Violence is falling, but you wouldn’t know it from political speeches.


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In the presidential debate next Tuesday, we can expect to hear a lot about crime and punishment. Kamala Harris will tout her record as a prosecutor. And Donald Trump will likely claim, as he has before

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, that “crime is so out of control in our country . . . you can’t walk across the street to get a loaf of bread. You get shot. You get mugged. You get raped.”

Pundits long called crime a “wedge issue.” In his classic 1993 Political Dictionary, William Safire defined such an issue: “A hot-button subject that splits a coalition or constituency.” For decades, politicians used concern about violence to stoke anxiety and stir division.

Then something unexpected happened: crime rates plummeted. New York, once a symbol of urban decay, became the nation’s safest big city. (Come visit!) Democrats and Republicans united for reform. Americans agreed — lawbreakers must face consequences. But public safety and fairness are not competing interests to be balanced against each other — they go hand in hand.

All of which makes recent political trends so worrying. Yes, crime spiked during the pandemic, but violent crime is falling again. Dramatically so in many areas, and for many categories of offense. Homicides dropped by roughly 20 percent in Baltimore and Philadelphia between 2022 and 2023 and by 11 percent in New York City. But the politicians who once again seized upon crime as a wedge issue during the pandemic are still howling. Violence is falling, but demagoguery is on the rise. It’s a good moment to take stock, to sort the myths from the truth.

Take bail reform, a policy change that has attained an outsized significance. Many politicians use it as a generic term for all changes to reduce overincarceration. When someone is accused of a crime, the New York Post invariably blames “lax bail laws.” Is that a valid concern?

Economist Terry-Ann Craigie and attorney Ames Grawert, my colleagues at the Brennan Center, looked at data from 33 communities across the country, the largest study of its kind

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to date. Some of the cities had implemented bail reform while others had not. “Ultimately this report finds no statistically significant relationship between bail reform and crime rates,” Cragie and Grawert conclude. “In other words, there is no reason to believe that bail reform has led to increased crime.” After all, crime increased during the pandemic in areas that had changed bail laws as well as in those that maintained the status quo.

Here’s another widespread myth circulating this year: the claim of a migrant crime wave. There is no evidence for that

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either. Immigration certainly poses challenges, especially when border crossings surge as they did earlier in the Biden administration. But migrants simply are not more dangerous than the rest of us — in fact, the opposite. Immigrants have a similar or even lower likelihood of incarceration compared with native-born Americans. Very often, they bring down crime rates while increasing social cohesion.

None of this is new. As a 1931 report

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by the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement acknowledged, “The theory that immigration is responsible for crime, that the most recent ‘wave of immigration,’ whatever the nationality, is less desirable than the old ones, that all newcomers should be regarded with an attitude of suspicion, is a theory that is almost as old as the colonies planted by Englishmen on the New England coast.”

We can learn lessons from all this.

Valid public concerns about safety and disorder matter and are a key component of the national political conversation. People want the rule of law respected, and those who cause harm should be held accountable. We all want our kids to be able to walk safely to school. We all want safe communities. But decades of research indicate that public safety and justice reforms can be achieved together.

At the same time, we cannot let runaway fears of imagined crime stampede us into a return to harsh past policies. Nearly 2 million people are behind bars in this country, a population bigger than Vermont, Wyoming, and the District of Columbia combined. The system still falls most heavily on those who are economically disadvantaged and on people of color, especially Black Americans.

The answer, I think, is to recover the spirit of the bipartisan movement for change that was so promising in the past decade. The Koch brothers and George Soros linked arms. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) joined with Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY). Even Donald Trump proudly signed the First Step Act and featured formerly incarcerated Americans at the State of the Union address.

Often, public perceptions about crime lag the reality. Let’s hope that as political passions cool, this wedge issue will lose its capacity to divide us.





A Radical Bid for a Constitutional Right to Bribery

Former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder is trying to convince a federal court that his scheme to take bribes from a public utility company in exchange for pushing a $1 billion bailout of a public utility company was constitutionally protected. As the Brennan Center explained in a friend-of-the-court brief it filed with partners last week, this argument is nonsense and unlikely to prevail. But the fact that it’s being raised at all “reflects how deeply the Supreme Court has chipped away at anticorruption protections in favor of a cynical view that corruption is an unavoidable part of politics,” Eric Petry writes. Read more

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More Trouble for Georgia’s Elections

Last week, Democratic groups and individuals sued the Georgia Election Board over two new election rules that could allow rogue county officials to block or delay certifying the state’s election results. Critics have warned that these changes could also open the door to unfounded claims of election fraud and calls for time-consuming investigations by county boards. Writing for State Court Report, Erin Geiger Smith provides an overview of the politicized fight over election certification in Georgia. READ MORE

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Ohioans’ Chance to End Gerrymandering

All 99 seats in the Ohio House of Representatives are up for election, but because of the state’s extremely gerrymandered district lines, many of the outcomes are all but predetermined before Election Day. In November, Ohioans will have a chance to break this cycle of unfair maps. A ballot measure backed by the Brennan Center would “take the power to draw district maps away from the state’s most powerful politicians and give it to an independent commission made up of Ohio citizens,” Yurij Rudensky writes in the Hill. Read more

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Challenges for AI Regulation

The Supreme Court has yet to take up cases on artificial intelligence regulation. But its recent NetChoice decisions concerning social media content moderation offer glimpses into how the justices might rule on AI-related issues. Writing for Slate, Mekela Panditharatne explores the constitutional hurdles that policymakers may have to navigate when regulating the development and usage of AI tools. READ MORE

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PODCAST: The Data Behind Bail Reform

Our latest episode features a discussion about a new Brennan Center report exploring the relationship between bail reform and crime. The panelists included Ames Grawert, senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s Justice Program, and Terry-Ann Craigie, professor of economics at Smith College and economics fellow at the Brennan Center. The conversation was moderated by Brennan en español Editor in Chief Mireya Navarro. Listen on Spotify

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, Apple Podcasts

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, or your favorite podcast platform

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.





Coming Up

VIRTUAL EVENT: The Experts’ Guide to Free and Fair Elections

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Thursday, September 19, 3–4 p.m. ET



Election workers are unsung heroes, working behind the scenes to ensure that our elections run smoothly and securely. Yet many people don’t fully grasp what their job entails, leaving room for election deniers to spread misinformation. This lack of understanding has fueled a disturbing rise in threats, intimidation, and abuse of election officials since 2020.



Join us for a live virtual event that will spotlight these essential but often overlooked professionals. The discussion will offer a unique opportunity to hear firsthand from the people who make our elections possible as they share their day-to-day challenges and the role that they play in protecting democracy. RSVP today

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Want to keep up with Brennan Center Live events? Subscribe to the events newsletter.

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News

Alice Clapman on the myth of noncitizen voting // VIRGINIA MERCURY

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Joseph Nunn on Trump’s promise to invoke the Insurrection Act if reelected // TALKING POINTS MEMO

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Gowri Ramachandran on threats against election officials in Georgia // ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION

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Jasleen Singh on a voter purge in Texas // DALLAS OBSERVER

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Daniel Weiner on the effects of AI on the 2024 election // NPR

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