Americans must feel safe when they are asleep in their
own homes. We will work to establish "no-knock warrants" standards.
The risk of mistakes and unintended consequences is too great.
Source: Democratic Party Platform adopted at 2020 Convention , Jul 27, 2020
Poverty is not a crime; eliminate
cash bail
Poverty is not a crime, and it should not be treated as one.
Democrats support eliminating the use of cash bail and believe no one should be
imprisoned merely for failing to pay fines or fees, or have their driver's
licenses revoked for unpaid tickets or simple violations. Equal justice under
the law should not be contingent on the ability to pay for quality legal
representation, which is why we support increasing funding for public defenders
and for the Legal Services Corporation.
Source: Democratic Party Platform adopted at 2020 Convention , Jul 27, 2020
End mass incarceration & reform
criminal justice
[At the 2016 convention preparation], we were victorious in
including amendments in the platform that made it the policy of the Democratic
Party to fight for:
·
Abolishing the death penalty, ending
mass incarceration, and enacting major criminal justice reforms;
·
Establishing a path toward the
legalization of marijuana;
·
Ending disastrous deportation raids,
banning private prisons and detention centers, and passing comprehensive
immigration reform.
Source: Where We Go From Here, by B. Sanders, p.16-7, on
2016 DNC , Jul 9, 2016
Death penalty must not be arbitrary
We will continue to fight inequalities in our criminal
justice system. We believe that the death penalty must not be arbitrary. DNA
testing should be used in all appropriate circumstances, defendants should have
effective assistance of counsel, and the administration of justice should be
fair and impartial.
Source: 2012 Democratic Party Platform ,
Sep 4, 2012
Crack down on gangs and drugs
We are proud that Democrats led the fight to put more than
100,000 cops on the beat through the COPS program, and we will continue our
steadfast support for COPS and community policing. To keep our streets safe for
our families, we support tough punishment of violent crime and smart efforts to
reintegrate former prisoners into our communities as productive citizens. We
will crack down on the gang violence and drug crime that devastate so many
communities, and we will increase drug treatment, including mandatory drug
courts and mandatory drug testing for parolees and probationers, so fewer crimes
are committed in the first place. We support the rights of victims to be
respected, to be heard, and to be compensated. We will help break the cycle of
domestic violence by punishing offenders and standing with victims.
Source: The Democratic Platform
for America, p.18 ,
Jul 10, 2004
Fight crime with prevention, community police
Serious crime is down to its lowest level in a quarter-century.
But we have just begun to fight. We will fight to increase the number of
community police. We will toughen the laws against serious crime. We will
reform a justice system that spills half a million prisoners back onto our
streets each year. We will put the rights of victims and families first again.
And we will push for more crime prevention, to stop the next generation of
crime before it’s too late.
Source: 2000 Democratic National Platform as adopted by the DNC , Aug 15, 2000
Tougher punishments, including the death penalty
Bill Clinton and Al Gore took office
determined to turn the tide in the battle against crime, drugs, and disorder in
our communities. They put
in place a tougher more comprehensive strategy than anything tried before, a
strategy to fight crime on every single front: more police on the streets to
thicken the thin blue line between order and disorder, tougher punishments -
including the death penalty - for those that dare to terrorize the innocent,
and smarter prevention to stop crime before it even starts.
They stood up to the gun lobby, to pass the Brady Bill and
ban deadly assault weapons - and stopped nearly half a million felons,
fugitives, and stalkers from buying guns. They fought for and won the biggest
anti-drug budgets in history, every single year. They funded new prison cells,
and expanded the death penalty for cop killers and terrorists.
Source: 2000 Democratic
National Platform as adopted by the DNC , Aug 15, 2000
DNA testing & post-conviction reviews in death penalty
cases
We believe that in death penalty cases, DNA testing should
be used in all appropriate circumstances, and defendants should have effective
assistance of counsel. In all death row cases, we encourage thorough
post-conviction reviews. We will put the rights of victims and families first
again. And we will push for more crime prevention, to stop the next generation
of crime before it’s too late.
Source: 2000 Democratic National Platform as adopted by the
DNC, Aug 15, 2000
DEMOCRATS.ORG
PROTECTING COMMUNITIES AND BUILDING
TRUST BY REFORMING OUR CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
Our criminal justice system is failing to keep communities safe—and
failing to deliver justice. America is the land of the free, and yet more of
our people are behind bars, per capita, than anywhere else in the world.
Instead of making evidence-based investments in education, jobs, health care,
and housing that are proven to keep communities safe and prevent crime from
occurring in the first place, our system has criminalized poverty, overpoliced and underserved Black and Latino communities,
and cut public services. Instead of offering the incarcerated the opportunity
to turn their lives around, our prisons are overcrowded and continue to rely on
inhumane methods of punishment. Instead of treating those who have served their
time as full citizens upon their return to society, too many of our laws
continue to punish the formerly incarcerated, erecting barriers to housing,
employment, and voting rights for millions of Americans.
Democrats believe we need to overhaul the criminal justice
system from top to bottom. Police brutality is a stain on the soul of our
nation. It is unacceptable that millions of people in our country have good
reason to fear they may lose their lives in a routine traffic stop, or while
standing on a street corner, or while playing with a toy in a public park. It
is unacceptable that Black parents must have “the talk” with their children, to
try to protect them from the very police officers who are supposed to be sworn
to protect and serve them. It is unacceptable that more than 1,000 people, a
quarter of them Black, have been killed by police every year since 2015.
Democrats also recognize that all too often, systematic cuts to public services
have left police officers on the front lines of responding to social challenges
for which they have not been trained, from homelessness to mental health crises
to the opioid epidemic. We can and must do better for
our communities.
Democrats know we can end the era of mass incarceration and
dramatically reduce the number of Americans held in jails and prisons while
continuing to reduce crime rates, which have fallen steadily from their peak
nearly three decades ago. This is the moment to root out structural and
systemic racism in our criminal justice system and our society, and reimagine public safety for the benefit of our people and
the character of our country.
We must start by preventing people from entering the
criminal justice system in the first place. Democrats believe we must break the
school-to-prison pipeline that too often relies on arrests and law enforcement
to address misbehavior that ought to be handled and deescalated within the
school. We support re-issuing federal guidance from the Department of Education
and the Department of Justice to prevent the disparate disciplinary treatment
of children of color and children with disabilities in school and educational
settings. Democrats believe every school should have sufficient funding to
employ guidance counselors, social workers, nurses, or school psychologists to
help guarantee age-appropriate and racially equitable student disciplinary
practices, rather than turning to police to resolve these issues.
A growing number of states have recognized it is unjust—and
unjustifiable—to punish children and teenagers as harshly as adults. We believe
that if you aren’t old enough to drink, you aren’t old enough to be sentenced
to life without parole. The federal government will incentivize states to stop
incarcerating kids, and develop community-based alternatives to prison and
detention centers for youth and invest in after-school programs, community
centers, and summer jobs to provide opportunities for young people at risk. And
Democrats believe that children who do enter the juvenile justice system should
be given a true second chance, including by automatically sealing and expunging
juvenile records.
Democrats believe we must ensure real accountability for
individual and systemic misconduct in our police departments, prevent law
enforcement from becoming unnecessarily entangled in the everyday lives of
Americans, and reimagine policing for the benefit and
safety of the American people. In recent years, some innovative police
departments have enacted evidence-based reforms to change their approach by
investing in robust training and putting in place—and, even more crucially,
enforcing—strong standards governing conflict resolution, de-escalation, and
use of force. We must build on these evidence-based approaches and implement
them nationwide.
Democrats will establish strict national standards governing
the use of force, including banning the use of chokeholds and carotid holds and
permitting deadly force only when necessary and a last resort to prevent an
imminent threat to life. Americans must feel safe when they are asleep in their
own homes. We will work to establish “no-knock warrants” standards. The risk of
mistakes and unintended consequences is too great. We will require immediate
application of these standards to all federal law enforcement agencies and
condition federal grants on their adoption at the state and local level. We
will require officer training in effective nonviolent tactics, appropriate use
of force, implicit bias, and peer intervention, both at the academy and on the
job. And we will ban racial and religious profiling in law enforcement.
Democrats will support measures to improve training and education
for judges, corrections officers, prosecutors, public defenders, and police
officers to ensure transgender and gender non-conforming people receive fair
and equitable treatment in the criminal justice system.
It is past time to end the failed “War on Drugs,” which has
imprisoned millions of Americans—disproportionately Black people and
Latinos—and hasn’t been effective in reducing drug use. Democrats support
policies that will reorient our public safety approach toward prevention, and
away from over-policing—including by making evidence-based investments in jobs,
housing, education, and the arts that will make our nation fairer, freer, and
more prosperous.
Democrats will reinvigorate community policing approaches,
so officers on the beat better serve the neighborhoods they work in, and make
smart investments to incentivize departments to build effective partnerships
with social workers and mental health and substance use counselors to help
respond to public health challenges. Body cameras are not a panacea, but
Democrats believe they can help improve accountability and transparency; we
support their continued use and will take steps to improve compliance, require
their use in blended federal-local task forces, and promulgate best practices
to protect personal privacy. Democrats believe weapons of war have no place on
our streets, and will once again limit the sale and transfer of surplus
military weapons to domestic law enforcement agencies—a policy President Trump
reversed immediately upon taking office.
We cannot create trust without holding those in power
accountable for their actions. Democrats will reinvigorate pattern-or-practice
investigations into police misconduct at the Department of Justice, and
strengthen them through new subpoena powers and expanded oversight to address
systemic misconduct by prosecutors. Far too often, the law has shielded police
officers who stand accused of heinous violations of civil and human rights.
Democrats support lowering the intent standard for federally prosecuting law
enforcement officials for civil rights violations. We will also act to ensure
that victims of federal, state, or local law enforcement abuses of power can
seek justice through civil litigation by reining in the doctrine of qualified
immunity.
The American people deserve access to timely and accurate
data on activities supported by their tax dollars, including policing. We will
collect and publish data on the use of force in police departments across the
country to promote transparency and accountability. To increase transparency
and improve federal, state, and local law enforcement hiring practices,
Democrats will also establish a national registry of officers who have been
found to have abused their power.
Democrats also support measures to increase diversity among
the ranks of police departments, so our law enforcement agencies look more like
the communities they serve. And we will seek increased funding for officer
health and well-being in police departments across the country, including for
personal safety equipment and mental health services.
Substance use disorders are diseases, not crimes. Democrats
believe no one should be in prison solely because they use drugs. Democrats
will decriminalize marijuana use and reschedule it through executive action on
the federal level. We will support legalization of medical marijuana, and
believe states should be able to make their own decisions about recreational
use. The Justice Department should not launch federal prosecutions of conduct
that is legal at the state level. All past criminal convictions for cannabis
use should be automatically expunged. And rather than involving the criminal
justice system, Democrats support increased use of drug courts, harm reduction
interventions, and treatment diversion programs for those struggling with
substance use disorders.
Poverty is not a crime, and it should not be treated as one.
Democrats support eliminating the use of cash bail and believe no one should be
imprisoned merely for failing to pay fines or fees, or have their driver’s
licenses revoked for unpaid tickets or simple violations. Equal justice under
the law should not be contingent on the ability to pay for quality legal
representation, which is why we support increasing funding for public defenders
and for the Legal Services Corporation.
Since 1990, the United States has grown by one-third, the
number of cases in federal district courts has increased by 38 percent, federal
circuit court filings have risen by 40 percent, and federal cases involving a
felony defendant are up 60 percent, but we have not expanded the federal
judiciary to reflect this reality in nearly 30 years. Democrats will commit to
creating new federal district and circuit judgeships consistent with
recommendations from the Judicial Conference.
Sentencing decisions should be based on the facts of each
case, including the severity of the offense and individuals’ circumstances.
Democrats support allowing judges to determine appropriate sentences, which is
why we will fight to repeal federal mandatory minimums, incentivize states to
do the same, and make all sentencing reductions retroactive so judges can
reconsider past cases where their hands were tied. We believe it is long past
time to end the federal sentencing disparity between crack and powdered
cocaine, which has contributed to the disproportionate imprisonment of people
of color. And Democrats continue to support abolishing the death penalty.
Our courts should reflect our country. Democrats will
appoint people to the bench who are committed to seeing justice be served, and
treating each case on its merits. We will nominate and confirm federal judges
who have diverse backgrounds and experiences, including as public defenders,
legal aid attorneys, and civil rights lawyers.
Democrats are proud that the Obama-Biden Administration
commuted the sentences of more than 1,700 people serving unjust sentences
following thorough review of their individual cases, and we support the
continued use of the President’s clemency powers to secure the release of those
serving unduly long sentences. We denounce President Trump’s inappropriate use
of clemency to help his friends and political cronies avoid justice. We also
support establishing an independent clemency board to ensure an appropriate,
effective process for using clemency, especially to address systemic racism and
other priorities.
Private profit should not motivate the provision of vital
public services, including in the criminal justice system. Democrats support
ending the use of private prisons and private detention centers, and will take
steps to eliminate profiteering from diversion programs, commercial bail,
electronic monitoring, prison commissaries, and reentry and treatment programs.
Democrats believe prisoners should have a meaningful opportunity to challenge
wrongful convictions and unconstitutional conditions in prisons. We also
believe that too many of our jails and prisons subject people to inhumane
treatment, and will work to end practices like solitary confinement for adults
and juveniles, ban the use of restraints on pregnant federal inmates, and ban
the use of chokeholds and carotid holds. Incarcerated people must not be denied
access to vital medical care or unnecessarily exposed to disease, as they have
been during the COVID-19 pandemic. And Democrats will pursue a holistic
approach to rehabilitation, increasing support for programs that provide
educational opportunities, including pursuing college degrees, for those in the
criminal justice system, both in prison and upon release.
Democrats believe in redemption. We must deepen our
commitment to helping those who have served their time re-enter society, earn a
good living, and participate in our democracy as the full citizens they are. We
support the automatic expungement of certain criminal
records for those that have been fully acquitted, wrongfully convicted, or
pardoned by the executive. We will aim to ensure access to transitional housing
for returning citizens, support expanded access to mental health and substance
use treatment, and will stop the practice of reincarcerating
people for technical violations of probation or parole. Democrats support
federal and state efforts to “ban the box” and will make it easier for
returning citizens to access work opportunities through the Job Corps. The
formerly incarcerated should not be blocked from exercising their voting rights
or accessing public services, including Pell Grants and nutrition assistance,
available to other free citizens of the United States. Continuing
to punish a person after they have rejoined the community is both cruel and
counterproductive.
NBC
BIDEN BUCKS LIBERALS AND TELLS
DEMOCRATS TO GET TOUGH ON CRIME
It shows how powerful the issue has become, says James
Carville, who helped Bill Clinton counter soft-on-crime attacks
during the 1990s crime
By Alex Seitz-Wald and Carol
E. Lee March 4, 2023, 7:00 AM EST
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s decision Thursday on a local crime law sends a national message to
fellow Democrats about how he believes they should address Republican criticism
of the nation's rising crime rates.
Democrats have focused predominantly on police reform since
the George Floyd protests reignited a national debate over race and law
enforcement three years ago. But rising violent crime rates and growing
perceptions of unease in major cities have prompted a chorus of party
strategists and officials to call for a tougher approach to counter Republican attacks.
