Budget cuts cause chaos for criminal justice practitioners

 From The Marshall Project:

The cuts have caused chaos in criminal justice grantmaking, creating a perception that the process is increasingly aligned with President Donald Trump and the Project 2025 agenda — even as some decisions contradict the administration’s own stated goals.

“We have seen the Department of Justice weaponized to be in service of President Trump's political agenda and weaponized to go after his opponents and critics and enemies,” Insha Rahman, vice president of advocacy and partnerships at the Vera Institute of Justice, said.

DOJ funding under the second Trump administration now serves the president’s agenda of mass deportation and a “law and order” approach to reducing crime, Rahman said. The DOJ terminated $5 million in outstanding funds to Vera, who, for 64 years, has run on a platform of criminal justice reform achieved by research. Rahman said the nonprofit had unwavering support from the federal government in the past. Now, Vera is among those organizations that sued to reinstate the funding.

In addition to grassroots anti-violence nonprofits, local police departments, prosecutors and courts, state departments of corrections, national criminal justice nonprofits and researchers had to pause or scale back programs, find other sources of funding, leave positions open or lay off staff. Equal Justice USA (EJUSA), a national nonprofit whose work included funding grassroots organizations supporting victims of violent crime or working to prevent violence also shut down.

“The opportunity to support a President’s agenda may be greater through OJP grant funding than it is through any of the federal government’s other grant-making components,” Gene Hamilton, a DOJ official during Trump’s first administration, wrote in the chapter about the department in Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership.

Since its creation in 1984, OJP has aimed to make the federal government a major supporter of state and local governments’ efforts to reduce crime, often through research, evaluation and development — and grants to encourage new programs, or to support promising models. The office is responsible for grants that transfer billions of federal dollars to state and local agencies making up the criminal justice system, as well as research and nonprofit organizations.

OJP provides site-based grants, which fund local governments or nonprofits to implement programs in particular places, research grants to study the effectiveness of programs, as well as training and technical assistance grants that share expertise to help local programs best use their funding. Training and technical assistance grants, often to national nonprofits like EJUSA or Vera, were the hardest hit in the April cuts. They accounted for more than $578 million in original funds, the Council on Criminal Justice found.

The Justice Department told grant recipients that were terminated that their work “no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities.” A termination letter reviewed by The Marshall Project said the department was focusing on direct support and coordination for law enforcement, “combatting violent crime”, “protecting American children,” and supporting victims of trafficking and sexual assault.

However, many of the grant cuts were in these areas. While police departments were not the primary recipients of terminated grants, the Justice Department ended grants aimed at supporting police. The department ended a grant that expanded police officer safety wellness training as part of a broader police mental health and wellness initiative. It also terminated a training and technical assistance grant to help rural law enforcement agencies implement plans to reduce violence. Beyond technical assistance, that grant also funded a few small, focused agency programs to confront violent crime problems.

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CREATORS: Trump Administration Breathes Life Into Lost Cause of the Confederacy

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
September 2, 2025

The Trump administration is talking about making the nation's capital and places like California and Chicago safe again — reminiscent of the campaign's mantra that evolved into an acronym that represents a political movement MAGA, Make American Great Again.

At the same time, President Donald Trump's acolytes are using the criminal justice system to get even with his political opponents. The FBI raided the home of former national security adviser John Bolton.

According to a carefully calculated leak to The New York Post, Bolton — a major critic of Trump — had the search of his home personally authorized by FBI director Kash Patel. Greg Sargent recently wrote in The New Republic, "Patel had openly declared in 2023 that 'the conspirators,' that is enemies of Trump and MAGA, must be prosecuted, and also that more loyalists with the resolve to see this through would be recruited to carry this out."

The Department of Justice appears to be Trump's personal enforcers. Patel's hit list is common knowledge, and his open involvement in the investigation of Bolten is meant to send a message to Trump's critics. This sounds more like the Mob — who decades ago federal prosecutors successfully crushed — than the Department of Justice.

At the same time, the Trump administration is doubling down on its crime crackdown in major cities. Trump has long painted major U.S. cities as unsafe and lawless. This is nothing new. During 2017 inaugural address, Trump spoke of "American carnage" in urban areas, pointing to crime and poverty, particularly in places led by Democrats.

The focus has not changed. Even though, cities like Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and Chicago have been the focus of Trump's wrath, Southern cities like Memphis and Jackson, Mississippi have been ignored.

Not only is it a lie to say that cities like Chicago are "a mess" and dubious at best to suggest that the National Guard needs activated to clean up the mess — the rationale for deploying the National Guard is not about making cities safe it is about creating a "police state."

It has long been a staple of American governance that local and state law enforcement is to be conducted by civilians, not the military.

Ordinarily, a state's governor controls its National Guard. Under Title 10 of the U.S. Code, the president can "federalize" the National Guard, placing them under federal control and funding for federal missions like overseas deployments or suppressing domestic insurrections.

Trump invoked this authority first in Los Angles in June during immigrations protests. He cited "incidents of violence and disorder" tied to ICE operations. According to Katie Couric Media, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other officials challenged the deployment, "arguing the order violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits U.S. troops from engaging in civilian law enforcement. A federal judge agreed, but the ruling was ultimately put on hold by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals."

The Posse Comitatus Act was meant to prevent the federal government from using the military as a domestic police force after Reconstruction.

This struggle is again evolving into a fight between red states and blue states — code for rural v. urban. While Los Angeles, Washington, DC and soon Chicago are under siege, there are plans to mobilize up to 1,700 National Guard troops from 19 Republican-controlled states, including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, and Georgia and Texas.

This is a modern-day Reconstruction. Major urban areas being occupied by troops from predominately southern states. The Trump administration is breathing life into the lost cause of the Confederacy.

