A Newsletter With An Eye On Political Media from The American Prospect
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A NEWSLETTER WITH AN EYE ON POLITICAL MEDIA

Getting Real on Crime and Punishment

Republicans and New York's 'Democratic' mayor demagogue on the
issue, even as many real Democrats fail even to engage it.

**** It wasn't so long ago that even scholarly sources were
insisting that the Black Lives Matter protests had significantly shifted
the public discourse <[link removed]>
and "incited a change in public awareness of BLM's vision of social
change and the dissemination of antiracist ideas into popular
discourse." Even so, that was then. It sure wasn't the case during the
November 8 election, at least in New York, where Democrats cratered and
cost their party control of the House of Representatives in significant
measure owing to exactly those issues on which BLM supporters sought to
change peoples' minds.

True, the "anti-crime" hysteria was undertaken in the service of
electioneering, as Fox News's coverage of crime "fell off a cliff
<[link removed]>"
once the votes were counted. But the hyping of scary crime stories has
long been a staple of both local news and conservative political
campaigns. Back in July 2021, Altercation addressed "The Roots of Crime
Hysteria
<[link removed]>" in
the context of the New York City mayor's race, a phenomenon that
helped deliver the vote to the Republican-in-Democrat's-clothing Eric
Adams. He now continues to trumpet this narrative to the detriment of
Democrats both statewide and nationally.

What is so infuriating is the fact that not only are the statistics
employed by the mainstream media often wrong, but so, too, are their
assumptions about how voters view the issue and what they want from
their leaders who seek to address it. The Vera Institute recently
undertook a deep dive into this question
<[link removed]>
and found that voters continue to view the problem from a multiplicity
of perspectives that require a far more sophisticated response than
simply telling Democrats to either change the subject or embrace the
Republican narrative of being "tough on crime." What they found was that
the country did not follow the example of New York. Instead, "the $157
million
<[link removed]>
bet by Republicans on ugly, Willie Horton-style
<[link removed]>
crime scare tactics during election season to take down Democratic
candidates did not pay off. Many factors were at play for why, unlike in
years past, crime fearmongering as a national campaign strategy failed
the GOP."

Vera found <[link removed]> that "[a]ccording to exit
polls
<[link removed]>,
and consistent with Vera's crime and safety exit survey results, other
issues-the economy and abortion-rose to the top for most voters." In
fact, "3 out of 5 survey respondents said this year's election
campaigns did not affect their awareness of crime as an issue. But exit
polls also found that crime and safety mattered most to 11 percent of
voters <[link removed]> in
making their voting choices." But the polls also led to the conclusion
that Democrats need to emphasize "safety" above all, before even
beginning to discuss issues like fairness, equity, better mental health
support, etc. when addressing voter concerns. This is especially true
because "this issue is a high priority for key segments of the
Democratic base
<[link removed]>,
including 73 percent of Black women voters and 58 percent of Black men
voters."

The issue that Republicans-and many in the media-most exploited in
New York was the state's 2019 bail reform law, which eliminated the
use of cash bail for most misdemeanors and some nonviolent felony
charges, for people charged with crimes while out on parole or
probation-or those who have pending felony charges or convictions. The
law, according to Vera <[link removed]>, "has benefited
more than 8,000 New Yorkers
<[link removed]>
who returned home to their families, jobs, and communities instead of
awaiting trial in jail, and no credible evidence has been found
<[link removed]>
to link the reform to increases in crime." But with a major assist from
Mayor Adams, it was desperately demagogued by Republicans, who blamed it
for the rise in violent crime in the city. Democrats proved unwilling to
defend the law, and instead either changed the subject to more popular
topics or embraced Republican-lite solutions. This failed, naturally.
One of the few clichés about politics that is actually true is that
"it's not what you say about the issues; it's what the issues say
about you." Run away from your own positions and voters will accurately
dub you an untrustworthy coward (see under "Maloney, Sean
<[link removed]>"),
as the complete opposite approaches evident in the successful responses
by John Fetterman in Pennsylvania
<[link removed]> and J.B. Pritzker in
Illinois
<[link removed]>
clearly demonstrated.

Meanwhile, not only does Eric Adams continue to reify the Republican
rhetoric on all crime-related issues, he also is going to great lengths
to make the problem appear worse than it is. For instance, Gothamist
reported
<[link removed]>
that according to a motion filed by public defenders in Manhattan
Supreme Court, Mayor Eric Adams and the NYPD used "sealed criminal court
records in a political move meant to argue that bail reform was causing
a rise in repeat crime." Naturally, Rupert Murdoch's New York Post
blew Adams's publicity stunt into a story headlined <about:blank> "10
Career Criminals Racked Up Nearly 500 Arrests Since NY Bail Reform
Began," and that was followed by other
<[link removed]>
reports
<[link removed]>
tying repeat offenders to the failure of bail reform. Ironically, as the
lawsuit notes, they picked the wrong ten unnamed offenders, who, it
turned out, were actually eligible to be held on bail despite the 2019
law that so upset Adams and the NYPD. (Adams, Gothamist also reports
<[link removed]>,
has, in addition, "shown no signs of moving on a major campaign promise
to publish a list of police officers the NYPD is watching for violent or
otherwise unseemly behavior.")

