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July 17, 2024
Have "Republicans Have Completely Abandoned Criminal Justice Reform"?
The quesiton in the title of this post is drawn from the statement quoted above that serves as the headline of this lengthy new Reason piece. Here are excerpts:
The Republican Party wants you to be afraid. Very, very afraid. Under former President Donald Trump, the party is playing up fears of violent crime, even as crime rates have fallen from their pandemic-era spike. And in the process, it is abandoning the modest yet meaningful moves toward criminal justice reform it made in recent years.
This much was clear on the second night of the 2024 Republican National Convention (RNC), whose theme was "Make America Safe Again." Several of the presenters spoke of the need to get tough on crime.
"We are experiencing a plague of crime across America," said retired police Lieutenant Randy Sutton. "It's all made America more dangerous than ever before." Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis charged that Democrats, like President Joe Biden, "have unleashed progressive prosecutors across our nation who care more about coddling criminals than about protecting their own communities."...
While Trump bragged about signing the FIRST STEP Act and ran ads in 2020 touting his ability to accomplish criminal justice reforms, he had soured on the law by the end of his term. By the time he announced his bid for reelection in 2022, Trump had stopped talking about the bill altogether and was calling for anyone "caught selling drugs, to receive the death penalty." Some Republican-led states that implemented reforms are now repealing them, even in places where the measures were successful.
The FIRST STEP Act was not only one of the most successful reform initiatives in recent years, but it represented a truly bipartisan effort — progressive activist Van Jones still brags about working with Republicans to get it passed — but it became verboten in GOP circles.
The 2024 GOP platform makes no mention of criminal justice reform and instead pledges to "restore law and order," "stand up to Marxist Prosecutors," and "restore safety in our neighborhoods by replenishing Police Departments, restoring Common Sense Policing, and protecting Officers from frivolous lawsuits" — presumably a reference to Trump's stated pledge to give cops "immunity from prosecution."
On the second night of the RNC, with immigration and crime as its theme, speakers stuck to the party line: Many presenters spoke of immigration and crime as if they are inextricably linked, and nobody mentioned criminal justice reform, other than one mention of "comprehensive prison reform" by Republican National Committee co-Chair Lara Trump as one of Trump's first-term accomplishments.
It is clear that Trump has always been eager to tout a "law-and-order" message, and it also seemc clear that many GOP official and candidate are eager to use crime and punishment as a wedge political issue. But I still see some nuances here, with a lot of the crime talk linked to immigration themes and progressive prosecutors being more of a focal point that progessive policies like the First Step Act. And yet, while we have not heard any recent GOP calls for repeal the First Step Act (as we heard from Gov DeSantis when we was seeking the nomination), I am not expecting Senator Vance tonight or candidate Trump tomorrow to pledge to work on the Second Step Act.
July 17, 2024 at 03:32 PM | Permalink
Comments
Classic Republican fearmongering, but very effective even as the crime rates in fact are falling
Posted by: anon | Jul 17, 2024 4:51:05 PM
Richard Nixon rode that horse to victory.
Posted by: anon2 | Jul 17, 2024 5:34:56 PM
More likely, liberal politicians are hiding the real crime rates: https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/oakland-police-data-reports-19545681.php
Posted by: htjyang | Jul 17, 2024 5:55:54 PM
When you decriminalize everything, of course crime rates will fall.
Posted by: TarlsQtr | Jul 17, 2024 6:37:25 PM
Wow. Every single time I look at comments in hopes of more insight into the main subject, all I get is a handful of cheap shots at the political parties. While I have a political affiliation with one of them, I can't care less who wins the election. I do care about the issues, and we need bipartisan solutions to have those resolved. The two parties can and should differ in their approaches, but both should have the same goal. And their approaches shouldn't be so vastly different that their supporters have nothing in common. If Republicans and Democrats will continue their political war, it will eventually spill into a civil one - and we have already seen glimpses of that - and this country won't survive.
Posted by: Anon | Jul 17, 2024 8:24:13 PM
As usual, htjyang and TarslQtr nail it.
As for "Reason," a record number of drug overdose deaths, now over 100,000 per year, https://blogs.cdc.gov/nchs/2023/05/18/7365/, is no reason to depart from the tiresome, years-long party line that the problem isn't drugs, it's trying to curb their sale and use. The overdosed corpses piling up in the morgue weren't really people who counted anyway.
Posted by: Bill Otis | Jul 17, 2024 8:28:54 PM
I see it as a telling barometer of our broader society, Anon, that the most vocal folks here also tend to be the most partisan. I am hopeful that the silent majority share your interest in bipartisan solutions.
Posted by: Doug B | Jul 17, 2024 9:18:32 PM
Doug --
Depends on what the solutions ARE. The SRA of 1984, which created binding guidelines and generally raised sentences, won by a massive bipartisan vote and was co-sponsored by Strom Thurmond and Ted Kennedy.
Posted by: Bill Otis | Jul 17, 2024 11:24:36 PM
Whenever I see the false equivalency fallacy, I recall the words of the great President Ronald Reagan (whose 58.8% of the vote in 1984 still remains unsurpassed in the following 40 years and therefore has better claim to understanding the American people than most):
"I urge you to beware the temptation of pride–the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire...."
Posted by: htjyang | Jul 17, 2024 11:37:39 PM
Doug,
Try getting prosecuted in Bragg’s NY or Gascon’s LA. They don’t send police or seriously pursue even mob shoplifting. Criminals break into cars, steal them or belongings inside, and you are lucky to get a cop to show up.
One would get arrested for pissing or shitting in front of a store. Now, it’s a “human right.”
Serious crimes get pled down to nothing charges.
Are you seriously saying that such leniency and decriminalization does NOT cook the crime stats and it is merely the “most vocal” people being “partisan?”
If so, you and the rest academia show again that you cannot be taken seriously. If such poor research techniques were attempted in the hard sciences, you’d flunk freshman geology class. Yet, people with JD’s act like decriminalization (formally, informally, or by having fewer cops with lower morale) does not need to be factored into crime stats.
Posted by: TarlsQtr | Jul 18, 2024 1:50:58 AM
Bill: Yep, Bill, the SRA of 1984 was bipartisan, and I think it was one of the great reform laws in recent federal criminal justice reform history. I wish its text was applied more faithfully by all. Similarly, the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 and the First Step Act of 2018 and the recent Federal Prison Oversight Act were all enacted with strong bipartisan votes. That recent history, even in these more partisan times, is one of many reasons I remain hopeful that the silent majority share an interest in bipartisan CJ solutions.
Master Tarls: I merely made the observation that the "most vocal folks here also tend to be the most partisan." Do you think that is an accurate observation?
As for prosecutors, policing and crime stats, I agree entirely that a wide range of political and practical choices shape how we see and measure and report crime. I make that point all the time when I note the data of dramatic decreases in federal prosecutions for marijuana trafficking over the last decade when the amount such obvious trafficking has certainly increased. (It is also why I often focus on homicide stats because they seem least subject to the impact of the forces you note.)
Posted by: Doug B | Jul 18, 2024 9:06:34 AM
I hope this country doesn’t bow down to fear mongering and unravel the progress made in reducing incarceration. Incarceration doesn’t instill new positive behaviors in released inmates - indeed it most often reinforces self destructive behaviors as evidenced by recidivism rates. Brett Miler
Posted by: Brett Miler | Jul 18, 2024 12:30:19 PM
