The rhetoric and fearmongering over crime has led, in part, to an expansion of “stand-your-ground” laws in the US. 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. Republicans have led the charge on crime rhetoric, Ofer said. “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.” 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. Some progress has been made in the last two decades. Just 2.6% of adult white males had been incarcerated. 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”. Black people have been historically more likely to be arrested than white people, which led to higher rates of incarceration. In this crime crackdown, not everyone was treated equally. “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. 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. The impact, Ofer said, was “an exponential growth in incarceration” in the US. It culminated in the election of prosecutors who promised more convictions and longer sentences. The 1980s was when tough-on-crime rhetoric “exploded”, Ofer said. Still, the rate of homicide in major cities was about half that of historic peaks in the 1980s and early 1990s. Crime declined in 35 large cities in 2022, according to the Council on Criminal Justice, although rates remain higher than pre-pandemic levels. Since that peak, most types of violent crime have now dropped. “So-called red states actually saw some of the highest murder rates of all,” the Brennan Center said. But it also rose across the rest of the country. The rate of murder rose in big cities, which tend to vote Democratic and which are repeatedly demonized by Republicans and the rightwing media. 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%. There is also an element of Republicans, and, Ofer said, some Democrats, pouncing on an increase in violent crime during the Covid pandemic. “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.” “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. 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. 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. 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. “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. As the 2024 contest heaves into view, it is clear that Republicans plan to follow the same playbook.
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