The abrupt rise in crime that washed over locked-down America last year is emerging as a hot political issue for the 2022 midterm elections.
It’s also fiction. Overall crime declined from 2019 to 2020. Homicides were up, but all other categories of crime were lower.
A study of 22 states and the District of Columbia found no correlation between crimes rates and political leadership or police reform efforts. In other words, electing Republicans provided no lower crime advantage, nor did policing changes lead to increased crime. Nor did the study find a difference between urban and rural areas. The only clear trend is that overall crime is declining, and declined substantially over the year of pandemic shutdowns, except for homicides.
Why homicides are an exception wasn’t explained. I have an idea: More guns.
“There seems to be a hysteria that began about a year and half ago to try and convince Americans that we’re undergoing another crime wave,” said Jim Kessler of Third Way, a Democratic think tank based in D.C. (details here). “At a certain point, we just wanted to look at what the actual data was,” he said. “And it doesn’t bear up. What we’re seeing is really scant evidence of a crime wave.”
In the old days, newspapers conjured “crime waves” to fill pages when other news was slow, or sell newspapers when circulation dipped. Today, and in many past elections (remember Willie Horton?), it’s Republicans who exploit public fear of crime for ulterior purposes — because it works.
It works because the fear is real. But the crime wave is not. That’s a political fiction. And even the crime rate jumped, there’s no evidence that one party is better than the other at fighting crime. Read story here.