As Ty Seidule, professor emeritus at West Point, described in his book, "Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause," the south rebelled against the north because "(T)he Confederate States of America ... refused to accept the results of a democratic election in 1860."

Sound familiar?

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner's Toll, 2010 was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino 

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Trump invades Washington, DC based on a big lie: Crime is ravaging the district

President Donald Trump’s unprecedented decision to take over the Metropolitan Police Department and order the National Guard to help fight crime in Washington, D.C. is based on a big lie.

The big lie: crime is ravaging the district. In reality, crime is at its lowest level in decades in the nation’s capital. In early January, federal prosecutors in Washington released a press bulletin with the subject line: “Violent crime in D.C. hits 30 year low.” And since then, it has plummeted 26%, according to the Metropolitan Police Department.

Yet Trump on Monday portrayed D.C. as a crime-infested hellscape and said Attorney General Pam Bondi would “take command of the Metropolitan Police Department as of this moment.”

In making his case, Trump ticked off recent violent incidents in Washington, including the fatal shooting of a congressional intern and the attempted carjacking of Edward Coristine, an original Department of Government Efficiency staffer known online as "Big Balls."

“Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people,” Trump said.

A senior law enforcement official told NBC News that an initial federal effort this weekend was chaotic. As many as 120 FBI agents, mostly from the FBI Washington Field Office, worked shifts with the Metropolitan Police Department this weekend, the official said. But agents were confused about their exact role on the streets and who they reported to at any given time.

A second federal official said that confusion continued on Monday. "No one knows who is in charge or what they're supposed to do," the official said.

Unmarked federal law enforcement vehicles are trailing patrol cars in Washington to provide support if needed, another federal official said. Some agents dismissed such efforts a waste of resources, with one jokingly calling the processions "a federal funeral."

One notable group, the D.C. police union, said it supports the takeover by the president, saying the department has been beset by "chronic mismanagement" and "staffing shortages."

“The union agrees that crime is spiraling out of control, and immediate action is necessary to restore public safety,” it said in a statement. “However, we emphasize that federal intervention must be a temporary measure, with the ultimate goal of empowering a fully staffed and supported MPD to protect our city effectively.”

Concern from former chiefs

The announcement of the federal takeover was met with alarm by Art Acevedo, a retired police chief who led departments in Houston, Austin and Miami.

“Not only is it unprecedented, it’s unwarranted,” Acevedo said. “There’s no reason for it other than the political optics sought by the administration to pretend that crime is out of control and they are the saviors.”

Trump said that he had appointed the administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Terry Cole, as the head of the Metropolitan Police Department.

Cole will report to Bondi, but it is unclear whether Cole will bring in his own staff to run the various divisions of the roughly 3,500 office police department.

At her own press conference later in the day, Mayor Muriel Bowser called Trump’s actions “unsettling and unprecedented.” The attorney general of D.C., Brian Schwab, had also blasted the move and said that he was exploring legal options, but Bowser acknowledged that Trump had the authority to temporarily seize control of the police department.

She noted, however, that “nothing about our organizational chart has changed.”

Trump must notify certain members of Congress within 48 hours about the reason for taking over control of police and the estimated timeline for federal control, according to the D.C. Home Rule Act. The act also indicates that Trump can take control of the D.C. police for 30 days, unless Congress authorizes an extension.

Flooding the streets

The policing experts interviewed by NBC News noted that crime is a nuanced problem that requires a multi-faceted solution that includes the strengthening of social services.

“To just flood the streets of D.C. with law enforcement” and “taking over D.C. local police, it seems like a half-baked idea looking for a problem,” Donell Harvin, a former homeland security and intelligence chief for Washington, D.C., said on MSNBC.

Snider, the retired NYPD officer, said local police agencies are far better equipped to address local crime than federal agencies or the National Guard.

“They know the players. They know the streets. They know where the violence occurs,” said Snider, who is an adjunct lecturer at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York and a policy director of criminal justice and civil liberties at the R Street Institute, a think tank in D.C.

“Any aid from federal agents or the National Guard should be supportive measures,” Snider added. “They shouldn’t be coming in and taking over local policing.”

Acevedo, the retired police chief, said the administration would be able to make an impact on crime by setting aside more money for local enforcement, as it has for its migrant crackdown.

“If the administration truly wanted to make a difference at the state and local level and help make communities safer, it is as simple as increasing the total federal budget dollar investment for local law enforcement to recruit, train, equip, and retain the best and the brightest to serve as peace officers,” he said.

Trump’s penchant for calling in military personnel to tackle domestic unrest is by now well-established. He did so five years ago during the George Floyd protests. And just this summer, he ordered the National Guard and active-duty Marines to Los Angeles to help quell large-scale protests sparked by ramped-up immigration raids.

But the National Guard doesn’t have arresting powers, so there is a limit to how involved they can be in fighting crime in D.C.

Retired Army Col. Jack Jacobs said National Guard troops are typically better trained than active duty soldiers to help in urban settings for things like crowd control.

“But they’re not trained to do the things that police do, which is a, patrol, and b, investigate,” Jacobs, an NBC News analyst, said in an interview. “In my view, this is mostly theater, and nothing necessarily useful will come of it.”

Questions about January 6th

Trump’s takeover of the D.C. police force comes several months after he pardoned about 1,500 people convicted of crimes, some of them violent, in the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Daniel Hodges, one of dozens of Metropolitan Police Department officers who were brutalized during the riot and whose assailants were among those pardoned by Trump upon his return to office, woke up to the news that Trump had taken over the MPD after working an overnight shift.

“It’s a big photo op. It’s not going to change anything,” Hodges said, speaking while off-duty in his personal capacity.

Hodges, who was in the National Guard for six years, said that National Guard members are not trained in local law enforcement. While D.C. had law enforcement issues that could be better addressed, Hodges said, he doesn’t think Bondi is going to have grand insight into how to deploy MPD officers.