The net result of the misreporting of both the rise in crime itself as
well as the hype it enjoys across so much of the mainstream media is
that, as Phillip Atiba Goff, professor of African American studies and a
professor of psychology at Yale University and a founder and the CEO of
the Center for Policing Equity, explained in a New York Times op-ed,
"The Root Cause of Violent Crime Is Not What We Think It Is
<[link removed]>."

He notes that "[t]he tough-on-crime narrative acts like a black hole. It
subsumes new ideas and silences discussions of solutions that are
already making a difference in people's lives. And it provides
bottomless succor to politicians who are more interested in keeping
themselves in power than keeping people safe." Instead, he posits that a
"message of 'strong communities keeping everyone safe' [can] open
the minds of Republican voters, Democratic voters and many in between.
It is backed up <[link removed]> by
science. Academics
<[link removed]>,
government commissions
<[link removed]>
and even many police chiefs
<[link removed]>
have agreed with the substance behind the message for decades. And there
is evidence, including the results of last month's midterms, that it
can work politically on a larger scale." (Please do click on his op-ed
<[link removed]>
to see examples, with evidence for the claim that these policies are
better for both communities and politicians seeking re-election, as
there are too many such citations for me to describe in the space I have
here.)

From a purely political standpoint, I thought New York's public
advocate (and Brooklyn College alumnus) Jumaane Williams made a strong
case in The Nation
<[link removed]>
for how progressives "must [and can] do a better job speaking to
people's fears and presenting an affirmative case for our workable,
effective policies on public safety." Williams notes that "progressive
justice reforms have been shown again and again to not be a cause of
this increase in crime, regardless of what tabloids and elected
officials have counterfactually insisted. Hyperbolic coverage of crime
has spurred voters to align with the party that has long
been-erroneously-perceived as better on these issues." What's
more, under the "disingenuous fearmongering is real fear. Under the
statements and statistics are real individuals and families facing pain
and loss as a result of violence in their neighborhoods." And, "Too
often, progressives are characterized as not caring about that pain,
because, too often, progressives are quick to minimize the realities of
crime and violence because of the compassion inherent in progressive
ideology and policy." Again, read his piece to get the full benefit of
his argument.

[link removed]

In news completely unrelated to crime hysteria, media hype, and unfair
blame attached to the city's poor and nonwhite populations, there's
a new entrance at 110th Street to Central Park dedicated to the
exonerated "Central Park Five" called "The Gate of the Exonerated
<[link removed]>."
It was dedicated this week, 20 years after five Black and Latino men
were wrongfully convicted of rape and later exonerated using DNA
evidence. They were arrested as teenagers amidst a panic over their
alleged 1989 gang rape of the famed "Central Park Jogger"; at the time
and even still today, our idiot ex-president apparently stands by his
call to give them the death penalty
<[link removed]>.
(The jogger's name is Trisha Meili, who later authored a memoir that
dealt with the event. We spent two years in graduate school at Yale in
the early 1980s and I both liked and admired her.)

****

"What's new in the world of We Are Not One: A History of America's
Fight Over Israel
<[link removed]>?"
you ask. Not nearly as much as there should be, in my unbiased opinion.
But I did write this piece about Israeli attitudes toward American Jews
in Haaretz
<[link removed]>,
and this piece about the bad bargain right-wing Jews made in giving a
pass to right-wing Christian antisemites for so long in The Nation
<[link removed]>.
Oh, and in this week's New Yorker
<[link removed]>,
there's a lovely brief review that employs the words "fearless,"
"scrupulous," and accurately notes that my book's purpose "is not to
flatter readers, no matter their ideological camp, but, rather, to
scrutinize mythologies and fairy tales." Take a look.

****

Now for some holiday cheer:
* The Pogues, "Fairytale of New York
<[link removed]>"

* The Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles, Tom Lehrer's "Hanukkah in
Santa Monica
<[link removed]>"

(By the way, the 94-year-old Lehrer, a mensch of mensches, just released
all of his songs
<[link removed]>
into the public domain-though he says it's temporary.)
* Otis Redding, "Merry Christmas Baby
<[link removed]>"

* Eartha Kitt, "Santa Baby
<[link removed]>"

* The Kinks, "Father Christmas
<[link removed]>"

* John and Yoko, "Happy Xmas (War is Over)
<[link removed]>"

* The entire Phil Spector Christmas album
<[link removed]>

* Guess who (not "The Guess Who") doing "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town
<[link removed]>"

* And finally, a whole Roches Christmas show from the Bottom Line in
1990 <[link removed]>

See you next week.

~ ERIC ALTERMAN

Become A Member of The American Prospect Today!
<[link removed]>

Eric Alterman is a CUNY Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn
College, an award-winning journalist, and the author of 12 books, most
recently

**We Are Not One: A History of America's Fight Over Israel** (Basic
Books, November 2022). Previously, he wrote The Nation's "Liberal
Media" column for 25 years. Follow him on Twitter @eric_alterman
<[link removed]>

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