Biden — who has a history of pushing for stauncher crime
laws — has tried to straddle the Democratic divide but was forced this week to
choose sides when he said he wouldn't allow the Washington, D.C., city
government to enact laws that would lower some criminal penalties.
“If Republicans thought President Biden would hand them a
wedge issue for 2024, they thought wrong,” said Democratic strategist Lis Smith, a veteran of former President Barack Obama’s
re-election campaign and an architect of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s rise. “It’s going to be very hard to define him
as soft on crime after he’s denounced defunding the police and reducing
sentences for crimes like carjackings.”
Nothing focuses the mind of a White House gearing up for
re-election like an incumbent getting only 17% of the vote, as Chicago Mayor Lori
Lightfoot did Tuesday in the city’s crime-focused mayoral contest.
The Washington, D.C., bill offered a slew of complications.
The Democratic-controlled city council passed a sweeping criminal reform
measure but then the mayor, also a Democrat, vetoed it. The council overrode
her veto.
But D.C.'s unusual existence as not fully independent of the
federal government means that Congress can quash any law change. A Republican-led
bill got the support of about 30 Democrats in the House and is now expected to
pass the Senate with a handful of Democrats, forcing Biden to either sign or
veto it. Democrats, who have increasingly pushed for D.C. to be left to rule itself, called on Biden to veto the measure on the grounds
that it isn't the federal government's place to determine local criminal law.
But Biden didn't acquiesce.
"I support D.C. Statehood and home-rule – but I don’t
support some of the changes D.C. Council put forward over the Mayor’s
objections – such as lowering penalties for carjackings,"
the president said on Twitter.
The White House is planning a full-throated effort to
present him as tough on crime to try to chip away at any Republican advantage
on an issue that has put many Democrats on the defensive.
NPR
Republicans blame Democrats for rising crime. Here's the complicated
truth
By Martin Kaste NOVEMBER 3, 2022 5:01 AM ET
In New
York's race for governor, Long Island Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin has gained ground on incumbent Democrat Kathy Hochul by repeating a simple message.
"There
is a crime emergency right now in New York state,"
Zeldin declared at a mid-October campaign event
outside Rikers Island jail, where he accepted the
endorsement of the Corrections Officers' Benevolent Association.
"Time
and again, one new pro-criminal law after the next, where was Kathy Hochul?"
Zeldin is talking about a series of laws passed in recent years by
the Democratic-majority state legislature, which has been in the vanguard of
the national movement to reduce incarceration. Prisoners are now guaranteed
more rights in the parole process, they can earn their freedom more quickly,
and fewer minors are being prosecuted as adults. The most prominent of the
changes, though, was the bail
reform of 2019,
which eliminated cash bail for most misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies.
That means more criminal defendants stay out of jail
before trial. Critics
say some have used that freedom to drive up the
crime rate.
Liberal
criminal justice reform policies in the country coincided with the upheaval of
the pandemic
"You
get arrested with a gun in New York City this year — almost 17% of those people
already have an open felony case. And that's up from 12% in 2017," says
Michael Lipetri, New York Police Department's chief
of crime control strategies. "So we're seeing career criminals carrying
firearms in New York City like we've never seen before. That's a recipe for
disaster."
But defenders of bail reform look at the statistics
and come
to the opposite conclusion.
They say
the changes were long overdue, given the dire conditions inside of many jails —
such as New York's Rikers Island — and the fact that
cash bail usually means poorer
defendants have to await trial in jail, while wealthier people go free.
"For
a long time, Black and brown communities have been harmed by the policies and
laws connected to our legal system," says New York City Councilmember
Tiffany Cabán, a former public defender and strong
proponent of bail reform. "This is us trying to right some wrongs, and
we've done it in a way that has not had an effect on public safety, and that's
what all the data and research show."
The
complicated truth is that liberal criminal justice reform policies in New York
and elsewhere in the country coincided with the upheaval of the pandemic. The
same period saw a record-breaking surge in gun purchases, school closures,
economic distress and other societal disruptions. With so many social variables
in the mix, it's nearly impossible to isolate a single cause for higher crime.
Republican
campaigns are, nevertheless, making the case that liberal policies are to blame. In Pennsylvania, the
Republican-controlled legislature has spent the campaign season holding
hearings about the alleged failure of Philadelphia's progressive district
attorney, Larry Krasner, to prosecute enough gun crimes. They may try to
impeach him before election day.
"It
is a fundamentally anti-democratic, fundamentally fascistic effort to erase the
votes of the people," says Krasner, who was easily re-elected by
Philadelphia voters in 2021. And he says the Republican charge that he doesn't
go after violent criminals is unfounded.
Concern
that Democrats don't take seriously the demoralization and effectiveness of
police after protests
"My
office prosecutes a higher proportion of the gun arrests that [police] make
than my predecessor," Krasner says.
"I'll
tell you who we release!" he continues. "We're not going to go after
you if you're simply a buyer of a small amount of weed, and we're not going to
go after you if you're a prostitute."
He says
the low conviction rates for serious crimes can be traced back to a police
department that doesn't have the resources it needs.
The same could
be argued in other big cities. Despite protestors' calls for the
"defunding" of police in 2020, most departments retained
or increased their
budgets. But
many also lost officers, who quit or retired in large numbers, especially in big
cities run by Democrats.
Peter Moskos, a former police officer who now teaches at the John
Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, says he worries that Democrats
aren't taking seriously the reduced effectiveness of policing since the
protests.
"There
is a real attempt at denialism," he says.
"And I think a lot of that comes from a movement that was focused solely
on reducing mass incarceration, which is a movement in principle that I
support."
Peter Kerre founded a volunteer
group called Safewalks, and says New York City's streets
remain dangerous. But he opposes efforts to roll back criminal justice reforms
that have released more people from jail and prison.
Fears an
overreaction by Republicans
Moskos points out that the national total of people in jail,
prison or probation has decreased significantly in the past decade, and now
it's time for liberal Democrats to acknowledge and fix instances of reforms
that went too far. If they don't, he says he fears an overreaction by
Republicans.
"It's
a vacuum that will be filled by the Trumpian
right," he says, "and that won't be pretty."
But
community activist Peter Kerre disagrees. He founded
a volunteer group called Safewalks to escort people
home, following attacks on women in the Bushwick,
Brooklyn neighborhood during the depth of the pandemic.
"It's
true that there are people who slip through the cracks, and end up committing
crimes again," he says. But as someone who participated in the Black Lives
Matter protests of 2020, he says, "We've heard about all the people
unjustly locked up, a majority people of color, and to reverse anything without
looking at implications of racism would be just going back to square one."
THE AMERICAN
PROSPECT
HOW DEMOCRATS MISHANDLED CRIME
SEE WEBSITE for CHARTS and GRAPHS
The most effective issue for Republicans in this midterm is
a result of Democratic elites failing to understand what their diverse base of
working-class voters wants.
BY STANLEY B. GREENBERG NOVEMBER 3, 2022
Democratic candidates faced a barrage of ads on crime
starting in September and early October, a barrage aided by Fox News
dramatically increasing its crime reporting.
And it worked. It stalled and reversed the momentum
Democrats had gained with the Supreme Court decision on abortion, the January
6th hearings, the Justice Department search of Mar-a-Lago,
and Democrats passing the Inflation Reduction Act.
The 2022 midterms will be remembered as a toxic campaign,
but an effective one in labeling Democrats as “pro-crime.” When voters in our
survey were asked what they feared the most if Democrats win full control of
the government, 56 percent rushed to choose “crime and homelessness out of
control in cities and police coming under attack,” followed by 43 percent who
chose “the southern border being open to immigrants.” Those two outpointed
voters’ worries about Congress banning abortion nationally and women losing
“equal rights.”
While Democrats were still competitive in the congressional
ballot throughout the fall, they trailed Republicans by 13 points on which
party would do better on crime. A quarter of Democrats in
October said Republicans would do a better job. That included a quarter of
Blacks and a stunning half of Hispanics and Asian Americans.
So, I was asked repeatedly by colleagues and campaigning
Democrats, “What should we be saying on crime and when I’m attacked for
‘defunding the police’?” To be honest, Democrats were in such terrible shape on
crime at this late point, I said, speak as little as possible or mumble.
Nothing they’ve said up until now was reassuring and helpful.
Obviously, they should respond if attacked, demonstrating
respect for the police and rejecting defunding. But they should move as quickly
as possible to change the subject, preferably to the cost of living, where Democrats have a real policy offer and pose a real
electoral choice.
But Democrats cannot change the subject for long.
They have to go back to the choices they made in the
tumultuous year of 2020—moral, ideological, and strategic choices that I
believe branded the Democrats in ways that alienated them from key parts of
their own base.
I wrote after the 2020 election in the Prospect that
we just witnessed a “race war,” where Donald Trump did everything possible to heighten
racial conflict and focus the country on the “breakdown of law and order” and
rising crime in African American cities. I accepted that Democrats had no
choice but to defeat Trump’s “racist campaign” and “win a mandate to address
racial justice.” I knew that suited Trump’s adviser Steve Bannon,
who was counting on America’s racism to fuel Trump’s Republican Party.
The battle to defeat Trump’s race war, however, blinded many
from seeing the priorities and needs of working-class African American,
Hispanic, and Asian American voters. Those were the voters who pulled back from
their historic support for Democrats. To be honest, many assumed that battling
long-standing racial inequities would be their top priority. But that
assumption becomes indefensibly elitist when it turns out these voters were
much more focused on the economy, corporate power, and crime.
That is why the crime issue is so revealing.
AMERICA WAS A MESS DURING THE
PANDEMIC and
the halting year of getting back to normality. One part was the rise in crime
in American cities. They experienced rises in violent crime and murders. In
2021, New York saw an 11 percent increase in overall crime, including a near 16 percent increase
in robberies. Detroit witnessed an almost 5 percent increase in violent crimes from 2020 to 2021.
Philadelphia set a homicide record in 2021 with 562 deaths, up 13 percent from 2020. Atlanta had a two-year total of 315
murders, which accounts for a two-thirds increase compared to the two years prior to the pandemic.
When Trump put the spotlight on high crime rates in
Democratic-run cities, we retorted with the high crime rates in Republican-led
cities. But where was the worry about community safety? Where were our plans to
address crime? We were stymied by our rightful outrage over the repeated
examples of police abuse and need to bring reforms. Yet if you ask our own
voters, as I did after the election, they think our plan was “defund the
police.”
Voters and our base hated the idea of defunding the police.
So, virtually every Republican ad in 2020 depicted African American looters,
attacks on police, and Democratic members of the “Squad” calling for “defunding
the police.”
More from Stanley B. Greenberg
From early 2020 onward, Democratic leaders showed no
interest as far as voters could tell in addressing crime or making communities
safer.
Why are Democrats not trusted on crime? It’s not rocket
science.
In 2021, I created a multiracial and multigenerational team
of pollsters funded by the American Federation of Teachers and the Center for
Voter Information to look at how to raise Democratic support with all
working-class voters. It included HIT Strategies and Equis
Labs.
They conducted the research in the African American,
Hispanic, and Asian American communities. All of those communities pointed to
the rising worry about crime. And they worried more about the rise in crime
than the rise in police abuse. Yet Democrats throughout 2021 focused almost
exclusively on the latter. Clearly, these communities wanted political leaders
to address both.
Despite Democrats’ seeming indifference to community safety,
we found that Democrats in 2021 could make gains if they reassured voters on
the police. Voters believed Democrats were for defunding the police, so
messages that showed respect for the police and advocated for funding got
heard. The message also included “urgent reforms, including better training and
accountability to prevent excessive force and racial profiling.” And since the
principal doubt was about the police, the message had to focus only on the
police.
This Democratic crime message was preferred to the
Republicans’ by 8 points, and hearing it gave the Democrats another 2-point
lift in their congressional vote margin.
But crime rates in the major cities grew well into 2022. New
York City has seen citywide shooting incidents increase by 13 percent compared to July 2021, and the number of murders
increased for the month by 34 percent compared to this time last year.
Philadelphia and Chicago experienced prominent shoot-outs on the subway, and in
Philadelphia overall shootings have increased by 3 percent and violent crimes are up 7 percent.
As a result, crime was a top-tier issue in the midterm
election, and that included Blacks, who ranked it almost as high as the cost of
living in poll after poll. For Hispanics and Asian Americans, crime came just
below the cost of living as a priority. And Republicans continued to remind
voters that Democrats continued to support “defunding the police,” even by
linking candidates to organizations they took money from, like Planned Parenthood,
which back in 2020 called for defunding.
The Democrats had so little credibility on crime that any
message I tested this year against the Republicans ended up losing us votes,
even messages that voters previously liked.
Here is the Democratic message I tested in July, culled from
Democratic campaigns: It included Democrats declaring “gun violence” a “public
health crisis,” allocating billions to state and local law enforcement,
prosecuting more criminals, banning assault weapons, and not defunding the police.
It lost to the Republican crime message by 10 points and cost us 2 points in
the Democratic margin. Democrats can only be heard if they address their police
problem.
In my Labor Day survey, I tested the exact police message
that I developed with the team of pollsters last year, focusing again on
respecting and funding, not defunding the police, including urgent reforms. It
defeated the Republican crime message by a stunning 10 points, yet we still lost
a point in the margin among those who heard it.
With Democrats so out of touch on crime and the police, just
discussing crime cost Democrats.
In a mid-October poll, I was able to test a crime message
that got heard. It got heard because it dramatized more police, said Democrats
heard our communities on violent crime, and also called out the small minority
of Democrats who failed to address violent crime, and said, “Democrats in
Congress are mainstream” and support our “first responders.”
To be honest, I didn’t want to open up this debate during
the campaign when Democrats could do little to address it. That is why I am
writing this article now, being published right before
the election.
Our effective crime message began with respect for police,
but this time, the Democrat proposes to add 100,000 more police. That is a
pretty dramatic offer that says, my crime plan begins
with many more police. The message includes the same urgent reforms, but also
adds, “those very communities want us to get behind
law enforcement” and “fight violent crime as a top priority.”
This crime message defeats by 11 points a Republican crime
message that hits Democrats for defunding the police, being with Biden who is
soft on crime, and presiding over Democratic cities with record homicide rates.
Democrats are in so much trouble on crime, yet this message wins dramatically
in the base and competes with working-class targets.
But the message gains even more support and shifts which
party you trust better on crime when the Democrats call out the small minority in
the House who supported defunding the police and voted against all efforts to
fund law enforcement. This message had some of the strongest results in the
survey, with the positive reaction outscoring the negative by 16 points.
The margins in favor of this message topped 30 points with
Blacks and Hispanics and 20 points with Asian Americans, Gen Z and millennials, and unmarried women.
In this polarized time, it dropped the Republicans’
advantage from 13 to 10 points.
THE FAILURE OF ELITES TO SEE what was happening in these communities on crime was
matched by their failure to see how much the economy trumped racial inequality.
2020 was the two-decade anniversary of most Americans not
seeing any pay raises, and that was even more true for
African Americans and Hispanics. After the CARES Act in March
of that year, Congress gridlocked on giving further pandemic relief until after
the election. Not surprisingly, 35 percent of voters in exit polls said
the economy was the top factor in their vote. Only 20 percent said racial
equality.