“It’s terrible, it’s disgusting,” Hodges added, “but it’s not a surprise.”

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FBI: Violent crime fell 4.5% in 2024--Homicide alone down 15%

Violent crime in the United States fell 4.5% in 2024, according to a new FBI report, while property crime dropped 8.1% from the previous year, reported Pennsylvania Capital-Star.

The declines continue a trend seen since crime surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, when homicides jumped nearly 30% in 2020 — one of the largest one-year increases since the FBI began keeping records in 1930. By 2022, violent crime had fallen close to pre-pandemic levels.

Homicides, which the FBI classifies as murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, dropped nearly 15% in 2024. Reports of other violent offenses also decreased, including rape by 5.2%, robbery by 8.9% and aggravated assault by 3%.

Property crime also fell across all major categories, with motor vehicle theft down 18.6%, burglary down 8.6% and larceny-theft down 5.5%. Reported hate crimes decreased 1.5% from the previous year.

The 2024 report draws on submissions from 16,675 law enforcement agencies — 2.1% more than last year — representing more than 95% of the U.S. population. Every city agency serving a population of 1 million or more people provided a full year of data. Participation in the FBI’s crime data collection is voluntary, and the data is based on crimes reported to police.

About 75% of participating agencies submitted information through the FBI’s new, more detailed National Incident-Based Reporting System, or NIBRS, which covered 87% of the population.

The data release marks a shift from recent years when participation lagged following the FBI’s 2021 transition to the new system, which required many law enforcement agencies to invest in training and technology upgrades. In 2021, national reporting rates fell below 70% for the first time in two decades, forcing the FBI to estimate results for many jurisdictions.

The FBI’s crime trends report also includes new law enforcement safety data. Sixty-four officers were feloniously killed in the line of duty in 2024, 43 officers were accidentally killed and 85,730 officers were assaulted.

Although the FBI’s 2024 report is a year behind, it aligns with other crime trend reports. The Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank, recently found that homicides and other serious offenses, including gun assaults and carjackings, fell in the first half of 2025 across 42 major cities compared to the same period in 2024.

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Crime rates fell considerably in the first six months of 2025

Crime almost certainly fell considerably in the United States in the first six months of 2025, reported Jeff-alytics. The decline in crime that began in 2023 and picked up steam in 2024 has accelerated even faster so far in 2025. Both violent and property crime likely fell with large drops in both murder and motor vehicle theft leading the way.

The national decline in murder stands out due to extraordinary drops in many cities. New Orleans recorded fewer murders through June 2025 than any year since 1970 even in spite of the January 1st terrorist attack. New York City has only recorded fewer murders once through June since 1960 (136 in 2017). Philadelphia recorded the fewest murders since 1969, Los Angeles since 1966, Baltimore since 1965, Detroit since 1964, and San Francisco had the fewest ever recorded (monthly data available to 1960).

As a reminder, murder rose at the fastest rate ever recorded in 2020 and it stayed at that consistently higher level in 2021 and 2022. Murder began dropping in 2023 and ended up falling at the fastest rate ever recorded that year. Then murder likely fell even faster in 2024 though we won’t have official FBI data on that for a few months. Now, just five years after the largest one-year increase ever, the US is on track to have the largest one-year drop in murder ever recorded for the third straight year in 2025.

The assessment of national crime trends can be made thanks to a variety of independent data sources which have historically closely aligned with FBI national estimates. These alternative sources are needed because the FBI has reported no data on national crime trends since reporting Q2 2024 data last year.

Relying on sampling is a workaround to the traditional slowness of FBI data, but there is always a risk in interpreting the results of 18,000 agencies from a sample of 400+ agencies. That said, the size of the crime declines articulated by independent sources and the historical accuracy of those sources suggests that large declines will hold up even if the unofficial sources are off by more than usual.

The most recent formal FBI data is 18 months old now while the CDC is just finishing up its provisional 2024 count. Fortunately, both the Gun Violence Archive (GVA) and Real-Time Crime Index (RTCI) tend to mimic the annual changes seen in the official sources. As such, these unofficial tallies can tell us what is happening without having to wait 9 or more months for the official word.

Both the GVA and RTCI point to massive declines in fatal shootings and murders occurring in 2025, the third straight year of large declines. The RTCI is now available through May 2025, and that reporting can be supplemented by sampling large cities with publicly available data to see that the trend continued through midyear.

The bottom line is that crime is falling in the United States led by the largest one-year percentage point decline in murder ever recorded. If that sentence sounds familiar it’s because it’s basically identical to what I wrote last year about our crime trends.

It is late enough in the year and the declines are large enough to feel confident that these trends will generally hold through the rest of the year. The exact degree of downward motion in the nation’s crime stats will still take some months to tease out, but a large decline is almost certainly inevitable at this point.

Real-Time Crime Index

The Real-Time Crime index was updated last week through May 2025. The new RTCI sample has data from 421 agencies representing more than 102 million people. This sample makes up around half of all the murders that occur in the US in a given year, so it’s a reliable bellwether of the nation’s murder trend. (As an aside, this is our biggest sample yet in terms of agencies and population covered).

The RTCI through May 2025 shows murder down 20 percent relative to the first 5 months of 2024, down 37 percent relative to the first 5 months of 2021 (at the height of the murder surge), and down 9 percent relative to the first 5 months of 2019 (pre-surge). Murder rolling over the last 12 months in this sample has fallen below 2019’s level

Violent crime is down roughly 11 percent in the RTCI while property crime is down 12 percent. There is undoubtedly some underreporting occurring as agencies still have 9 or so months to correct missing reports. But that issue does not impact the finding of large scale declines in every crime category even if the degree of the decline is likely slightly overstated by the collection methodology.

