Every time new data is released on U.S. crime rates, the political world ponders the same question: Why is it that the public believes crime is getting worse, when the evidence makes clear that crime rates are getting better?
The answer is multifaceted, but it’s hardly unreasonable to think deceptive Republican rhetoric has made the problem worse.
On the second night of the Republican National Convention, for example, House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik railed against President Joe Biden’s “violent crime crisis.” House Speaker Mike Johnson made similar comments, declaring, “We can’t survive the dramatic increases in violence, crime and drugs that the Democrats’ policies have brought upon our communities.”
Note the over-the-top hyperbole: To hear the Louisiana Republican tell it, crime hasn’t just reached crisis levels, it’s also reached the point at which the United States “can’t survive” such rampant crime.
For now, let’s put aside the irony of Republican officials denouncing crime rates while simultaneously nominating a criminal for the nation’s highest office. Instead, let’s focus on the degree to which Stefanik, Johnson and several other convention speakers turned reality on its head.
In fact, CNN reported a month ago on the latest statistics from the FBI showing a 15% drop in violent crime this year.
The new numbers show violent crime from January to March dropped 15.2% compared to the same period in 2023, while murders fell 26.4% and reported rapes decreased by 25.7%. Aggravated assaults decreased during that period when compared to last year by 12.5%, according to the data, while robberies fell 17.8%. … Meanwhile, property crime went down 15.1% in the first three months of this year. Burglaries dropped 16.7%, while motor vehicle theft decreased by 17.3%. The declines in violent and property crimes were seen in every region of the US.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a written statement that the latest data “makes clear that last year’s historic decline in violent crime is continuing.”
The reference to last year was especially notable because of the encouraging results from 2023. NBC News reported in March, for example, “that crime in the U.S. declined significantly in 2023, continuing a post-pandemic trend and belying widespread perceptions that crime is rising.”
All of this, of course, follows a dramatic spike in the murder rate in 2020 — the final year of Donald Trump’s presidency.
As for the political implications of the recent progress, I’m reminded anew of a line in a recent Axios report that stood out for me: “Polls show crime is a top concern ahead of the 2024 election — and it’s an issue where Republicans regularly edge Democrats. But falling homicide rates could take the steam out of the crucial GOP advantage.”
That’s true; it could. That said, it’s difficult to have confidence that it will. Prominent Republican voices likely know that crime rates are falling. That apparently doesn’t stop them from telling the public the opposite of the truth, working from the assumption that many voters will simply believe the falsehoods and never hear about actual crime data. Circling back to our recent coverage, political campaigns have long followed some intuitive rules. Those looking to win tend to identify rivals’ areas of weakness and focus attention accordingly. Similarly, candidates have also taken care to learn about their foes’ strengths and steer their races away from those issues. But crime rates offer a great example of how contemporary Republican politics rejects the intuitive rules for a different model. The evidence makes clear that Biden has a compelling story to tell: Crime rates, most notably murder rates, spiked toward the end of his Republican predecessor’s term. Under the incumbent Democratic president’s leadership, Americans are now safer. Common sense might suggest that GOP officials would see the news and try to move the public conversation away from this area of strength for Biden. But as it turns out, they find it far easier to effectively say, “Why don’t we just make stuff up and wait for the public to buy it?” This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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