In Democracy Corps’s 2020 Election Day survey, the top
reason by far for supporting or considering Trump was “the strongest economy”
and “getting us out of the [pandemic] recession.” The economy did not make it
into the top four reasons to vote for Biden, other than preserving the
Affordable Care Act.
In all my research since 2016, our base of African
Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans, millennials,
and unmarried women, these were the voters who rallied to attacks on the rigged
political economy. And in leading up to the 2020 election, Democrats were not
attacking those inequalities, but the systemic racism that produces police
abuse and threatened their right to vote.
That message did not motivate African American voters,
consolidate Hispanics, or motivate Asian Americans. That is why Democrats got
disappointing turnout in 2020 in Milwaukee, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Atlanta.
What got the attention of the Democratic base voters was the
Democrats providing direct payments to households, the Child Tax Credit, the
proposed expansion of Medicare, reduced health care premiums, the federal
government supporting unions, a $15 minimum wage for contractors, and enforcing
labor protections. These were all things that help make life affordable.
In 2022, we have also tested the priority of the Biden
administration to address racial inequalities with this impressive set of
actions:
But that scored at
the bottom of the list of ten actions of the administration. Blacks ranked it
third, but well below empowering workers and Medicare. It was the
lowest-ranking accomplishment for Hispanics and Asian Americans.
Perhaps the most telling are the results for each community
that were conducted by the team of pollsters. In a
test of five policies, measures to address racial inequalities always tested in
the middle or the bottom of the priority list for Blacks, Hispanics, and Asian
Americans.
Those graphs are a hammer that smash
the idea that America’s elites know what should be the top priority for
Democrats in government.
Whatever happens on Tuesday, Democrats should start by
listening to the voters again and show that they know how to make communities
safe, while raising the power and well-being of all working people.
WASHINGTON POST
OPINION
THE MIDTERMS SHOWED DEMOCRATS
DON’T NEED TO PANDER ON CRIME
By Katrina
vanden Heuvel November 29, 2022 at 8:04 a.m. EST
Here’s another positive outcome of the surprising midterm
elections: They should put an end to the crime scare.
I don’t mean the public concern about crime, which is still
at unacceptable levels, but the fearmongering by
Democratic pollsters, operatives and politicians about the political issue of
crime and its effects on the Democratic Party.
In the run-up to the elections, Republicans went all in
charging Democrats with being weak on crime and tying Democratic candidates to
the “defund the police” slogan. The GOP spent more ad money railing
about rising crime than about the economy or inflation. Pre-election
Washington Post polls showed Republicans with a double-digit advantage on the
issue, far larger than their edge on the economy or immigration.
In response, Democratic Party operatives began rending their
garments. Paul Begala agonized that “I have never seen a more destructive
slogan than ‘defund the police.’ ” Pollster Stanley B. Greenberg warned that “the 2022 midterms will be remembered as a toxic
campaign, but an effective one in labeling Democrats as ‘pro-crime.’ ” New York
Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall
even recycled Elaine
Ciulla Kamarck and William Galston’s updated version of their infamous 1989 “Politics of Evasion” essay, which argued that the Democratic brand was poison,
and that the party “is in the grip of myths that block progress toward
victory.”
The only hope, these voices said, was to do a Bill Clinton:
Pander on the issue. Take it away from Republicans. Clinton ended up supporting the death penalty and calling for putting another 100,000 police officers on the street. (Unmentioned was the horrific result of his 1994 crime
bill, which helped usher in a new era of mass incarceration that he later apologized for.)
Then came the election, and the results were clear. CNN exit polls showed that voters ranked inflation as the top factor
in their vote, followed closely by abortion. Only 11 percent mentioned crime. Democrats — including
many calling for criminal justice reform — fared better in the midterms than any incumbent party since 2002,
when Republicans benefited in the wake of 9/11. In stark contrast, though
Clinton had succeeded in winning a small edge for Democrats on the crime issue
by 1994, the party was routed in that year’s midterms, losing 52 seats and control of the House.
The candidate seemingly most vulnerable to the crime scare
this year was John Fetterman, running for the open
U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania. As lieutenant governor, Fetterman
had devoted much of his energy to working on getting nonviolent offenders
released from prison. Republicans poured money into attacking him on the issue — spending nearly $12 million on crime ads, according
to AdImpact, compared to $2.5 million on the economy
and inflation. Fetterman not only won, he picked up a
Senate seat for the Democrats.
Reform candidates fared well nationwide. As noted in a summary by Chloe Cockburn of the criminal justice reform group Just Impact, Mary
Moriarty, a career
public defender who clashed with local police and prosecutors, will become the
next prosecutor of Minnesota’s Hennepin County, beating a Republican who
denounced reform as endangering public safety. In places as varied as Memphis,
Dallas, San Antonio and Polk County, Iowa, reform candidates for prosecutor won
against law-and-order types. Tina Kotek won the
Oregon governorship as a reformer defending spending on public health,
treatment and recovery capacity.
Voters aren’t as stupid as the political pros think. African
Americans, for good reason, are much more likely to say that violent crime is important to their
midterm vote than Hispanic or White voters. Yet more than 8 in 10 Black
voters went for Democrats. African Americans see criminal justice reform as a priority
and are, also for good reason, less trusting of the police than White
Americans.
The crime scare did make a difference in some races.
Incumbent Republican Sen. Ron Johnson eked out reelection in Wisconsin by waging what many saw as a
shameless race-baiting campaign against his African American opponent — with crime as
a major theme. In New York congressional races, Republican ads on crime — reinforced by New York Mayor
Eric Adams’s alarmist rhetoric about rising crime — helped the GOP pick up several congressional seats
(although the Democratic fiasco around reapportionment might have had a greater
effect). Minnesota’s Democratic attorney general, Keith Ellison, who prosecuted
Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd and championed police
reform, won reelection by only a small margin, having to overcome
door-to-door canvassing by the police union.
And, with Trump in the field, crime will surely be a major
theme for Republicans in 2024. But the midterm elections showed that Democrats
need not panic. They don’t have to attack progressives or compete with
Republicans on locking people up. Voters will respond to a common-sense agenda
on dealing with crime and police reform. Young voters, scarred by mass murders
in schools, care deeply about gun policy. If moderate Democrats want to address
the “poisoned” Democratic Party brand, they might best look in the mirror and
stop echoing Republican fearmongering in their desire
to discredit progressives.
THE BROOKINGS INST.
THE RISK OF
ELECTION VIOLENCE IN THE UNITED STATES IN 2024
By Daniel L. Byman January 27, 2023
Despite fears
that the 2022 U.S. midterm elections would see a reprise of January 6-like
political violence, the elections occurred with no mobs storming state capitals
or other attacks. Improved law enforcement deserves much of the credit: January
6 was a shock, and both federal and state officials were far more vigilant this
time around. In addition, no national figure tried to whip up mobs, as
President Donald Trump did in 2020. Violence could return in 2024, especially
if Trump or another figure willing to incite violence is on the ballot, but law
enforcement, if it remains vigilant, will be better prepared to reduce the
scope and scale of any threat.
The High 2021
Threat Environment
Since a
pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, the prospect of
further political violence has loomed over America.
Before the 2022 election, government agencies like the Department of Homeland
Security and the National Counterterrorism Center warned of the risk of
election-related violence. Polls found that one in 10 Americans believed
violence was justified right now, and that figure rose to one in five of
Republican-voting men. Threats against members of Congress skyrocketed, and
even local school board races became far more threatening. The brutal attack on
Paul Pelosi, husband of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, at his San Francisco
home seemed to confirm many people’s fears.
Making all this
worse, hundreds of election deniers were on the ballot, creating worries that
losers at the polls would incite violence rather than accept political defeat.
In addition, the contests for Senate, governor, and other races were close,
often coming down to small numbers of votes in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and
other states.
Yet November 8
came and went, and the United States did not see significant election-related
violence despite the many warnings and an ominous environment. It’s always hard
to understand why something didn’t happen, but this vital question is worth
exploring, given the dire predictions and continuing concerns about future
violence.
Why Low Election
Violence in 2022?
To begin with,
it is important to understand what contributed to the January 6 violence that
shocked many Americans. Trump, along with several lieutenants and leading
supporters in the media, pushed the idea that he was the rightful winner of the
2020 election. Many other Republican leaders stayed silent rather than openly
stand against a president popular among the Republican electorate. In the leadup to January 6, election deniers organized relatively
freely, both at face-to-face gatherings and online, where they often used Facebook to push misinformation and prepare for violence.
Although some of the violence was spontaneous and involved bystanders who
gathered on the mall simply to show support for Trump, it is now clear that
organized groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers prepared for and planned
violence before January. Despite many indicators that violence was brewing, law
enforcement and intelligence agencies did not focus on the problem, leading
them to be surprised when the storm broke.
RELATED BOOKS
Spreading Hate:
The Global Rise of White Supremacist Terrorism
TERRORISM &
EXTREMISM Spreading Hate: The Global Rise of White Supremacist Terrorism
Daniel L. Byman
March 22, 2022
Road Warriors:
Foreign Fighters in the Armies of Jihad
TERRORISM & EXTREMISMRoad Warriors: Foreign Fighters in the Armies of
Jihad
Daniel L. Byman
May 2, 2019
Al Qaeda, the
Islamic State, and the Global Jihadist Movement: What Everyone Needs to Know
MIDDLE EAST
& NORTH AFRICAAl Qaeda, the Islamic State, and
the Global Jihadist Movement: What Everyone Needs to Know
Daniel L. Byman
August 24, 2015
Some, but not all,
of these contributing factors have changed for the better. Starting at the top,
Trump himself was not on the ballot this last midterm election. As a result, he
did not encourage his cultish followers to march on the Capitol or otherwise
whip up their fears and anger as he did before the January 6 insurrection. He
did champion several Republican candidates who lost races where Republicans had
seemed well-placed to win, such as Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, among
others, but rather than serve as inspiration for violence this actually
discredited the former president. Even before the election, leading Republicans
like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell cited “candidate quality” as a
reason why Republicans might not win back the Senate. When this concern proved
valid, he and other Republicans lambasted Trump for the loss, joined by Fox
News and other conservative media outlets.
Some candidates
did raise doubts about the validity of elections, notably Republican candidate
for governor of Arizona, Kari Lake, who claimed she lost due to voter
suppression, an allegation that appears to have little evidence behind it. It
appears that without Trump’s involvement, individual races did not capture the
national imagination or inspire the same level of passion among voters: his
charisma and national reach was unique.
Social media
companies also took several positive steps, though their efforts remained
incomplete and the impact of these steps is not clear. Trump, of course, was
banned from Twitter and Facebook, reducing his reach.
Companies like Facebook sought to combat the
incitement of violence and voting-related misinformation. Studies of major
companies, however, showed that false information remained widespread on their
platforms.
Aggressive law
enforcement is perhaps the biggest change from the 2020 election. Whereas in
2020 many plotters believed they could count on a degree of government
complicity, that sense of security is gone. As the official warnings before the
election suggest, government agencies are aware of the risk and trying to head
off problems before they manifest. More concretely, the U.S. government charged
almost 1,000 people with crimes related to January 6 so far, in the largest
investigation in the FBI’s history. Organized groups like the Proud Boys and
Oath Keepers were hit hard, with leaders convicted of felonies and the groups
themselves under tremendous scrutiny.
Prospects for
2024
Election
violence, of course, could return in 2024. Part of this depends on whether
Trump is on the ballot and how much support he has from others within the
conservative political and media ecosystem to again whip up violence. The
former president has shown he will push conspiracy theories and encourage
violence should he lose, and there is no reason to expect that to change. For
now Trump’s star appears to be falling, but he has proven resilient, and he has
many die-hard supporters. In addition, new Twitter owner Elon
Musk has welcomed the former president back to Twitter,
and in general social media remains awash in dangerous conspiracies.
But there is
good news as well. Many GOP leaders seem to recognize that election denialism and support for violence is a losing strategy.
Perhaps more important, Trump is not president, and the FBI and other federal
law enforcement will be aggressive in trying to stop election-related violence.
Indeed, even without direction from political officials, January 6 was a wakeup
call, and both federal and state government officials are far less likely to be
caught by surprise in future elections.
None of this
suggests violence is impossible, or even highly unlikely. Many politicians and
ordinary Americans alike seem too willing to consider violence, should
elections not go their way. As long as law enforcement remains vigilant,
however, it will be more difficult for politicians to incite violent mobs and
for dangerous groups to organize: important factors in reducing the scope and
scale of the danger, even if it remains a strong concern.
NBC
AS VIOLENT CRIME SOARS IN
WASHINGTON, D.C. , TRUMP VOWS A ‘FEDERAL TAKEOVER’
Forget
statehood — Washington leaders are worried “we could lose most of the control
we have over the city now.”
A shattered window of a convenience store along H Street NE
in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 30.Matt McClain / The
Washington Post via Getty Images file
Feb. 4, 2024, 7:00 AM EST / Updated Feb. 5,
2024, 11:30 AM EST
By Alex Seitz-Wald
Donald Trump has never been a fan of Washington, D.C., and
the feeling is mutual among most of its residents, who broke into spontaneous
street celebrations when he lost the White House.
But the former president’s animosity has only grown since he
left the city and as violent crime has continued to climb in the capital, while
falling from pandemic-era highs in other cities, leading Trump to campaign on a
“federal takeover of this filthy and crime-ridden embarrassment to our nation.”
Trump repeatedly promised to essentially occupy the capital
with federal troops, a tactic he flirted with during the height of the 2020 Black Lives Matter
protests in his final year in office, telling a conservative audience last
year, “I will send in the National Guard until law and order is restored” and
that he “wouldn’t even call the mayor.”
Washington has legitimately become a national outlier on violent crime, making 2023 the city’s deadliest in more than two decades,
even as violent crime dropped in nearly every other city in America. Nearby
Baltimore, for instance, infamous for its crime and blight portrayed in “The
Wire,” saw its biggest drop in homicides on record last year.
In Washington, though, shootings, homicides and carjackings all soared, spilling into neighborhoods that have typically been
spared that kind of violence, including the downtown area occupied by office
workers, and making many longtime residents feel unsafe for the first time.
The headlines are piling up of residents shot in DuPont Circle, in a Metro station, outside Nationals Park, and walking home from work. On Monday, a former Trump administration official
was shot seemingly at random while waiting to pick up his wife on K Street,
famously home to many of the city’s white-shoe law and lobbying firms. He died over the weekend.
Trump, Republicans in Congress and their allies in the
conservative media have used Washington — where Democrats typically receive about
90% of the vote for president — to portray the entire Democratic Party as soft
on crime ahead of the November election and argue it needs more federal
oversight.
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District’s long-serving
advocate on Capitol Hill, said the city needs more autonomy, not less, to
tackle crime, given the well-documented coordination failures between the city’s federal and local agencies. But she fears
even Home Rule, the legislation that let Washington residents elect their
own government for the first time in 1974, could be in jeopardy.
“I think he would do all he could to keep statehood from
happening, but also to roll back Home Rule,” she said. “There’s no question in
my mind that if he were to gain control of the presidency again, we could lose
most of the control we have over the city now.”
What’s behind the capital’s crime?
The causes are myriad and so is the finger-pointing, with
the D.C. Council, the mayor, the police, prosecutors, the courts and the
mismanaged crime lab all coming in for blame.