The decline is fairly uniform across cities/counties and population sizes. In 13 agencies covering 1 million people or more, murder is down 20.1 percent, violent crime is down 11 percent and property crime is down 12 percent. In 192 agencies covering under 100,000 people, murder is down 36 percent, violent crime is down 9 percent and property crime is down 14 percent.

Aside from murder, the motor vehicle theft decline stands out. Motor vehicle thefts surged in 2022 but have been plunging ever since. The decline in motor vehicle thefts started at the very end of 2023 and has been steady ever since. The surge in auto thefts that kicked off in 2020 has not been falling as long so it is still higher than pre-COVID levels, but we aren’t yet seeing signs of a slowdown.

Gun Violence Archive

The Gun Violence Archive data through June paints a similarly rosy picture of our nation’s gun violence trend (though even a large decline leaves gun violence far too prevalent). If a picture is worth 1,000 words then the next three graphs tell the story in 3,000 words.

The GVA isn't exact but it's another strong indicator that the historic drop in gun violence is continuing through June 2025.

Sampling Cities

The RTCI is updated through May which obviously isn’t quite midyear (though it's close!). I grabbed publicly available murder data from the 30 cities with the most murders in 2023 plus Jacksonville (which didn’t report in 2023 but would have been on this list if they had) to clearly see that the RTCI trend carried through midyear.

And…yep. That’s a huge decline through midyear in a decently large sample of cities. Violent and property crime are harder to sample because fewer agencies publish aggregated counts, but there’s no reason to suspect any change from the available May data once June is counted.

The Midyear Final Word

The final word on crime through midyear is that there is a sizable decline in every category of Uniform Crime Report Part I crime. The declines in crime shown by the RTCI data through May suggests crime may decline at or near record levels in every crime type we have measured since 1960. It’s also plausible that multiple crime types will feature the largest drop ever recorded moniker in 2025.

Not every crime is reported to police, there are still six months left in the year for these trends to moderate, and not every city or county is seeing historic declines (or declines at all). Yet the data so far this year paints the picture of declines that began in 2023 and 2024 continuing (and accelerating) through the first half of 2025.

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2025 may be on course for the lowest homicide rate ever recorded

One of the most predictable clichés in journalism is "if it bleeds, it leads"—the idea that media have a bias for salacious, grisly stories. Like many stereotypes, it's very much based in truth, which might explain why plummeting murder rates nationwide have not managed to capture national attention.

Despite a news cycle that prioritizes doom, the U.S. has seen that decline take hold over the last couple of years, with the murder rate in 2024 not just falling from the 2020 spike but returning to pre-COVID levels. That brings us to the present, and to a question: Reason magazine askes, Could 2025 see the lowest murder rate ever recorded?

It's possible.

The primary caveat, of course, is that the year is not over. But the initial numbers show a record low is within the realm of possibility—an amazing turn of events, particularly when considering the murder increase five years ago, which at times felt apocalyptic.

So what are the numbers? In surveying some of the most homicide-prone cities nationwide, crime data analyst Jeff Asher recently found more than a 20 percent decrease in murders from 2024. That's encouraging in isolation, but even more so when remembering that last year, too, saw a sharp decline, and 2023 before that. A sampling: As of early May, murders were down 31.6 percent in Baltimore, 34.5 percent in St. Louis, 36.8 percent in Cleveland, 63 percent in Denver, 30.6 percent in New Orleans, 26.8 percent in New York, and 23.7 percent in Chicago.

For an even more up-to-date example, Philadelphia had recorded 88 homicides as of May 22, according to the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) crime dashboard. On May 22, 2021, that number was 201. Indeed, 88 is the lowest year-to-date homicide number that the PPD has listed on its dashboard for this same period—January 1 to May 22—tying with years 2014 and 2015. (2014 currently holds the record for the lowest national murder rate ever recorded.)

"Running the numbers suggests that a 10 percent or more decline in murder nationally in 2025 would roughly tie 2014," writes Asher, co-founder of AH Analytics. (The numbers, thus far, are much better than that, although that could of course change.) "But it's fairly clear that a decline in the direction we're currently seeing would safely give 2025 the title of lowest US murder rate ever recorded."

A common point of pushback in the debate around crime rates is the notion that many offenses simply aren't reported to police. "That concern is a very legitimate one—for certain crimes," I wrote last year in discussing the 2024 murder rate decline. "Tracking burglaries, for example, is notoriously difficult; the bulk of people simply don't report them. Murders, however, are usually reported to police." That doesn't mean law enforcement will actually solve the crime: About 58 percent of murder and non-negligent manslaughter cases were cleared in 2023, according to data on Statista, which means for crime reporting purposes, the case was solved. While there's obviously work to be done there—and while data collection is by no means perfect—it is typically pretty hard to hide a body.

But what about the idea that we're merely coming off a murder uptick, so this is nothing to celebrate? "Fewer people are being killed than they were during a major homicide increase" is not compelling messaging, to be sure. But that's not what's happening here. We're not talking about a record decline after a precipitous surge; we're talking about a record low, period. While it's still possible that won't pan out, the fact that it's even on the table after a bloody few years is such good news that journalists might even consider leading with it.

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U.S. gun violence continued to decline significantly in 2024

Gun violence in the United States continued to decline significantly in 2024, providing yet another signal that the pandemic-era surge has come to an end, reported The Trace. Firearm deaths and injuries dropped for a third straight year. Homicides in major cities, mass shootings, and child and teen gun deaths also fell.

Yet the toll of gun violence remains. Even as shootings decline, tens of thousands of lives continue to be lost or permanently changed by guns.

Data helps provide a clearer picture of gun violence trends, informing prevention efforts and highlighting both the progress made and the challenges that remain. 

Here are two of 13 statistics offered by The Trace that help shed light on America’s gun violence epidemic.