Brett Tolman, a former U.S.
attorney appointed by George W. Bush, who is now executive director of the
conservative criminal justice reform group Right on Crime, chiefly blamed
Washington’s chief prosecutor for declining to prosecute most cases.
“We do not need to change the law. We do not need a
president coming in and using the National Guard to take over the city,” he
said. “All you need is a person on the job, whether Republican or Democrat,
telling people they will enforce the law.”
The D.C. Council made national headlines last year for
passing a penal code reform that was widely panned as too lenient. Congress
used its power over the capital city to kill the law and President Joe Biden
notably decided against vetoing it, sending a clear message to Democrats that it was time to get tougher on crime.
Months later, as violent crime continued to climb, the D.C.
Council moved the other direction, voting 12-1 in favor of the first of several pieces of
emergency legislation to tackle crime, by, among other things, making it easier
for police to hold suspects before trial.
But Republicans have focused on the first measure, turning
the national spotlight on the city in two congressional hearings last year.
Trump has repeatedly tried to get his criminal trial moved
out of Washington, arguing he cannot possibly get a fair trial in the city, not
only because a jury pool would be drawn from the city’s largely hostile
residents, but because “I am calling for a federal takeover of this filthy
and crime ridden embarrassment to our nation.”
In December, he said on Truth Social that Washington “has
become a dirty, crime ridden death trap, that must be taken over and properly
run by the Federal Government,” adding the plan was a key part of his platform.
Last week while campaigning in Las Vegas, Trump vowed to
“take over our horribly run capital” and renovate it so “it’s no longer a
nightmare of murder and crime.”
“We’re going to federalize it. We’re gonna have the toughest
law enforcement in the country. We’re not going to have any more crime and it’s
going to look beautiful,” Trump added.
Law & Order: D.C.
In some ways, Trump’s attacks on Washington are similar to
the ones Republicans have levied against major American cities for decades.
But despite decades of activism in favor of D.C. statehood,
Washington remains essentially a ward of the federal government and the powers
it has to govern are entirely derived from
Congress — which
could theoretically revoke them.
Congress can — and does — kill legislation passed by the
D.C. Council and has authority over its budget, while most of the city’s parks and much of its infrastructure are run by the federal
government.
Meanwhile, the “Order” part of D.C.’s “Law & Order” is
run by the federal government. The president appoints the District’s judges and
its chief prosecutor, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, whose
office handles both federal and routine local crimes, unlike any other city in
the country.
The local attorney general conducts most juvenile
prosecutions, but supervision of juveniles in the system is handled by a
federal agency.
‘Entirely solvable’
Charles “Cully” Stimson of the conservative Heritage
Foundation, who was once a prosecutor in the district’s U.S. attorney’s office,
testified before the House last year at the invitation of Republicans.
He said many of Washington’s problems could be solved in
ways that would not violate the city’s Democratic values.
“This is a man-caused problem and it is entirely solvable,”
Stimson said. “If you parachuted in the California penal code and then put in
basically any other DA and made them the U.S. attorney, crime rates would drop
immediately.”
U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves, who was appointed by President
Joe Biden, declined to prosecute two-thirds of people arrested in 2022 and 56% in 2023, while critics blame his office for being too quick
to plead down cases that were prosecuted. Stimson also criticized
Graves for taking gun cases to the local court, where convictions are difficult
for various reasons, instead of to the federal courthouse next door, both of
which are available to him.
In its defense, the U.S. attorney’s office has pointed to
rising prosecution rates in recent months, welcomed the arrival of new
prosecutors and resources from the Justice Department, and said many cases had
to be thrown out in recent years because the troubled Washington crime lab lost its
accreditation,
which it only regained in December.
Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Police Department has been
arresting fewer people. The number of arrests made per officer fell steeply during the pandemic to nearly half of
pre-pandemic levels and have not recovered, despite an uptick under its new
chief, Pamela Smith, who was installed in July.
At a town hall in November, former Assistant Chief Morgan Kane, who
retired last month, said getting officers “back in the game” after 2020 has
been “a big push” from the chief and other leaders. “At this point, what we’re
really doing is rebuilding their confidence back up,” she said.
Eduardo Ferrer, the policy director of
the Juvenile Justice Initiative at Georgetown University Law School, who has
worked to improve the city’s juvenile justice system, said, “What D.C. needs is
more control, not less.”
Meanwhile, he said, while the city has zero gun stores, it
is inundated with illegal guns from neighboring states, and federal courts have rolled back strict gun laws that Washington implemented.
“If the Feds wanted to do something about gun crime in D.C.,
they should be doing more to stop the flow of illegal guns into the city,” he
said. “We shouldn’t be punishing our people in D.C. for a problem that’s
essentially been foisted upon us.”
CORRECTION (Feb. 4, 2024, 9:21 a.m. ET): A previous version of this
story misspelled the name of an expert and misidentified the think tank where
he works. He is Charles “Cully” Stimson of the Heritage Foundation, not Charles
Stimpson of the Heritage Institute.
TCADP
TCADP FEBRUARY 2024 NEWSLETTER:
TEXAS SET TO RESUME EXECUTIONS THIS MONTH
By Kristin Houle February 1, 2024
In this edition:
Scheduled executions: Sign Sister Helen Prejean’s
petition to stop the execution of Ivan Cantu, set for
February 28, 2024
TCADP 2024 Annual Conference: Join us in Fort Worth on March 2, 2024, for a day of
inspiration and advocacy
In case you missed it: U.S. Supreme Court agrees to consider the case of
Oklahoman Richard Glossip, who has maintained his
innocence while facing nine execution dates
Texas primary election: Upcoming voter registration deadline and candidate forums
Featured events: DFW community huddle February 1, on Zoom; TCADP
General Membership Meeting on February 21; TCADP book group discussion on
February 28
Scheduled executions
The State of Texas is scheduled to execute Ivan Cantu on February 28, 2024. Cantu also faced execution in April 2023 before
the date was withdrawn by a district court judge in Collin County, who agreed
additional legal proceedings were necessary.
Cantu was convicted of killing his cousin James Mosqueda and James’s fiancé, Amy Kitchen, in north Dallas in
2000. He has maintained his innocence, and in previous appeals he argued his
trial attorneys were ineffective for failing to investigate and present
evidence that would support his claim. Disturbed by the prospect they heard
false and misleading testimony during the trial, some of the jurors who
sentenced Cantu to death in 2001 want this evidence to be reviewed.
In August 2023, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied
Cantu’s appeal and Collin County set a new execution date. Cantu’s spiritual
advisor, Sister Helen Prejean, has created a petition to the Court and to the Collin County District
Attorney to demand his execution be delayed.
Read more about Cantu from the Texas Observer.
Texas has another execution scheduled for March 13, 2024, when James Harris, Jr. is set to
be put to death.
There has been one execution nationwide this year. On
January 25, 2024, Alabama put Kenneth Smith to death using a new, untested
method of nitrogen hypoxia. Read this disturbing account from the Equal
Justice Initiative, “Questions Surround Execution of
Kenneth Smith.”
TCADP 2024 Annual Conference
The TCADP 2024 Annual Conference:
Creating Conscious Communities is just one month away! Join us for a day of education
and advocacy on Saturday, March 2, 2024,
at the Martin University Center on the campus of Texas Wesleyan University in
Fort Worth.
Foremost among the many inspiring speakers you will hear that
day is Ms. Opal Lee, the “Grandmother of Juneteenth” and
a Fort Worth resident since 1937. Last month, CBS News aired a short
segment about Ms. Lee and her quest to reclaim the land from which her family
was forcibly driven. Watch it here.
Ms. Lee will deliver the keynote address as part of the
awards luncheon, during which we will honor five individuals who have raised
awareness of death penalty issues. Our 2024 award recipients are mental health
advocates Greg Hansch and Professor Brian Shannon,
Dallas faith leader Dr. Jaime Kowlessar, journalist
Jolie McCullough, and Fort Worth resident and longtime TCADP member, Scott Ruthart. Read about them here.
The conference also will feature a panel discussion and your choice of breakout sessions, which will
include these:
– Mike Ware, the Executive Director of the Innocence Project
of Texas, and Gretchen Sween, a capital defense
attorney, will talk about junk science and the role it has played in wrongful
convictions in Texas.
– Nan Tolson, the director of
Texas Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, will lead a
workshop on the importance of conservative voices in the fight to end the
death penalty.
– A Tarrant County attorney who has represented
numerous capital murder defendants, an ordained United Methodist minister who
served in Huntsville, and a woman whose father was killed in the Oklahoma City
bombing will address the traumatic effects of the death penalty process.
If you’ve ever wanted to meet TCADP supporters from across
the state or become more involved in our campaigns, this is your chance!
Tickets are available for the full conference (10:00 AM to
4:00 PM, with registration and breakfast opening at 9:00 AM) or for the
luncheon only (12:30 to 2:30 PM). Register by February 16, 2024, for
the best rates!
Note: TCADP has reserved a block of rooms at the SpringHill Suites Fort Worth University (3250 Lovell
Avenue) for anyone who needs overnight accommodations on March 1-2, 2024. To
receive the special room rate of $139/night, book by Friday, February 9,
2024. Make your reservation here or call 800.321.2211 and reference TCADP at the SpringHill Suites FWU to receive the group rate.
In case you missed it
Death penalty developments in Oklahoma
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal from Richard Glossip, an Oklahoma death row inmate who has steadfastly
maintained his innocence in the face of nine execution dates. The Attorney
General for Oklahoma has serious concerns about the case and supports Glossip’s quest for a new trial.
Separate from the case of Richard Glossip,
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond and the
head of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections recently asked the Oklahoma Court of Criminal
Appeals to space out executions in 90-day intervals to ease the “tremendous burden” on corrections
officials. (No such consideration has been given to corrections officials in
Texas, who carried out two executions in the same week in
March 2023.)
Texas primary election
Texas will hold its 2024 primary election on Tuesday, March 5, 2024. Early voting begins Tuesday, February 20 and
runs through Friday, March 1.Candidates for the Texas Legislature, the
Texas Supreme Court, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, and other offices
will be on the ballot. Numerous counties, including El Paso, Harris, Nueces,
and Travis, also will be electing District Attorneys (DA) this year. Click here for the full list of DA
candidates,
published by the Texas District & County Attorneys Association.
Check your registration status, access a sample ballot, find
your polling place, and more on the Texas Secretary of State’s website.
Important reminder: The last day to register to vote in the
2024 primary election in Texas is Monday, February 5, 2024.
TCADP encourages you to check with local nonprofit media
outlets or civic organizations for information about candidate debates and
other ways to engage in the primary election. For example, nonpartisan
organizations Fort Worth Report, KERA, SteerFW, and the League of Women Voters will host candidate debates for several local races on Wednesday, February 7 and
Thursday, February 8. El Paso Matters also has a page dedicated to election information,
including candidate events.
On Wednesday, February 21, 2024,
the Texas Tribune will host a conversation about
what’s at stake in the state’s March 5 primary. You can attend the event
in person in downtown Austin or online. RSVP here.
Featured events
Online gathering for TCADP supporters in the Dallas-Fort
Worth Metroplex
For a preview of the annual conference and to meet other TCADP supporters in
the DFW Metroplex, join TCADP Deputy Director Tiara
Cooper on Zoom on Thursday, February 1, 2024, at 6:00 PM Central Time. Tiara will share updates for
all interested in learning more about TCADP and our annual conference and
taking onsite action. Get connected and don’t forget to register
to receive the Zoom link.
TCADP General Membership Meeting
TCADP’s General Membership Meeting will take place on Zoom on Wednesday, February 21, 2024, from 7:00 to 8:00 PM Central Time. Attendees will
hear a report on our impact in 2023 and participate in the election of new
board members. We’ll then break into small groups for discussions led by TCADP
Board Members. If you have questions about your membership status, email
Executive Director Kristin Cuellar at kristin@tcadp.org.
TCADP Book Group
The TCADP book group meets on Zoom every six to eight
weeks and reads a mix of fiction, non-fiction, and memoirs. Our next meeting
will take place on Wednesday, February 28, 2024,
at 7:00 PM Central Time when we will discuss Twelve Angry Men, a play by Reginald Rose. (Listen on Audible.) Register here.
After that, we will read Chain Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. (We don’t have a meeting date yet for this
book discussion, but it will likely be in mid-April.)
Thank you for standing in community with us! We hope to
see you in Fort Worth on March 2, 2024.
THE DESERT SUN
JUDGE HANDS DOWN DEATH PENALTY FOR MAN WHO MURDERED FOUR PEOPLE IN PALM
SPRINGS
by Christopher Damien
Palm Springs Desert Sun
A man who murdered four people in Palm Springs just over five
years ago was sentenced to death Friday.
Jose Larin-Garcia, now 24, was
convicted of four counts of murder last year for the 2019 shooting. In February 2023, a
jury voted to sentence him to death for the four killings, including of one juvenile, during what is arguably
among the most violent nights in Palm Springs' history.
Riverside County Superior Court Judge Anthony Villalobos
upheld the jury's sentence Friday at the Larson Justice Center in Indio during
a hearing that was emotional for all involved.
"This is one of the most difficult cases I've sit
on," said Villalobos soon before sentencing the man to death. "No one
here is walking away unscathed. There is no way to make this right. The only
thing I can do is what the law provides."
Deputy District Attorney Samantha Paixao
read a letter written by the son of one of the victims, Carlos Campos Rivera,
who was 10 years old when his father was killed.
"There are no words to describe how this has impacted
me," Paixao read, pausing at times to gather
herself through the emotion of the letter. "How am I supposed to
articulate something that has turned my life completely upside down? I had
everything in the world at that point until I lost my best friend in the world,
my dad."
The young man, who is in high school now years after his
father's killing, wrote to the convicted: "I still can’t understand why
you would do such an evil thing."
Maria Morales, the mother of Yuliana
Garcia, echoed the pain of loss and the confusion of having no simple answers
about why four young people are dead and a man condemned.
"She didn't deserve to die this way. All she wanted was
good for people," Morales said of her daughter. "There’s not a day
since this horrible tragedy that I don’t cry. ... As for Mr. Larin-Garcia, I just want to know why. Why did you do this?
Why did you make this choice to take four people’s lives? You did this to
yourself; you did this to your mom, to everyone who is sitting here."
And Yudis Garcia, Larin-Garcia's mother, appealed to the judge for mercy on
her now condemned son.
"As a mother, I understand what they are going through.
I understand her pain," Garcia said through a Spanish language
interpreter, speaking of the relatives of those killed. "Not only did they
lose their son, I am losing mine too. ... He should not be judged without
complete certainty, because I know my son didn't do this."
Palm Springs police were dispatched to reports of shots
fired just after midnight on Feb. 3, 2019, at the 3700 block of East Sunny
Dunes Road, where a car had crashed into a wall in front of a residence. Found
inside were the bodies of Yuliana Garcia, 17; Jacob
Montgomery, 19; and Juan Duarte Raya, 18. Blocks away Campos Rivera, 25, was
found dead on Canon Drive. All of them had been fatally shot.
The killings set off a manhunt that resulted in Larin-Garcia's arrest at a bus station in Indio the next
day. Police say a friend had purchased him a ticket to Florida under a fake
name.
Larin-Garcia's attorney, John Dolan, filed motions in advance of
Friday's hearing, for a new trial and to exempt his client from the death
penalty. Villalobos ruled against them.
Prosecutors presented evidence during two trials that Larin-Garcia had ridden with the three in the car to the
home of Campos Rivera, who had arranged to purchase pills from one of the
passengers. Paixao presented evidence that Larin-Garcia shot and killed Campos Rivera during the
interaction. The driver of the vehicle sped off and blocks later, she said, Larin-Garcia shot and killed all three of the people with
him in the car before jumping out of the vehicle.
Larin-Garcia was found by police hiding under a truck near the
crashed car, where he had removed some articles of clothing. He was taken to
the hospital, which he left that night and was at large until his arrest at the
bus stop.
"Jose Vladimir Larin-Garcia,
on February 3, 2019, executed four people. For no reason.
He deserves the greater punishment of death," said Paixao
before the jury voted on what sentence to recommend.
And she maintained Friday that the jury and Villalobos made
the correct decision: "I have no doubt that Jose Vladimir Larin-Garcia executed each person that night," Paixao said.
"I'm glad that justice was served for the
families," she continued. "The community has spoken through the
jurors, and they were decisive in their decision that Jose Vladimir Larin Garcia is guilty and should suffer the greatest
punishment that our law allows. The impact that this has had on their families
is unimaginable and will never end."
Larin-Garcia's attorney, John Dolan, said he believed the jury
got it wrong and vowed to appeal the decision. Dolan had seized on holes in the
police investigation, like that the murder weapon had
never been recovered, to claim that the actual shooter remained at large. Those
claims were among the issues that led to the first jury announcing they couldn't
agree on a verdict. Villalobos declared
a mistrial in the first trial in March 2022.
Larin-Garcia was re-tried and convicted in 2023. Dolan asked the
judge Friday to take the death penalty off the table in consideration of Larin-Garcia's age, 19 at the time of the shootings, and
his allegation that the real shooter has yet to be found. That motion was denied
during the hearing.
"They convicted the wrong person. That was covered in
two trials," Dolan said during an interview Friday. "I will make the
files available to the appellate counsel that will be appointed and think
there's plenty of reason for this case to be reversed and sent back to
trial."
Elmer Garcia, Larin-Garcia's
cousin, similarly expressed his frustration after the ruling Friday that
questions remained unanswered, like the location of the murder weapon.
"There are a lot of mysteries in this case," said
Garcia in the court hall. "If he was shooting from inside the car, where
is the gun? I feel badly that people died. But we need to be 100% sure that he
killed them."
Riverside County sentenced one man
to death last year, and
has sentenced five between 2022
and 2018. California has not executed a
person since 2006, while
665 people were on death row in the state last year.
ABC NEWS
HERE'S WHERE THE 2024
PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES STAND ON CRIME AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE
The White House hopefuls have shared different opinions on
policing.
By Ivan Pereira October 4,
2023, 1:38 PM
Here's where the candidates stand on crime and criminal
justice
Policing and criminal justice are two of the big issues on
the campaign trail ahead of the 2024 election.
The Republican and Democratic contenders differ over how
they would handle public safety and criminals. Broadly speaking, Republicans
want to increase punishments and policing to address crime while Democrats want
to reform the system.
Here’s a brief look at where the major candidates stand on
the issue.
Joe Biden
President Joe Biden has bucked some calls from the
progressive wing of the Democratic Party, saying, “We should all agree the
answer is not to defund the police. It’s to fund the police.”
At the same time, he has also pushed for greater
accountability for when police “violate the public trust.”
In the White House, he has also backed community policing
and violence intervention efforts and called for more mental and social
services funding.
MORE: Who's
running for president in 2024 and who might run
Robert F.
Kennedy Jr.
During an appearance on "The Breakfast Club" radio
program in September, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an attorney and activist running
against Biden as a Democrat, said that he would support a federal anti-Black
hate crime law.
Kennedy added that he would appoint an attorney general who
would aggressively pursue investigations into alleged hate crimes and police
misconduct.
His campaign website states that "we will transform the
police. We will incentivize them to prevent violence, not make unnecessary
arrests. We will train them in deescalation and
mediation skills and partner them with neighborhood organizations."
Marianne
Williamson
Author and speaker Marianne Williamson, who is challenging
Biden in the Democratic primary, has called for a rehabilitative approach to
addressing crime, arguing that punitive accountability is “largely
ineffective.”
Williamson supports community policing, decriminalizing
addiction and investing in after-school programming as ways to tackle crime.
Donald
Trump
During former President Donald's Trump tenure, he played a
major role in enacting the First Step Act, a criminal justice reform law that
reduced some mandatory minimum prison sentences, gave judges the power to
sentence nonviolent drug offenders to less time behind bars and more, such as
increasing job training to lower recidivism rates.
Trump has supported rehabilitation-focused measures for
nonviolent crimes -- but, at the same time, he has advocated for the death
penalty for drug dealers and repeatedly used hard-line rhetoric when talking
about criminals.
Ron DeSantis
Although Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has not rolled out specific policies yet on
how he would combat crime and address public safety as president, he’s often
said that he would support law enforcement.
In the past, as governor, DeSantis
supported recruitment bonuses in the state for police officers.
Nikki
Haley
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. during the Trump
administration, has spoken about "bringing back law and order" to the
country and contended that some of her fellow Republicans want to bring crime
down.
Haley has said that leaders should hold prosecutors
responsible and to prosecute according to the law, claiming that some people
who are arrested by officers are let out of jail soon after.
Vivek Ramamswamy
Vivek Ramaswamy, a commentator and
businessman, has said he has seen a correlation between a “national identity
crisis” and violent crime.
The Republican candidate has contended the issue can be
remedied with “faith-based approaches” and police "who aren’t afraid to be
sued for doing their jobs."
Mike Pence
Former Vice President Mike Pence has vocally criticized the
progressive-backed call for redirecting some police funding but has broken from
some of his GOP competitors over their calls to defund the FBI, a move he does
not support.
Pence has, however, vowed to “clean house” at the Justice
Department and FBI, which he argues would restore lost confidence in the
institutions, and often decries a so-called “two-tiered system of justice”
between Democrats and Republicans.
Chris
Christie
Former New Jersey governor and Republican Chris Christie, who has worked as a federal prosecutor in New Jersey, said
that if elected he would direct his attorney general and the Department of
Justice to aggressively prosecute violent crime in major cities, superseding
local prosecutors.
Christie has also defended the work of the FBI amid calls
from other Republican candidates for it to be dismantled, saying that it was
the work of its agents that prevented further terrorist attacks on the U.S.
post-9/11.
MORE: A new scientific method for bail reform
Tim Scott
South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott has stated his position on crime
is that America needs to "back the blue" and "refund the
police."
The Republican has said he has legislation he would push
that would increase law enforcement spending by 500%.
Doug Burgum
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, a
Republican hopeful, has tied crime and addiction together during his campaign
stomps, with the latter topic being very personal for him. His wife, Kathryn,
has been a recovering alcoholic for the last 20 years.
While public safety is not one of his main three issues, Burgum has suggested that jail without rehab is "not a
cure for addiction." He has also spoke out against defunding police
departments.
Asa Hutchinson
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa
Hutchinson released a plan to reform federal law enforcement agencies in a way
that he says empowers officers, allows for more transparency and rebuilds trust
in the institutions among the American people.
The Republican and former federal prosecutor has noted that crime in the U.S. is not limited to large
cities.
MORE: The Latest Updates On The 2024 Republican
Presidential Primary
REUTERS
REPUBLICAN WHITE HOUSE HOPEFULS
EMBRACE KILLING CRIMINALS TO FIGHT CRIME
By Gram Slattery October 20, 20231:08 PM EDTUpdated 4 months ago
WASHINGTON, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Fentanyl
producers in Mexico should be killed. So too should human traffickers and drug
smugglers on the U.S.-Mexico border. Shoplifters should be shot. Drug dealers and rapists? Executed.
Some Republican contenders for their party's 2024
presidential nomination have turned to a blunt policy proposal to tamp down on
crime: killing criminals.
Legal experts say some of the proposals the candidates have
put forward are likely illegal and their efficacy is questionable, raising
doubts about whether they would be put into practice.
The death penalty is generally unconstitutional for offenses
that do not cause the death of the victim, the U.S.
Supreme Court has ruled. Legal scholars and security officials with experience
on the border have affirmed that shooting smugglers on the border is illegal.
The rhetoric isn't entirely novel.
In 2020, then-President Donald Trump tweeted that when
the "looting starts the
shooting starts," after violent protests in Minneapolis against the
murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer. Twitter tagged
the tweet for "glorifying violence."
Trump is now the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican
nomination to challenge President Joe Biden, a Democrat.
Republican strategists involved in previous campaigns and
experts in political rhetoric say that calls to shoot, kill or otherwise injure
criminals appear to be more common during this Republican primary race than
they have been in previous years.
Crime is a greater concern for voters than it has been in
recent elections, even as crime trends are mixed. Some 88% of respondents in a
September Reuters/Ipsos poll said crime would be an
important issue for determining who gets their vote in the November 2024
general election.
Violent crimes, including rape and murder, declined in the United States in 2022 from the previous year,
according to a report released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation this
week. At the same time, property crime and aggravated assault were up, while
the 21,156 murders reported in 2022 were well above pre-pandemic level.
With Trump nearly 40 percentage points ahead, opens new
tab of
his nearest rival in the Republican race, his opponents are also incentivized
to try to break through by putting forward attention-grabbing policy proposals,
even those that appear to advocate state violence.
'SOMETHING MORE OUTRAGEOUS ALL THE TIME'
Such rhetoric can be dangerous, as it gives constituents and
law enforcement the impression that violence is condoned and tolerated at the
highest levels, said Thomas Zeitzoff, a politics
professor at American University in Washington.
"In a primary where it is becoming increasingly
difficult to break through the noise, the incentive is to say something more
outrageous all the time," said David Kochel, a
Republican consultant who is not aligned with any candidate.
During a September speech in California, Trump made headlines for
saying, "If you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are
leaving that store. Shot!" He did not say whether
store owners or police would be doing the shooting.
Then this week, a Florida store employee was charged with
manslaughter after shooting dead a fleeing shoplifter who at no time threatened
the employee or displayed any type of weapon, police said in a statement on
Wednesday. James Densley, a criminologist and
professor at Metro State University in St. Paul, Minnesota, said Trump's
message is reckless. "Looters and shoplifters is code for people of color.
If you're having political figures endorse violence, the risk is the targets
will be people of color."
The former president has reiterated previous calls for drug
dealers to receive the death penalty, despite legal scholars questioning its
constitutionality.
Criminal justice reform advocates have long fought against
an expansion of the death penalty, citing its disparate toll on communities of
color.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, a
nonprofit that analyzes capital punishment, Black Americans are overrepresented
among death row populations across the nation. A recent analysis from earlier
this year found Black people represent about 41% of inmates, yet are 13% of the
U.S. population.
"Tough-on-crime policies only amplify systemic racial
biases present in the justice system," Densley
said. By lowering the threshold for the death penalty, increasing numbers of
minority groups will be "caught up in that widening dragnet," he
said.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis,
Trump's top challenger, has said repeatedly he would authorize deadly force
against suspected smugglers crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, leaving them
"stone-cold dead."
DeSantis has signaled he is open to firing missiles into Mexico to kill narcotics kingpins involved in
the trade of the synthetic opioid fentanyl
that is fueling a deadly drug crisis in America. He and several other
contenders have signaled they are also open to sending special
forces into Mexico, the top U.S. trade partner, to kill suspects involved in the drug trade.
During the spring state legislative session in Florida, DeSantis signed a bill expanding the use of the death
penalty by, among other measures, allowing its use in cases of child rape, which has not
occurred in the U.S. since 1964.
At the most recent primary debate in California in
September, former Vice President Mike Pence said he would seek to accelerate
executions of people involved in mass shootings.
Trump and Pence did not respond to requests for comment,
while DeSantis' campaign defended his statements.
"Unlike the other candidates' mere talk, Ron DeSantis has delivered results on law and order
issues," said DeSantis campaign press secretary
Bryan Griffin.
DeSantis' campaign noted that he has also sought to increase the
number of police officers in Florida by offering them signing bonuses.
Pence has said he supports tough-on-crime
measures paired with criminal justice reform, indicating, opens new tab he still supports a measure he signed as
the governor of Indiana in 2015 to reduce the population of low-level offenders
in state prisons.
POLITICO
DEMOCRATS’ NEXT CRIME FIGHT: RETAIL THEFT
The New York governor is aiming to tackle the issue as
Democrats are in tough races throughout the state this year.
By NICK REISMAN 02/5/2024 05:00 AM EST
ALBANY, New York — Democrats want to talk tough on crime in
an election year. Their target — shoplifting.
Successfully pursuing retail theft could rob the GOP of a
winning message on criminal justice and give Democrats a national roadmap for
addressing the issue.
Now New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is
waging her own war on shoplifters through a mix of tougher criminal penalties
and funding in her $233 billion budget proposal. She wants to create new police teams to address the matter, while offering
a tax credit for businesses to help bolster security measures.
Hochul’s move comes as Democrats look to flip five U.S. House seats
in New York in the narrowly-divided chamber this year, while Republicans press
on with the anti-crime message that has helped them clinch electoral victories
throughout the country.
“It’s a perception because it’s happening right in front of
their face,” state Sen. Jessica Scarcella-Spanton, a
Democrat who represents heavily Republican Staten Island, said in an interview.
“You walk into a store and everything is locked up.”
The GOP has effectively linked Democrats to spikes in crime, and tackling shoplifting
makes political sense: Voters see everyday items under lock and key or social
media videos of thieves picking shelves clean. In New York, Republicans
in suburban House districts like Reps. Anthony D’Esposito and Nick
LaLota clinched victory in 2022 with a focus on crime and are both facing reelection
challenges this year. Across the country, California could be in for a change of direction, with many officials there
citing retail theft as a breaking point for the state. Getting tougher policies
on crime would be a departure for the state after years of rewritten sentencing
laws favored by the left.
And with 213 seats up in the New York State Legislature,
competitive House races throughout the state and a fierce fight underway for
the White House, party leaders believe it is crucial for Democrats to reclaim
ground on the issue of crime — particularly since they are often divided over
other law enforcement matters.
“I think this is really smart politics from the governor,”
Democratic consultant Alyssa Cass said. “It’s taking away a big talking point
for Republicans. They talk about this retail stuff all the time.”
But Republicans are signaling they’re not going to
relinquish this potent message, no matter what Hochul
does.
“Violent crime is still up and the fact is when you have
grand theft auto, when you have retail theft happening all around us and people
still seeing that violent criminals are getting off and being released, yeah,
it’s still going to be a major issue,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), who
is facing a competitive challenge, said in an interview.
He’s skeptical that the efforts to address retail theft will
be successful.
“When you’re dealing with $4 billion in retail theft last
year, the way to crackdown on it is to actually enforce the law,” Lawler said.
As election season accelerates, some GOP lawmakers in New
York are fueling a view that crime, as well as the influx of thousands of migrants a week, is part of a series of spiraling problems caused by
Democrats.
And while Hochul views it as a
winning move for her party, she will face familiar opposition to her left.