16,576

The number of firearm deaths, excluding suicides, in 2024

Gun deaths decreased for a third consecutive year, dropping 12 percent from 2023’s total of nearly 19,000. While still slightly above pre-pandemic levels, gun deaths this year were 21 percent lower than the pandemic-era peak of more than 21,000 in 2021. These figures, compiled by the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive, include murders, accidental shootings, and homicides deemed legally justified. GVA does not track suicides, which account for more than half of all gun deaths. [Gun Violence Archive]

-14 percent

The decrease in firearm injuries in 2024

Firearm injuries fell to 31,409 in 2024 — down nearly 14 percent from 2023, when there were 36,338. Tracking gun injuries is challenging. The Gun Violence Archive attempts it by monitoring media reports, which may not capture all incidents. Still, the data suggests a significant overall decline in firearm injuries. [Gun Violence Archive]

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Murders declined sharply across the U.S. in 2024

 The number of murders across the United States declined sharply for much of 2024, continuing a recent downward trend, according to data collected by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, reported The New York Times.

Murders spiked during the pandemic, and crime became a central focus of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s campaign message. Polls show Americans still see it as a major problem. And several high-profile homicides this year, including the recent killing of a homeless woman who was set on fire in a New York subway, may fan concerns.

But in 2023, the number of murders fell at the steepest rate ever recorded, according to the F.B.I.’s data.

That trend may be continuing, according to data from a mix of sources covering most or part of 2024. In some major cities, the numbers are at or below what they were before the pandemic.

Through October, data collected by the Real-Time Crime Index, based on reports from hundreds of law enforcement agencies, showed a nearly 16 percent decline in murders from 2023. The F.B.I.’s preliminary data for the first half of the year showed an even steeper decline.

But the F.B.I.’s data for the year is not yet complete, and it will not be until next year. Even with all of the statistics, the data set may not reflect the fullest picture on crime across the nation, as some law enforcement agencies do not report their numbers to the F.B.I.

Even with the data limitations, experts said the overall trend of declining murders nationally was clear. And several major cities saw striking reversals in the number of murders over the last two years.

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CCJ Report: Overall decrease in juvenile offending

Offending by juveniles (youth under age 18) has been the subject of significant local and national discourse over the last several decades, and especially during the last few years. Incidents of juvenile firearm violence, for example, have been the subject of extensive coverage by the mass media and on social networks.1 Policymakers have also drawn attention to juvenile offending, as evidenced by recent legislation aimed at both reducing youth violence and revising juvenile justice system approaches to this population.2

Juvenile offending accounts for a notable share of crime committed in America each year. Over the period examined for this study (2016 to 2022), roughly 14% of crimes involved at least one reported juvenile offender to the findings in other research on juvenile offending that relied on similar data sources.3, 4  The COVID-19 pandemic, however, may have altered some of these patterns.5 Responses to the pandemic led to the closure of schools—a primary site of youth socialization and, consequently, some offending—potentially influencing juvenile offending patterns. School closures, combined with trends such as the recent shift to digital socialization, have resulted in youth spending more time at home.6

This Counsel on Criminal Justice report focuses on trends in violent and nonviolent juvenile offending from 2016 through 2022. Its analyses examine changes in the frequency of juvenile offending by crime type, demographics, and several other characteristics. The official law enforcement data used in this report are drawn from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) program. The final sample used for the analyses includes 3,484 law enforcement agencies covering jurisdictions with an average of about 91 million residents per study year. Additional details and limitations of these data are discussed in the supplemental methodology report.

Key Takeaways

• Overall, there has been a general decrease in most forms of juvenile offending in recent years; notable exceptions include more frequent use of firearms among youth.
• Juvenile offending (total incidents) was about 14% lower, and the total number of juveniles involved was around 18% lower, in 2022 than in 2016, the beginning of the study period.
• Trends in juvenile crime diverge by age group. Offending among juveniles aged 15 to 17 was roughly 23% lower in 2022 than in 2016; offending among juveniles aged 10 to 14, however, was nearly 9% higher over the same period.
• Homicides perpetrated by juveniles jumped 65% from 2016 to 2022, while burglary (-62%), larceny (-46%), and robbery (-45%) experienced the steepest declines.
• Violent crimes committed by White youth remained essentially unchanged during the study period, increasing by less than one half of one percent (0.44%), while violent offenses committed by Black youth decreased by about 20%. Property crimes perpetrated by Black youth decreased by about 40%, while property crimes perpetrated by White youth decreased by roughly 52%.
• The number of offenses committed by juvenile males was 21% lower in 2022 than in 2016. There was no notable change in the offending frequency among juvenile females over the same period.
• Crimes involving two or more juveniles (co-offending) were 26% lower in 2022 than in 2016, and solo offending was about 10% lower.
• Firearm involvement in juvenile offending was 21% higher in 2022 than in 2016, while other weapon use was 6% higher. This suggests a more pronounced increase in the use of guns relative to other weapons, rather than increased weapon use generally. Firearm use has also increasingly resulted in serious injury for victims in recent years.

To read the report CLICK HERE

No correlation between violent crime and criminal justice reform

 Radley Balko writes in The Watch:

There is very little evidence that criminal justice reforms or progressive prosecutors are responsible for the spike in violent crime. Multiple studies have found no correlation between reform and crime rates at all, and as far as I know just one study claimed to find a correlation between progressive prosecutors and a slight uptick property crime — but no link to violent crime.

But the more obvious reason to doubt any link is that between 2020 and roughly 2022 violent crime also went up everywhere, including in jurisdictions with traditional, law-and-order prosecutors. It then went on a steep, nationwide decline in 2022. That, too, has been a nationwide trend, including in jurisdictions that passed and sustained reforms, as well as those that retained progressive prosecutors.