Some Democrats on the left have long questioned whether
tougher penalties can be effective crime-fighting tools. Over the last five
years in New York, Democrats have successfully won changes to the criminal justice system favored by progressive
advocates.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie,
whose signoff is critical for any deal in New York, has already questioned the
governor’s approach to a problem that has popped up in other areas of the
country.
“We keep trying to come up with a New York solution to a
national problem,” said Heastie, who has pushed back
against Hochul-led efforts to change a law that ended
cash bail requirements for many criminal charges.
Other liberal Democrats have been reluctant to support
tougher criminal penalties, worrying that could lead to a further backlog in
the courts and more people in jail. They have instead pushed for more mental
health services and alternatives to incarceration.
“I think all of us want to see a world and a state in which
no retail theft is happening,” state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, a Brooklyn Democrat, said. “But penalties have not
served as deterrence for wayward behavior.”
1.
Supreme Court Shocker? Here’s What Happens if Trump
Gets Kicked Off the Ballot
2.
Trump meets with Ronna
McDaniel — then says he’ll be recommending RNC changes
3.
Chutkan contemplates Trump trial extending deep into 2024,
as case remains in limbo
4.
Nikki Haley enters her YOLO stage
5.
New York verdict against Trump not valid, J.D. Vance
says
Retail theft, in part, could be sustaining the concerns that
voters have consistently registered with
crime as
Democrats in blue states have spent years trying to scale back tough-on-crime
laws to expand rights to defendants in low-level infractions.
Retailers in big cities like New York and Los Angeles have
seen a sharp uptick in shoplifting over the last five years — a problem that
coincided with the pandemic. The problem has been most pronounced in New York
City, where retailers saw a 64 percent largest uptick in shoplifting between
2019 and the middle of 2023, according to a study of 24 cities released
by the Council on Criminal Justice. Los Angeles reported a 61 percent increase during that
same time.
Hochul is sidestepping broader fights with her own party over the
state’s controversial cashless bail law, which New York Republicans have used with success in recent campaigns up and down the ballot.
Hochul has said voters remain worried about safety and has tried
to shore up her own crime-fighting bona fides at home after winning the closest
governor’s race in two decades in 2022 against a Republican who hammered on
crime.
She has also touted additional money for the State Police in a direct challenge to Republican claims Democrats
want to defund law enforcement. This year, she is calling for a measure meant to expand hate crimes offenses.
She has pointed to the drop in murders last year as a sign
that her policies are working.
“But what has popped up are the quality of life issues,” she
told the New York State Sheriffs’ Association earlier this month. “I don’t know
what’s happened. People are just walking in and stealing things off the
shelves.”
She wants a $3,000 tax credit meant to offset the cost for small businesses
upgrading their security. District attorneys’ offices would receive $10 million
to create teams geared toward prosecuting retail theft. And the State Police
would receive more than $25 million for a statewide task force to counter
shoplifting.
Hochul is also backing new criminal penalties for online retailers
and third-party sellers that offer stolen goods for sale. Assaulting a retail
worker would lead to a stiffer criminal charge under a separate proposal.
And yet Republicans are doubtful her plans will have a
noticeable impact.
Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-N.Y.),
a freshman Republican who like Lawler is facing a competitive reelection,
called Hochul’s approach a half measure.
“I support more funding for law enforcement,” he said. “But
until and unless we get rid of bail reform and have tougher penalties for
criminals, the governor is just slapping a band-aid on a gaping wound.”
Jason Beeferman contributed to
this report.
UK
Crime in the US is once again
falling. Can we rethink policing?
Simon Balto Wed 17 Jan 2024
12.08 EST
Reports on 2023 in the United States
are in, and a banner one is this: crime plummeted last year.
This is, of course, good news.
Republican congressmen are now talking
aboutthrowing migrants from helicopters | Moustafa Bayoumi
VERA INST. FOR
JUSTICE (LEFT)
POLLING SHOWS VOTERS PREFER CRIME PREVENTION OVER PUNISHMENT
Erica Bryant Sep 26, 2023
When public safety came up during the first Republican debate of the 2024 presidential election, viewers heard
candidates say “we ought to be funding law enforcement… at unprecedented
levels.” There were promises to put “more cops . . . on the streets [and] able
to do their jobs without looking over their shoulder for getting sued.”
Candidates also vowed to incarcerate more people, stating “we have plenty of
room in the federal prisons.”
But the United States already puts a greater
percentage of its population behind bars than almost any other country. If this
approach worked, we would already be one of the safest nations in the world. So
why do we have higher rates of crime than many countries that arrest and incarcerate far fewer
people?
Voters across the
political spectrum know that our current approach to crime and safety is not
working, and promises from candidates to simply arrest and incarcerate more
people are out of step with what voters and communities actually want and need.
Too often, the United States has used police and prisons to deal with problems
driven by economic instability, untreated mental illness, and substance use.
Instead of just reacting after crime
happens, with police and prisons, alternative proven solutions include
investments in jobs, education, health care, and sending the right first responders to
each situation.
Vera Action recently released a national poll detailing
what voters across the political spectrum believe addresses crime and makes
communities safe. A majority of those polled prioritized solutions that prevent crime, rather than just
responding after harm has been done. A prevention-first approach to safety,
which involves fully funding “things that are proven to create safe communities
and improve people’s quality of life, like good schools, a living wage, and
affordable housing,” was more popular with voters than traditional
“tough-on-crime” policies, like increased spending on police and prisons.
Younger voters were especially likely to support candidates who favor crime
prevention tactics, with 66 percent of voters ages 18 to 35 supporting this
prevention-first approach to public safety. Preventing crime and delivering
safety is a priority for everyone, but especially for Black and Latino
communities. Polling showed that 65 percent of Black voters and 53 percent of Latino
voters said that crime is a big problem where they live. The majority of these
same voters are more likely to prefer “crime prevention” strategies over “tough
on crime” policies.
Voters have plenty of evidence that more policing and more
incarceration don’t fix problems. Indeed, we have seen this in how, for more
than 50 years, the “War on Drugs” and its associated harsh prison sentences have not
succeeded in ending drug use, despite more than $1 trillion spent since 1971. While states continue to spend billions of dollars annually imprisoning people for drug-related
activity, addiction recovery programs have long waitlists because of inadequate public
investment. In 2021, 107,000 people in the United States died from drug overdoses. Many voters see that law
enforcement responses to substance use are inadequate. For example, in 2020,
Oregon voters overwhelmingly approved Measure 110, a law that decriminalized possession of small amounts of
drugs and earmarked part of the state’s
cannabis tax revenue for harm reduction and treatment programs. Despite backlash from people who
want to return to the failed status quo, Oregon is seeing increases in people seeking and being screened for
treatment.
Incarceration is similarly misused to address
problems associated with mental illness. As people struggle to access mental health care, untreated mental illness is
criminalized. The Los Angeles County jail system has become the largest provider of mental health
care in the United States, and jails across the country are
filled with people who would be far better served with community-based
treatment. For people with mental health care needs, being subject to the
conditions of jails and prisons can exacerbate negative symptoms and trap people in a cycle of
incarceration. Voters support policies that expand access to affordable mental health care treatment. In Philadelphia, voters
in the 2023 mayoral primary ranked solutions like increasing mental health
services and drug addiction programs and offering more jobs far
above adding police or passing more punitive bail laws.
When it comes to policing, people don’t simply want “more
cops on the street.” Nationally, 58 percent of voters polled agree that “we keep expecting the police to solve
every social problem, from kids skipping school to mental illness to
homelessness to gun violence. No one profession can do that.”
Voters want police who place value on building trust with
the communities they serve, and they recognize that this is the way to generate
real results. Research has made clear the problems associated with “stop-and-frisk” policing, for example, and the harms caused by the over-policing of communities. In fact, polling
found that 61 percent of voters see “building trust between police and
community” as an effective strategy. Vera Action’s polling found that a winning message focuses on “supporting police
who put their lives on the line for us every day and holding those who use
excessive force or abuse their power accountable,” rather than simply adding
100,000 more police officers to the ranks. Voters also ranked jobs, good housing, good schools, and well-lit streets over police in the factors that make
them feel safe in their neighborhoods.
The message is clear. Voters—especially young voters—are not
interested in failed “tough-on-crime” tactics. They want candidates who are
going to build safer communities through investments in health care, education,
and jobs. They want candidates who agree that the path to public safety is not
responding to crime with police and prisons, but by preventing harm in the
first place.
the WORLD
POPULATION REVIEW
AMERICAN CRIME RATES BY STATE 2024
Crime is alive and well in the United States. As a nation, we have relatively high crime rates; however, they have decreased significantly over the past
25 years. The American government categorizes crime in two ways.
A criminal act is either a violent crime or a property crime.
The four criminal behaviors that fall into the category of violent crime
include aggravated assault, robbery, homicide, whether intentional or
accidental, and rape.
In 2020, the most common type of violent crime committed in
the United States was aggravated assault. Robbery was the next type of violent
crime to take place most often, and although homicide rates have always been
pretty high in America, they still only accounted for about five cases per
100,000 people.
Property crime is another category of crime in America, and
the specific crimes that fall into this category are arson, burglaries,
larceny, and motor vehicular theft and damage.
Collective
Crime Rates in the United States in 2020
The average crime rates in America during the year 2020 were:
·
Homicide, 6.5 deaths per 100,000
people
·
Robbery, 73.9 cases per 100,000
people
·
Aggravated assault, 279.6 instances
per 100,000 people
·
Burglary, 314.2 cases per 100,000
people
·
Larceny, 1,398 cases per 100,000
people
·
Motor vehicle theft, 245.9 cases for
every 100,000 people
Crime rates decreased in the United States from 2016-2020.
This is good news, but it also isn't that impressive when you look at the
numbers. Take a look at the values below for crimes that involved guns and
criminal activity that resulted in murder, if that wasn't the goal in the first place. These numbers
are still quite large, and they are evidence of the reality that the United States
still has a long way to go before crime becomes abnormal instead of the norm.
Crime rates vary significantly between states based on
several factors, including population density and economic factors.
Historically, the causes and origins of crime have been
investigated in many disciplines. Some of the factors known to affect the
amount and type of crime that occur in each place are:
·
Population density and degree of
urbanization
·
Differences in population composition,
especially the concentration of young people
·
Population stability on resident
mobility, travel patterns, and temporal factors
·
Traffic mode and road network
·
Economic conditions, including
average income, poverty level, and ability to work
·
Cultural factors and educational,
recreational, and religious characteristics
·
Family conditions in terms of
divorce and family cohesion
·
Climate
After the FBI changed its criminal data collection program
in 2021, nearly 40% of local law enforcement agencies did not report data to
the federal government, while more than 7,700 agencies reported data at all. year for the FBI and nearly 4,000 agencies reporting partial
data. The gap includes the nation's two largest cities by population, New York and Los Angeles, as well as most agencies in five of
the six most populous states: California, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Florida.
States
with the Lowest Violent Crime Rates
Maine has the lowest crime rate 108.58, and the incidence Count
was 1466. Maine residents aren’t as concerned about their overall safety
compared to the rest of the nation. Maine had no mass shooting incidences,
compared to one the year before. Property crime has dropped steadily since 2019
in Maine, and each of its safest cities experienced less property crime than
the rest of the state, region, and the national average.
New Hampshire has the second-lowest crime rate in the United
States with 2000 incidents. New Hampshire comes in well below US averages for
violent crime and property crime. Its already-low violent crime rate made
improvements this year.
The Green Mountain State borders Canada and is well regarded as one of the safest travel
destinations in the US. Vermont has a crime rate of 173.4 per 100,000 people,
making it the state with the third-lowest crime rate. According to Safewise, 78% of Vermonters feel safe in their state,
beating the national average by a whopping 42%. The crime issue that causes the
most concern is property crime, tied with package theft as the crime Vermonters
fear may happen to them.
Connecticut has a crime rate of 181.59 per 100,000 people, that’s
the fourth lowest in America. The national average was 398.5, and Republican
states like Texas, Arizona, and Tennessee had violent crime rates in the 400s and 600s — two to
three times higher than Connecticut.
New Jersey New Jersey boasts some of the lowest crime rates
in the country, New Jersey's crime rate of 195.36 is the fifth-lowest
nationwide. This is the second consecutive year that New Jersey was among the
states with the lowest violent crime rates in the nation. The Garden State is
the fourth-lowest in the nation when it comes to property crime. In the
Mid-Atlantic region, New Jersey bested the violent-crime regional average, with
the lowest rate ahead of New York (363.8)
States
with the Highest Violent Crime Rates
|
State |
Crime
Rate |
|
7,986 |
|
|
6,462 |
|
|
6,408 |
|
|
6,091 |
|
|
5,973 |
|
|
5,899 |
|
|
5,870 |
|
|
5,759 |
|
|
5,658 |
|
|
5,610 |
The District of Columbia has the highest crime rate in the
United States, with a 999.8 crime rate per 100,000 people. According to me
Metropolitan Police Department, homicides increase by 14% compared to 2021,
robbery by 24%, burglary by 8%, and 4% in motor
vehicle theft.
Alaska has the second-highest crime rate of 837.85 per
100,000 residents. Alaska has the highest violent crime rate and the
thirteenth-highest property crime rate in the US. Alaska’s violent crime rate
is more than double that of the Pacific region and is the highest of all 50
states. So Alaskans’ low concern about violent crime is out of sync with the
amount of violent crime happening.
New Mexico has the third-highest crime rate in the United States.
New Mexico continues to have higher-than-average crime rates across the board,
but the good news is that property and violent crime rates are declining
yearly. Violent crime fell to 778.28 per 100,000—but that still gives New
Mexico the third-highest violent crime rate in the US.
Tennessee
Tennessee's crime rate of 672.70 per 100,000 is the
fourth-highest in the country. According to the Tennessee Bureau of
Investigation (TBI) increase in property, crimes were driven by the number of
reported burglaries in Memphis and Shelby County. Memphis saw an increase of 23
percent while the county as a whole saw an increase of nearly 12 percent. The
number of reported motor vehicle thefts (carjackings)
in Memphis increased by nearly 13 percent and 11 percent in Shelby County.
Arkansas's crime rate of 671.93 per 100,000 is the
fifth-highest in the country. According to the CDC at the National Center for Health
Statistics, Arkansas has one of the highest death rates from firearms. Crime
rates in the state are driven up by high concentrations of violence in some
cities. Both the Pine Bluff and Little Rock metropolitan areas' violent crime
rates -- at 1,098 and 939 incidents for every 100,000 residents, respectively
-- are far higher than the national average.
Crime Rate
by State 2024
*Rates per 100k People
|
State |
2020
Population |
Crime Reported |
Crime
Rate |
Violent
Crimes |
Violent
Crime Rate |
Non-Violent
Crime |
Non-Violent
Crime Rate |
|
712,816 |
14,113 |
7,986 |
7,127 |
999.84 |
49,798 |
6,986 |
|
|
2,106,319 |
22,077 |
6,462 |
16,393 |
778.28 |
119,718 |
5,684 |
|
|
4,645,318 |
35,473 |
6,408 |
29,704 |
639.44 |
267,978 |
5,769 |
|
|
5,807,719 |
30,238 |
6,091 |
24,570 |
423.06 |
329,164 |
5,668 |
|
|
5,218,040 |
33,133 |
5,973 |
27,691 |
530.68 |
283,974 |
5,442 |
|
|
3,030,522 |
25,590 |
5,899 |
20,363 |
671.93 |
158,400 |
5,227 |
|
|
3,980,783 |
23,666 |
5,870 |
18,255 |
458.58 |
215,410 |
5,411 |
|
|
7,693,612 |
28,061 |
5,759 |
22,596 |
293.70 |
420,446 |
5,465 |
|
|
6,886,834 |
51,314 |
5,658 |
46,328 |
672.70 |
343,350 |
4,986 |
|
|
4,241,507 |
17,698 |
5,610 |
12,380 |
291.88 |
225,564 |
5,318 |
|
|
6,151,548 |
38,447 |
5,605 |
33,385 |
542.71 |
311,396 |
5,062 |
|
|
731,158 |
10,647 |
5,359 |
6,126 |
837.85 |
33,056 |
4,521 |
|
|
3,249,879 |
13,400 |
5,190 |
8,471 |
260.66 |
160,182 |
4,929 |
|
|
1,407,006 |
8,399 |
5,077 |
3,576 |
254.16 |
67,856 |
4,823 |
|
|
7,421,401 |
40,435 |
4,940 |
35,980 |
484.81 |
330,646 |
4,455 |
|
|
29,360,759 |
135,574 |
4,937 |
131,084 |
446.46 |
1,318,320 |
4,490 |
|
|
10,600,823 |
48,904 |
4,872 |
44,451 |
419.32 |
472,052 |
4,453 |
|
|
2,913,805 |
16,783 |
4,823 |
12,385 |
425.05 |
128,154 |
4,398 |
|
|
4,921,532 |
26,596 |
4,727 |
22,322 |
453.56 |
210,322 |
4,274 |
|
|
39,368,078 |
178,304 |
4,720 |
174,026 |
442.05 |
1,684,108 |
4,278 |
|
|
1,080,577 |
9,319 |
4,711 |
5,077 |
469.84 |
45,834 |
4,242 |
|
|
765,309 |
6,766 |
4,577 |
2,518 |
329.02 |
32,512 |
4,248 |
|
|
5,657,342 |
19,948 |
4,527 |
15,698 |
277.48 |
240,424 |
4,250 |
|
|
2,966,786 |
12,841 |
4,494 |
8,638 |
291.16 |
124,702 |
4,203 |
|
|
892,717 |
8,389 |
4,415 |
4,476 |
501.39 |
34,936 |
3,913 |
|
|
10,710,017 |
46,865 |
4,415 |
42,850 |
400.09 |
429,976 |
4,015 |
|
|
986,809 |
8,185 |
4,355 |
4,262 |
431.90 |
38,710 |
3,923 |
|
|
3,138,259 |
18,298 |
4,314 |
14,445 |
460.29 |
120,924 |
3,853 |
|
|
1,937,552 |
10,291 |
4,152 |
6,473 |
334.08 |
73,982 |
3,818 |
|
|
11,693,217 |
39,805 |
4,009 |
36,104 |
308.76 |
432,726 |
3,701 |
|
|
6,754,953 |
27,727 |
3,924 |
24,161 |
357.68 |
240,906 |
3,566 |
|
|
21,733,312 |
86,907 |
3,922 |
83,368 |
383.60 |
769,112 |
3,539 |
|
|
4,477,251 |
15,159 |
3,818 |
11,600 |
259.09 |
159,346 |
3,559 |
|
|
3,163,561 |
12,997 |
3,700 |
9,601 |
303.49 |
107,450 |
3,396 |
|
|
12,783,254 |
53,081 |
3,678 |
49,793 |
389.52 |
420,334 |
3,288 |
|
|
6,055,802 |
27,435 |
3,619 |
24,215 |
399.86 |
194,974 |
3,220 |
|
|
12,587,530 |
56,731 |
3,545 |
53,612 |
425.91 |
392,574 |
3,119 |
|
|
582,328 |
4,585 |
3,455 |
1,364 |
234.23 |
18,758 |
3,221 |
|
|
3,557,006 |
9,589 |
3,312 |
6,459 |
181.59 |
111,340 |
3,130 |
|
|
5,832,655 |
21,832 |
3,295 |
18,861 |
323.37 |
173,308 |
2,971 |
|
|
9,966,555 |
50,363 |
3,200 |
47,641 |
478.01 |
271,266 |
2,722 |
|
|
19,336,776 |
73,160 |
3,185 |
70,339 |
363.76 |
545,576 |
2,821 |
|
|
1,784,787 |
9,151 |
3,155 |
6,352 |
355.90 |
49,952 |
2,799 |
|
|
8,590,563 |
20,838 |
3,121 |
17,925 |
208.66 |
250,228 |
2,913 |
|
|
1,057,125 |
4,931 |
2,722 |
2,440 |
230.81 |
26,332 |
2,491 |
|
|
623,347 |
3,515 |
2,607 |
1,081 |
173.42 |
15,172 |
2,434 |
|
|
8,882,371 |
19,669 |
2,512 |
17,353 |
195.37 |
205,750 |
2,316 |
|
|
1,826,913 |
6,656 |
2,466 |
4,432 |
242.59 |
40,626 |
2,224 |
|
|
1,350,141 |
3,778 |
2,421 |
1,466 |
108.58 |
31,220 |
2,312 |
|
|
6,893,574 |
23,394 |
2,415 |
21,288 |
308.81 |
145,204 |
2,106 |
|
|
1,366,275 |
4,198 |
2,344 |
2,000 |
146.38 |
30,028 |
2,198 |
showing: 51 rows
THE WORLD
POPULATION REVIEW
CRIME RATE BY COUNTRY
Snapshot
·
Crime rates are influenced by
several factors, such as poverty, unemployment, and law enforcement strictness.
·
Countries like Venezuela, Papua New
Guinea, and South Africa have high crime rates due to issues like corruption,
economic changes, and social challenges.
·
Low crime rates in countries like
Switzerland and Japan are attributed to effective law enforcement and in some
cases, restrictive gun laws.
Overall crime rate is calculated by dividing the total
number of reported crimes of any kind by the total population, then multiplying
the result by 100,000 (because crime rate is typically reported as X number of
crimes per 100,000 people). Crime rates vary greatly from country to country
and are influenced by many factors. For example, high poverty levels and
unemployment tend to inflate a country's crime rate. Conversely, strict police
enforcement and severe sentences tend to reduce crime rates. There is also a
strong correlation between age and crime, with most crimes, especially violent crimes, being committed by those ages 20-30 years old.
The overall crime rate in the United States is 47.70. The violent crime rate in the United States
has decreased sharply over the past 25 years. Crimes rates vary significantly
between the states, with states with such as Alaska, New Mexico, and Tennessee experiencing much higher crime rates than states such
as Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Some of the world's lowest crime rates are seen in Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Japan, and New Zealand. Each of these countries has very effective law
enforcement, and Denmark, Norway, and Japan have some of the most restrictive
gun laws in the world.
Countries
with the Highest Crime Rate
|
Country |
Crime
Index (Numbeo) |
|
82.10 |
|
|
80.40 |
|
|
78.40 |
|
|
78.30 |
|
|
75.50 |
|
|
74.30 |
|
|
70.80 |
|
|
69.10 |
|
|
68.80 |
|
|
67.50 |
1. Venezuela
Venezuela has a crime index of 83.76, the highest of any country
in the world. The U.S. Department of State has issued a Level 4 travel advisory
for Venezuela, indicating that it is unsafe to travel to the country, and
travelers should not travel there. Venezuela's high crime
rates have been attributed to reasons including government corruption, a flawed
judiciary system, and the breakdown of the Rule of Law.
Papua New Guinea has a crime index of 80.79. In Papua New Guinea,
crime, especially violent crime, is primarily fueled by rapid social, economic,
and political changes. Raskol gangs engage in small
and large-scale criminal activity and consist mainly of members with little
education and few employment opportunities. Organized crime in the form of
corruption is also common in major cities and largely contributes to the high
crime rate. Additionally, the geography of Papua New Guinea makes it appealing
for drug and human trafficking.
3. South Africa
South Africa has the third-highest crime rate in the world. South Africa has a notably high rate of assaults, rape, homicides,
and other violent crimes. This has been attributed to several factors,
including high levels of poverty, inequality, unemployment, and social
exclusion, and the normalization of violence. South Africa has one of the highest rape rates in the world. More than 1 in 4 men surveyed by the
South African Medical Research Council admitted to committing rape.
4. Afghanistan
Afghanistan has the fourth-highest crime rate. Crime is present
in various forms, including corruption, assassinations/contract killings, drug
trafficking, kidnapping, and money laundering. Afghanistan supplied 85% of the world's illicit opium in 2020. The Taliban, which regained control of the
country in 2021, has pledged to stamp out the opium industry, but it is such a
vital part of the country's struggling economy that it will be difficult to
eliminate. Widespread unemployment adds additional fuel for many of the
country's crimes, such as robbery and assault.
5. Honduras
With a crime index of 74.54, Honduras ranks fifth in the
world in terms of crime rate. Honduras's peak of violent crime was in 2012,
where the country experienced about 20 homicides per day, typically carried out
by gun-toting gangs such as Barrio 18 or Mara Salvatrucha.
Honduras is also considered to be a major drug route to the United States. Weak
domestic law enforcement has made the country an easy point of entry for the
illegal drug trade. The U.S. Department of State has issued a Level 3 travel
advisory for Honduras, indicating that travelers should reconsider visiting the
country.
Trinidad and Tobago has the sixth-highest crime rate in the
world. Trinidad and Tobago's government faces several challenges in its effect
to reduce crime, such as bureaucratic resistance to change, the negative
influence of gangs, drugs, economic recession, and an overburdened legal
system. There is a great demand for illegal weapons as well, which drug
trafficking and gang-related activities fuel. Trinidad and Tobago has a Level 2
travel advisory, meaning that travelers should exercise increased caution.
Visitors are typically victims of pickpocketing,
assault, theft, and fraud.
7. Guyana
Guyana has the eighth-highest crime rate worldwide of 68.74, and a murder rate of about four times higher than
that of the United States. Despite a rigorous licensing requirement to own
firearms, the use of weapons by criminals is common. Domestic violence happens
regularly in Guyana, as the enforcement of domestic violence laws is weak.
Armed robberies occur frequently as well, especially in Georgetown.
Additionally, tourists are often the victims of hotel break-ins, robberies, and
assaults.
8. El Salvador
Organized crime is a massive problem in El Salvador,
contributing to most social violence, with its two largest gangs, MS-13 and
Barrio 18. There are an estimated 25,000 gang members at large in El Salvador,
9,000 in prison, and about 60,000 young people in youth gangs, which dominate
the country. Many gangs have also cultivated relationships, and in some cases
territorial disputes, with drug traffickers. In addition to gangs, high
unemployment rates and low wages in El Salvador have pushed families into
marginalized areas where crimes are common. Property crimes, such as robbery,
theft, and theft of vehicles, are the most common.
9. Brazil
Brazil has the seventh-highest crime rate in the world with
exceptionally high rates of violent crimes. Brazil's homicide rate was 23.6 homicides per 100,000
inhabitants in
2020—and it has been as high as 30.8 in previous years. Brazil's most massive
problem is organized crime, as organized crime has expanded in recent years,
and violence between rival groups is a common occurrence. Drug trafficking,
corruption, and domestic violence are all pervasive issues in Brazil.
10. Jamaica
Finishing the top ten list of
countries with the highest crime rates is Jamaica, which is plagued by
government corruption, gang activity, and high levels of violent crime,
including sexual assault. The U.S. Overseas Security Advisory
Council describes
the Jamaican police force as understaffed and possessed of limited resources.
Travelers are advised to especially avoid Spanish Town and parts of Kingston and Montego Bay.
Notes:
- Lower GOCI scores are preferable.
- The Global Organized Crime Index (GOCI) is created each year by compiling
data from a wide range of indicators across three subcategories:
- Criminal Markets, from financial crimes and cyber crimes to human
trafficking, arms trafficking, environmental and drug crimes
- Criminal Actors such as mafia-style groups, criminal networks, and
state-embedded actors
- Resilience, which includes the country's judicial system, law enforcement,
and victim and witness support
- Crime Index and Safety Index are compiled semi-annually by statistics site Numbeo, and range from 0-100. Lower scores are preferable
in the Crime Index, while higher scores are preferable in the Safety Index.
Mid-2023 values for both indices are displayed.