But the narrative appears to be immune to data. The most high-profile loss last week in Los Angeles, where voters ousted district attorney George Gascón, one of the more well-known names in the progressive prosecutor movement. Gascón faced a revolt the moment he took office, as the prosecutors’ union went to court to get an injunction barring him from implementing reforms — reforms clearly supported by voters at the time — by arguing that they violated the rights of prosecutors. (That’s a hell of a sentence to write.) And they won.

Gascón then faced over two dozen more lawsuits from holdover prosecutors. They accused him of retaliation for publicly criticizing him, and of interfering with their cases by imposing the policies he was elected to implement. I can’t speak to the merit of specific accusations, but as someone who has been watching this stuff for 20 years, I can say that a reform-minded line prosecutor who publicly criticized a traditional DA the way these prosecutors went after Gascón would be fired in a heartbeat. L.A. prosecutors seem to think their “right” to implement carceral policies supersedes the will of the people they serve. And unfortunately, the courts seemed to agree, as some of these prosecutors won six and seven-figure awards. Still, Gascón survived two recall attempts before finally losing last week.

California voters also passed a ballot initiative to increase penalties for some drug crimes, and to allow felony charges for repeat low level theft offenders — a response to the widely-distributed myth that a 2014 initiative had effectively “legalized” shoplifting in the state. The state’s voters even rejected a ban on forced labor of incarcerated people.

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Trump’s 'evidence-free rhetoric' on crime was intended to deceive voters

Her is an excerpt from Ashley Rubin, a social scientist at the University of Hawaii, recent article posted on Radley Balko’s The Watch: 

Donald Trump’s evidence-free rhetoric [on crime] has managed to convince his supporters that violent crime is a major problem. A recent Gallup poll found that three of the five most important issues according to Republican and Republican-leaning independent voters—crime, immigration, and terrorism and national security—are connected to the broader issue of crime. But it’s not just Trump’s supporters—voters in general now care more about crime, even as the crime rates are falling and remain low, historically speaking.

As sociologist Katherine Beckett has demonstrated, the more politicians talk about crime, the more the media talks about crime, and the more citizens become concerned about crime—even when actual crime rates show crime is not the problem citizens think it is.

Trump’s promise to “stop crime and restore safety” sounds good to those voters who believe the hype that violent crime is at historically high levels (it’s not) and that we are in the middle of a crime wave (we’re not), and who believe that Harris plans to gut police departments in order to let violent criminals run free (she doesn’t). The effect is that those who challenge Trump’s depiction of a dangerous America get characterized as being soft on crime or enabling criminality.

Ultimately, by convincing the public that crime is a real threat, Trump isn’t just trying to delegitimize his opponents. He’s also paving the way for the public to accept unnecessary and harmful policy changes that don’t meaningfully bring the crime rate down but help him purge society—whether through deportation or incarceration—of the people he believes shouldn’t be in it.

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Creators: Homicides Are Down but More Murderers Are Walking the Streets

Matthew T. Mangino
Creators Syndicate
October 29, 2024

In September, The New York Times declared that "the number of murders reported in the United States dropped in 2023 at the fastest rate on record."

The FBI reported that there were about 2,500 fewer homicides in 2023 than in 2022, a decline of 11.6%. According to Jeff Asher, a crime data analyst who publishes on Substack, the data suggests "the largest year-to-year decline since national record-keeping began in 1960."

However, the picture is not all rosy. In the criminal justice system, "clearance rate" is a term used to measure the rate at which law enforcement agencies solve crimes. In the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program, law enforcement agencies can clear, or "close," offenses in one of two ways: by arrest or by exceptional means.

Clearance by exceptional means could include the death of a suspect or the reluctance of the victim or witnesses to cooperate in an investigation.

Declining clearance rates are a problem. A murder in America has a 50% chance of being solved.

Clearance rates have declined precipitously over the last 60 years. In 1965, clearance rates for murder hovered above 90%. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2022, the last year of available data, the clearance rate nationwide was 52.3%.

Although homicides have declined, solving murders has become more difficult. Even with modern investigative techniques, more homicides than ever remain unsolved.

The scope of the problem is enormous. For instance, in 2022, according to the FBI, there were 24,849 homicides. Based on the clearance rate for homicides in 2022, there are approximately 11,853 unsolved murders. That means there are probably more than 10,000 murderers walking the streets from 2022.

If you take the total number of murders over the last 10 years and divide that number by the average clearance rate, the result is more than 80,000 unsolved murders.

More than half of America's major police departments are struggling to solve homicides at the same level of success they enjoyed just a decade ago, according to a 2010 study of federal crime records by the nonprofit Murder Accountability Project.

The study focused on the nation's 160 police departments that investigate at least 10 homicides a year and annually report crime data to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report. Fifty-four percent of those departments reported less success in solving murders committed during the 10 years prior to the report than in the previous 10 years.

The problem is about more than police work. The MAP study found most departments with declining murder clearance rates also experienced an increase in homicides. These departments often are located in areas with declining tax bases or facing other kinds of fiscal challenges.

Some crime analysts have also cast doubt on FBI data. According to Newsweek, the concerns stem from the suggestion that the data "only covers 77 percent of the U.S. population and should be considered preliminary, given that state and local law enforcement agencies have months to report their data and correct any errors."

In addition, participating in the FBI's Uniform Crime Report is voluntary. If a police department refuses to provide data, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to replicate the data.

This summer, the FBI said the first three months of 2024 saw a "historic" drop in rates of violent crime and murder across the country. That is good news, but is it accurate?

Asher wrote, "Crime almost certainly declined nationally in the first three months of 2024 compared to the first three months of 2023, but the FBI's data is almost certainly overstating that decline."

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book "The Executioner's Toll, 2010" was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on X @MatthewTMangino).

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Juvenile crime increases in NYC over last seven years

 The number of people under 18 accused of major crimes, including murders, robberies and assaults, has increased sharply in New York City in the past seven years, Police Department figures show — a steep trajectory that has alarmed law enforcement officials, reported The New York Times.