|
Country |
Crime
Index (Numbeo) (per 100k) |
Overall
Criminality Score (GOCI) |
Criminal
Markets Score |
Criminal
Actors Score |
Resilience
Score |
Safety
Index (Numbeo) |
|
82.10 |
6.72 |
6.03 |
7.40 |
1.88 |
17.90 |
|
|
80.40 |
5.72 |
5.33 |
6.10 |
3.29 |
19.60 |
|
|
78.40 |
7.10 |
7.00 |
7.20 |
1.50 |
21.60 |
|
|
78.30 |
5.93 |
5.77 |
6.10 |
2.46 |
21.70 |
|
|
75.50 |
7.18 |
6.87 |
7.50 |
5.63 |
24.50 |
|
|
74.30 |
7.05 |
6.00 |
8.10 |
4.08 |
25.70 |
|
|
70.80 |
5.20 |
4.80 |
5.60 |
5.33 |
29.20 |
|
|
69.10 |
7.07 |
6.43 |
7.70 |
1.92 |
30.90 |
|
|
68.80 |
5.97 |
5.13 |
6.80 |
4.04 |
31.20 |
|
|
67.50 |
6.40 |
6.20 |
6.60 |
4.38 |
32.50 |
|
|
67.50 |
5.80 |
4.90 |
6.70 |
5.42 |
32.50 |
|
|
66.70 |
6.13 |
5.27 |
7.00 |
1.79 |
33.30 |
|
|
66.10 |
6.77 |
6.93 |
6.60 |
4.92 |
33.90 |
|
|
65.80 |
7.28 |
7.37 |
7.20 |
5.79 |
34.20 |
|
|
65.80 |
5.58 |
5.17 |
6.00 |
4.50 |
34.20 |
|
|
64.60 |
4.30 |
4.10 |
4.50 |
4.54 |
35.40 |
|
|
64.20 |
4.87 |
4.63 |
5.10 |
2.17 |
35.80 |
|
|
64.00 |
5.00 |
4.50 |
5.50 |
5.96 |
36.00 |
|
|
63.70 |
6.20 |
5.90 |
6.50 |
3.29 |
36.30 |
|
|
62.50 |
5.12 |
5.03 |
5.20 |
4.42 |
37.50 |
|
|
62.10 |
5.92 |
5.43 |
6.40 |
3.21 |
37.90 |
|
|
62.00 |
4.95 |
5.00 |
4.90 |
4.83 |
38.00 |
|
|
61.70 |
38.30 |
|||||
|
61.20 |
38.80 |
|||||
|
61.10 |
4.65 |
4.30 |
5.00 |
4.38 |
38.90 |
|
|
60.80 |
6.37 |
6.53 |
6.20 |
5.67 |
39.20 |
|
|
60.70 |
7.07 |
6.73 |
7.40 |
4.88 |
39.30 |
|
|
60.60 |
5.47 |
5.03 |
5.90 |
3.13 |
39.40 |
|
|
60.40 |
6.93 |
6.57 |
7.30 |
1.54 |
39.60 |
|
|
60.30 |
3.75 |
3.60 |
3.90 |
5.50 |
39.70 |
|
|
60.10 |
6.60 |
6.10 |
7.10 |
4.08 |
39.90 |
|
|
58.70 |
5.50 |
5.10 |
5.90 |
2.42 |
41.30 |
|
|
57.50 |
6.02 |
5.93 |
6.10 |
5.13 |
42.50 |
|
|
56.80 |
7.02 |
6.93 |
7.10 |
5.33 |
43.20 |
|
|
56.70 |
4.15 |
4.30 |
4.00 |
5.42 |
43.30 |
|
|
55.90 |
6.55 |
6.40 |
6.70 |
3.88 |
44.10 |
|
|
55.20 |
4.27 |
3.53 |
5.00 |
4.08 |
44.80 |
|
|
54.60 |
5.82 |
5.93 |
5.70 |
6.96 |
45.40 |
|
|
54.40 |
5.45 |
4.80 |
6.10 |
2.58 |
45.60 |
|
|
54.10 |
7.57 |
8.13 |
7.00 |
4.21 |
45.90 |
|
|
53.90 |
5.32 |
4.63 |
6.00 |
3.83 |
46.10 |
|
|
53.70 |
5.53 |
5.37 |
5.70 |
5.63 |
46.30 |
|
|
53.50 |
4.12 |
3.83 |
4.40 |
5.21 |
46.50 |
|
|
53.00 |
5.92 |
5.83 |
6.00 |
3.46 |
47.00 |
|
|
52.60 |
4.35 |
4.40 |
4.30 |
5.46 |
47.40 |
|
|
52.30 |
4.87 |
4.43 |
5.30 |
3.29 |
47.70 |
|
|
51.90 |
3.22 |
3.33 |
3.10 |
7.50 |
48.10 |
|
|
51.60 |
6.23 |
6.67 |
5.80 |
5.92 |
48.40 |
|
|
51.40 |
5.68 |
6.07 |
5.30 |
4.75 |
48.60 |
|
|
51.40 |
4.88 |
5.17 |
4.60 |
4.38 |
48.60 |
|
|
51.40 |
5.87 |
5.33 |
6.40 |
3.25 |
48.60 |
|
|
50.70 |
4.82 |
5.73 |
3.90 |
1.79 |
49.30 |
|
|
50.60 |
7.52 |
6.73 |
8.30 |
3.42 |
49.40 |
|
|
50.20 |
5.72 |
5.23 |
6.20 |
2.08 |
49.80 |
|
|
50.00 |
8.15 |
7.70 |
8.60 |
1.63 |
50.00 |
|
|
49.80 |
7.03 |
7.37 |
6.70 |
3.13 |
50.20 |
|
|
49.20 |
5.67 |
5.83 |
5.50 |
7.13 |
50.80 |
|
|
48.90 |
4.43 |
5.17 |
3.70 |
7.04 |
51.10 |
|
|
48.10 |
4.70 |
4.60 |
4.80 |
7.46 |
51.90 |
|
|
48.10 |
4.37 |
4.13 |
4.60 |
5.54 |
51.90 |
|
|
47.90 |
4.73 |
4.47 |
5.00 |
4.54 |
52.10 |
|
|
47.30 |
6.22 |
5.73 |
6.70 |
6.46 |
52.70 |
|
|
47.10 |
4.80 |
5.10 |
4.50 |
4.63 |
52.90 |
|
|
47.10 |
4.08 |
3.77 |
4.40 |
7.88 |
52.90 |
|
|
47.00 |
5.05 |
5.10 |
5.00 |
3.83 |
53.00 |
|
|
46.90 |
5.75 |
5.50 |
6.00 |
7.54 |
53.10 |
|
|
46.80 |
6.48 |
6.27 |
6.70 |
4.54 |
53.20 |
|
|
46.70 |
4.00 |
4.30 |
3.70 |
7.38 |
53.30 |
|
|
46.60 |
3.07 |
2.43 |
3.70 |
6.13 |
53.40 |
|
|
46.50 |
5.35 |
4.70 |
6.00 |
5.17 |
53.50 |
|
|
46.50 |
7.10 |
6.30 |
7.90 |
3.46 |
53.50 |
|
|
46.40 |
4.47 |
4.33 |
4.60 |
4.54 |
53.60 |
|
|
46.10 |
5.08 |
5.17 |
5.00 |
7.33 |
53.90 |
|
|
46.00 |
7.13 |
6.27 |
8.00 |
3.21 |
54.00 |
|
|
45.90 |
6.85 |
6.60 |
7.10 |
4.25 |
54.10 |
|
|
45.50 |
6.37 |
5.23 |
7.50 |
2.71 |
54.50 |
|
|
45.40 |
5.17 |
4.83 |
5.50 |
5.13 |
54.60 |
|
|
44.80 |
6.85 |
6.70 |
7.00 |
3.63 |
55.20 |
|
|
44.70 |
4.45 |
5.00 |
3.90 |
4.50 |
55.30 |
|
|
44.40 |
5.75 |
6.70 |
4.80 |
5.42 |
55.60 |
|
|
44.10 |
6.55 |
6.50 |
6.60 |
4.79 |
55.90 |
|
|
44.10 |
5.80 |
6.00 |
5.60 |
5.46 |
55.90 |
|
|
44.10 |
6.98 |
6.67 |
7.30 |
4.67 |
55.90 |
|
|
42.80 |
6.03 |
6.27 |
5.80 |
3.96 |
57.20 |
|
|
42.60 |
6.63 |
6.57 |
6.70 |
4.21 |
57.40 |
|
|
42.50 |
5.85 |
5.30 |
6.40 |
3.88 |
57.50 |
|
|
42.20 |
4.92 |
4.83 |
5.00 |
3.42 |
57.80 |
|
|
41.20 |
58.80 |
|||||
|
40.70 |
4.93 |
4.87 |
5.00 |
5.58 |
59.30 |
|
|
40.70 |
5.03 |
4.87 |
5.20 |
5.29 |
59.30 |
|
|
40.20 |
7.03 |
6.77 |
7.30 |
3.38 |
59.80 |
|
|
40.00 |
5.00 |
4.30 |
5.70 |
5.13 |
60.00 |
|
|
39.70 |
6.87 |
6.83 |
6.90 |
3.79 |
60.30 |
|
|
38.50 |
6.22 |
5.73 |
6.70 |
4.96 |
61.50 |
|
|
38.30 |
6.20 |
6.40 |
6.00 |
4.13 |
61.70 |
|
|
38.00 |
5.33 |
5.47 |
5.20 |
7.50 |
62.00 |
|
|
37.50 |
6.57 |
6.03 |
7.10 |
4.00 |
62.50 |
|
|
37.50 |
5.65 |
5.40 |
5.90 |
5.33 |
62.50 |
|
|
37.30 |
3.90 |
4.50 |
3.30 |
7.58 |
62.70 |
|
|
36.90 |
5.90 |
5.20 |
6.60 |
4.75 |
63.10 |
|
|
35.80 |
5.90 |
5.70 |
6.10 |
6.75 |
64.20 |
|
|
34.00 |
2.85 |
2.90 |
2.80 |
7.50 |
66.00 |
|
|
33.80 |
4.62 |
4.73 |
4.50 |
4.88 |
66.20 |
|
|
33.20 |
3.90 |
3.80 |
4.00 |
7.29 |
66.80 |
|
|
32.80 |
4.58 |
5.27 |
3.90 |
6.00 |
67.20 |
|
|
32.60 |
5.20 |
5.70 |
4.70 |
5.54 |
67.40 |
|
|
32.60 |
4.43 |
3.97 |
4.90 |
4.46 |
67.40 |
|
|
32.50 |
3.75 |
4.10 |
3.40 |
7.92 |
67.50 |
|
|
32.20 |
3.37 |
3.63 |
3.10 |
5.38 |
67.80 |
|
|
32.20 |
4.85 |
5.00 |
4.70 |
6.08 |
67.80 |
|
|
31.70 |
4.80 |
4.10 |
5.50 |
3.96 |
68.30 |
|
|
31.30 |
4.95 |
4.60 |
5.30 |
3.88 |
68.70 |
|
|
31.30 |
4.72 |
4.73 |
4.70 |
5.29 |
68.70 |
|
|
30.70 |
4.88 |
4.67 |
5.10 |
6.50 |
69.30 |
|
|
29.20 |
4.48 |
4.97 |
4.00 |
5.88 |
70.80 |
|
|
29.20 |
2.85 |
3.30 |
2.40 |
4.58 |
70.80 |
|
|
27.60 |
4.13 |
4.17 |
4.10 |
7.50 |
72.40 |
|
|
27.30 |
3.60 |
4.00 |
3.20 |
5.54 |
72.70 |
|
|
26.80 |
4.68 |
4.87 |
4.50 |
6.42 |
73.20 |
|
|
26.60 |
4.02 |
4.33 |
3.70 |
8.13 |
73.40 |
|
|
26.50 |
2.98 |
3.27 |
2.70 |
8.63 |
73.50 |
|
|
26.20 |
4.97 |
5.23 |
4.70 |
7.46 |
73.80 |
|
|
26.10 |
5.15 |
4.90 |
5.40 |
5.92 |
73.90 |
|
|
25.80 |
5.18 |
5.07 |
5.30 |
6.17 |
74.20 |
|
|
25.30 |
4.43 |
3.57 |
5.30 |
8.08 |
74.70 |
|
|
25.00 |
3.37 |
2.93 |
3.80 |
8.21 |
75.00 |
|
|
24.90 |
4.87 |
4.63 |
5.10 |
7.04 |
75.10 |
|
|
24.70 |
2.58 |
1.67 |
3.50 |
5.63 |
75.30 |
|
|
24.50 |
4.25 |
4.20 |
4.30 |
7.88 |
75.50 |
|
|
24.30 |
6.23 |
6.57 |
5.90 |
4.00 |
75.70 |
|
|
24.20 |
4.37 |
4.03 |
4.70 |
6.04 |
75.80 |
|
|
24.20 |
4.95 |
5.40 |
4.50 |
5.42 |
75.80 |
|
|
23.10 |
3.47 |
3.93 |
3.00 |
7.83 |
76.90 |
|
|
22.90 |
4.28 |
3.87 |
4.70 |
7.38 |
77.10 |
|
|
21.70 |
78.30 |
|||||
|
21.60 |
2.82 |
2.93 |
2.70 |
5.71 |
78.40 |
|
|
19.60 |
4.40 |
4.90 |
3.90 |
5.21 |
80.40 |
|
|
16.10 |
83.90 |
|||||
|
14.60 |
6.37 |
7.03 |
5.70 |
5.13 |
85.40 |
|
|
14.30 |
5.45 |
5.70 |
5.20 |
5.42 |
85.70 |
|
|
7.35 |
6.20 |
8.50 |
2.38 |
|||
|
6.18 |
6.77 |
5.60 |
4.79 |
|||
|
7.75 |
7.30 |
8.20 |
5.63 |
|||
|
3.88 |
3.87 |
3.90 |
7.21 |
|||
|
6.57 |
5.63 |
7.50 |
1.75 |
|||
|
5.58 |
5.27 |
5.90 |
3.33 |
|||
|
6.27 |
6.23 |
6.30 |
3.17 |
|||
|
5.70 |
5.70 |
5.70 |
3.46 |
|||
|
5.93 |
6.47 |
5.40 |
2.38 |
|||
|
4.48 |
4.77 |
4.20 |
4.58 |
|||
|
5.52 |
5.53 |
5.50 |
5.79 |
|||
|
4.58 |
4.77 |
4.40 |
3.13 |
|||
|
5.32 |
5.43 |
5.20 |
3.50 |
|||
|
5.02 |
5.13 |
4.90 |
4.79 |
|||
|
6.32 |
5.13 |
7.50 |
1.88 |
|||
|
5.23 |
4.77 |
5.70 |
4.50 |
|||
|
4.95 |
4.60 |
5.30 |
4.04 |
|||
|
6.12 |
6.33 |
5.90 |
3.46 |
|||
|
4.40 |
4.40 |
4.40 |
2.21 |
|||
|
4.78 |
4.47 |
5.10 |
3.25 |
|||
|
6.75 |
5.60 |
7.90 |
1.79 |
|||
|
5.50 |
5.40 |
5.60 |
3.25 |
|||
|
4.38 |
4.27 |
4.50 |
3.13 |
|||
|
3.97 |
3.93 |
4.00 |
2.33 |
|||
|
3.60 |
3.60 |
3.60 |
5.25 |
|||
|
5.60 |
5.20 |
6.00 |
3.92 |
|||
|
4.53 |
4.67 |
4.40 |
5.17 |
|||
|
4.85 |
4.60 |
5.10 |
3.25 |
|||
|
3.92 |
3.43 |
4.40 |
3.92 |
|||
|
4.38 |
3.57 |
5.20 |
2.21 |
|||
|
4.08 |
3.67 |
4.50 |
3.83 |
|||
|
4.38 |
3.87 |
4.90 |
3.29 |
|||
|
3.92 |
3.73 |
4.10 |
2.38 |
|||
|
3.90 |
3.90 |
3.90 |
4.71 |
|||
|
4.40 |
3.70 |
5.10 |
5.08 |
|||
|
4.77 |
4.53 |
5.00 |
3.04 |
|||
|
4.28 |
3.97 |
4.60 |
6.58 |
|||
|
2.43 |
2.67 |
2.20 |
5.13 |
|||
|
1.70 |
1.70 |
1.70 |
4.92 |
|||
|
2.43 |
2.97 |
1.90 |
5.83 |
|||
|
3.53 |
2.67 |
4.40 |
5.58 |
|||
|
2.45 |
2.60 |
2.30 |
4.33 |
|||
|
2.93 |
2.67 |
3.20 |
5.13 |
|||
|
3.00 |
3.00 |
3.00 |
5.88 |
|||
|
3.70 |
3.50 |
3.90 |
5.29 |
|||
|
3.90 |
3.50 |
4.30 |
5.21 |
|||
|
3.08 |
2.67 |
3.50 |
5.38 |
|||
|
2.98 |
2.67 |
3.30 |
4.58 |
|||
|
3.22 |
2.73 |
3.70 |
7.96 |
|||
|
2.63 |
2.67 |
2.60 |
5.17 |
|||
|
3.52 |
2.83 |
4.20 |
5.00 |
|||
|
2.52 |
2.73 |
2.30 |
5.79 |
|||
|
2.27 |
2.33 |
2.20 |
8.46 |
|||
|
3.48 |
2.37 |
4.60 |
5.21 |
|||
|
2.70 |
2.90 |
2.50 |
5.33 |
|||
|
2.05 |
2.20 |
1.90 |
5.00 |
|||
|
1.62 |
1.93 |
1.30 |
6.08 |
|||
|
46.67 |
showing: 197 rows
Which
country has the highest crime rate in the world?
Venezuela has the highest crime rate at 83.76, measured per
100,000 citizens.
Which
country has the lowest crime rate in the world?
Iceland ranks as the world’s safest country with the lowest
crime rate, achieving a 1.107 rating on the Global Peace Index. The index
accounts for conflict, political instability, internal distrust, and potential
terrorist attacks.
Frequently
Asked Questions