Last year, there were 4,858 major crimes where a minor was accused or arrested, up from 3,543 in 2017 — a 37 percent increase.

Those accused or arrested in felony assaults, in which a person is seriously injured or a deadly weapon like a gun or knife is used, have jumped by 28 percent since 2017. Robberies have risen by 52 percent. Killings in which a young person was accused rose to 36 in 2023 from 10 in 2017.

The number of young victims also rose dramatically, climbing 54 percent by 2023 compared with 2017.

“Most of what we see is youth-on-youth crime,” said Chief Michael LiPetri, head of crime strategies for the Police Department.

Crime committed by adults also rose in the same period, and the proportion of youth crime in 2023 remained a very small fraction of overall crime, about 3.8 percent, the same as it was in 2017. Still, police officials say that a rise in serious incidents involving minors can portend even more serious future violence.

The seven index crimes are murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, grand larceny and grand larceny of automobiles. Many of the crimes have continued to increase dramatically in 2024, particularly robberies and felony assaults. Through Oct. 1, there were arrests for 969 felony assaults and 2,019 robberies, a 17 percent increase from the same time last year.

The spikes, which have been particularly pronounced as the city emerges from the disjointed pandemic years and which mirror a national trend, have reanimated a decades-long argument over how to deal with young offenders.

Until recently, the criminal justice system in New York treated many young people accused of serious crimes as adults. But in 2017, when youth crime had fallen to lows not seen for decades, legislators in Albany changed the way the cases of 16- and 17-year-olds were handled, passing a law known as “Raise the Age.”

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Homicide down 11.6% nationally the largest single year decline since record-keeping began

Gallup poll last year found that 77 percent of Americans believed crime was rising, even though it was actually falling

The number of murders reported in the United States dropped in 2023 at the fastest rate on record, continuing a decline from the surge in homicides during the pandemic, according to The New York Times.

The F.B.I.’s report, which is the agency’s final compilation of crime data for 2023, showed that there were about 2,500 fewer homicides in 2023 that year than in 2022, a decline of 11.6 percent. That was the largest year-to-year decline since national record-keeping began in 1960, according to Jeff Asher, a crime data analyst based in New Orleans.

Overall, violent crime fell 3 percent and property crime fell 2.6 percent in 2023, with burglaries down 7.6 percent and larceny down 4.4 percent. Car thefts, though, continue to be an exception, rising more than 12 percent from the year before.

The latest data is consistent with earlier preliminary reports from the F.B.I., and with research from other organizations and criminologists, all showing continuing declines in most crime, including murder.

Even so, crime remains a point of contention in the presidential race, with the Republican nominee, former President Donald J. Trump, describing American cities as crime-ridden dystopias. Polling shows that Americans remain concerned about crime, and that there is a consistent gap between crime data and the public perception of the problem. For instance, a Gallup poll last year found that 77 percent of Americans believed crime was rising, even though it was actually falling.

“Perceptions of safety are not driven by numbers in spreadsheets,” said Adam Gelb, the chief executive of the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonprofit policy research group that produces its own reports on crime in America. “They are about what people see and hear and feel on the streets, on TV and in their social media feeds. They are not sitting around studying the F.B.I.’s website.”

Some states, most notably California, are weighing tougher criminal justice measures in the face of public concern over crime. In November, voters in the state will decide whether to roll back one of the state’s landmark criminal justice measures, known as Proposition 47. The measure, approved in 2014, lowered penalties for theft and drug crimes and was responsible for a sharp reduction in the state’s prison population.

As residents of all political stripes express frustration with shoplifting and the role of fentanyl and other drugs in perpetuating disorder, polls are showing overwhelming support in California for rolling back Proposition 47.

At the same time, two progressive district attorneys in California who pursued policies to reduce imprisonment are in tough fights to keep their jobs. Both were elected in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis and the social justice protests it provoked. One, Pamela Price in Oakland, faces a recall election driven by concerns about crime. The other, George Gascon in Los Angeles, is in an uphill battle against a more conservative challenger, polling shows.

 

Though the overall trend in crime is downward, there were still 19,252 murders last year in the United States, according to the F.B.I. And the progress was not uniform, with some cities, like Washington D.C., Greensboro, N.C., and Memphis, Tenn, showing big increases in homicides last year, Mr. Asher noted in an analysis he published on Monday.

“The caveat is that these are national numbers,” said Alex Piquero, a professor of criminology at the University of Miami and the former director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics said of the F.B.I. report.

Pointing to a mass shooting in Alabama over the weekend that killed four people, Mr. Piquero said: “When you hear what happens in Birmingham, or you hear what happens in some cities in the United States that still are experiencing firearm violence the way it is, the national numbers won’t mean a lot for those people or those communities. So we have to always remember that we are moving in the right direction, but now is not the time to stop doing what all the people who are invested in crime prevention are doing.”

Criminologists attribute the drop in violent crime to a number of factors, all related to the country emerging from the pandemic: more social services coming back; investments in violence-prevention initiatives; social bonds being re-established; more proactive policing.

“All of those things that were turned off, from a crime prevention point of view, have now been turned on,” Mr. Piquero said.

In a statement, President Biden cited the reduction in crime and pointed to investments in community anti-violence groups that were part of Covid stimulus legislation, saying, “Americans are safer now than when we took office.” He also urged more funding for police departments.

While the F.B.I.’s new report covers crime in 2023, more recent research shows the trend of falling homicides continuing into 2024. A report released in July by the Council on Criminal Justice found that many major U.S. cities had seen sharp drops in homicides this year, and that rates of homicide had returned to prepandemic levels.

And in a database kept by Mr. Asher that tracks murders in nearly 300 American cities, homicides in those cities have declined by nearly 18 percent so far this year — equating to more than 1,200 fewer murders then last year.

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Crime rates are falling, data collection not improving

 Washington Post Editorial:

There’s encouraging news about crime rates in the United States. After a spike in both violent crime and property offenses after the pandemic-and-protest year of 2020, statistics show that crime is reverting to 2019 levels. That’s according to a newly released midyear report by the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank, based on monthly offense rates for 12 violent, property and drug crimes in 39 cities that have consistently reported such data over the past six years.

Rates for 11 of the 12 offenses CCJ covered in its report were lower in the first half of 2024 than in the first half of 2023. One crime of any kind is too many, of course, and even five years ago the United States was unacceptably violence-prone. Still, those who are genuinely interested in eliminating crime, as opposed to exploiting the issue for political purposes, will take heart in the new trends and study them for hints about which anti-crime policies do and do not work.

Alas, many in politics are interested in exploiting the issue. Former president Donald Trump told a rally in March that “crime is rampant and out of control like never before,” and doubled down on that alarmist message by telling the Republican National Convention that “our crime rate is going up.” Political rhetoric interacts with the public’s long-standing tendency to believe the worst about crime, which is why Mr. Trump is not the only politician to play this game. Twenty-three out of 27 Gallup polls conducted since 1993 showed that at least three-fifths of American adults believed crime had risen over the previous year, though annual rates actually fell during most of that period.

It would be equally wrong to dismiss public concerns, however; they have a basis in reality. Even with the recent improvements, it is undeniable that crime, including the worst crime — homicide — spiked nationally in recent years. The trauma and insecurity that this caused lingers. In seven U.S. cities that provide data on carjacking, that offense remains 68 percent more frequent than it was in the first half of 2019, according to CCJ’s report. Shoplifting and car theft also remain at elevated levels.

Given the emotions that inevitably swirl around this subject, public opinion will probably never precisely reflect statistical reality. But at least the government could publish a sufficiently precise and up-to-date picture of statistical reality. Unfortunately, it does not, as another recent CCJ report explained. The lead federal source for national data, the FBI, issues annual reports each October based on numbers gathered up to 18 months previously and reported — voluntarily and with varying degrees of accuracy — to the bureau by some 18,000 police agencies. Crime rates are based on two different sources: The National Incident-Based Reporting System, which collects details on crimes reported to law enforcement, and the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey, which gathers data directly from individuals about their experiences with crime, whether these incidents were reported to police or not.

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'If it bleeds it leads' media ignores dramatic decline in violence

 According to The New Republic, in the first half of 2023, Boston had 18 homicides. In the first half of 2024, it had four—a 77 percent drop. Mesa, Arizona, saw a drop of more than 70 percent, from 21 to six. Homicides in New Orleans fell by almost 40 percent. In Baltimore City, Cleveland, Dallas, Philadelphia, and Phoenix, homicides declined by around 30 percent. 

These dramatic numbers come from a midyear crime report published by the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which takes data from 69 police and sheriffs’ departments. In aggregate, the study documented a 17 percent drop in homicides. If the trend persists in the latter half of the year and holds true for the whole country, the total number of homicides will end up where it was in 2015, at around 15,500, and will represent the largest single-year decline in at least 65 years, exceeding the previous record decline—of 12 percent, set just last year—by almost a third. Meaning: The entire Covid-19 homicide spike will have vanished.

It may seem risky to extrapolate the midyear data from just 69 departments to the year-end results from 18,000 local departments, but historically, midyear data from the Major Cities Chiefs Association and national year-end data track each other surprisingly well. (For those who want to dig into the weeds, I dive deep here.) Barring some sort of shocking shift, 2024 seems on pace for historic or near-historic declines.

The plunge is unambiguously good news. It is also unexpected good news. Rising homicide rates create the very real risk of vicious cycles that do not end simply because we’ve started a new statistical year. Homicide trends tend to be quite long. From 1963 to 1980, homicides rose every year except one. After a brief decline in the early 1980s, they rose again most years between 1985 and 1994, at which point all violent crime began a steady, decade-long drop.

There are clear reasons for the cyclical nature of the phenomenon. One study in Chicago found evidence that each shooting led to an average of three more retaliatory and counter-retaliatory shootings; some led to dozens more; at least one led to over 100 more. Slowing and then reversing these cycles of revenge can be challenging, yet it happened over the past few years, not long after the chaos and violence of 2020–21, and with surprising rapidity.

This is the sort of news that should spawn dozens of media pieces digging into what, exactly, caused so quick a reversal. Yet that is not what we have seen. Excluding pieces in Axios and Bloomberg, the MCCA report has largely gone unnoticed (and neither of those articles dug into why the decline occurred). To the extent these declines have popped up elsewhere in the media, it is less as a newsworthy development in and of itself and more as a means to fact-check false claims from Donald Trump. (Take, for instance, Vox on August 12: “Trump says crime is out of control. The facts say otherwise.”) Contrast this reticence with how the media handled the Covid-era homicide spike, which was covered by major outlets like The New York Times and NPR in multiple extensive pieces.

That attention made sense: The 2020 surge was the largest increase in homicides in at least 55 years; no other year’s increase comes within half its size. It had huge human costs. But the present decline demands equal attention—and could be put to good political use by the Harris-Walz campaign, should it want to.

There are important stories here. One of the most compelling explanations for the homicide declines that started in 2023 is a story of defunding—but not of the police. Contrary to claims that “defund the police” decreased budgets, police employment and especially police budgets have remained fairly constant; it was local nonpolice employment that was decimated during the pandemic. John Roman, a researcher at the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center, has argued that the surge in homicides seems closely linked to the Covid-driven layoffs of civilian government employees, whose jobs are not framed as “law enforcement” but who regularly help reduce crime and victimization: teachers, social workers, drug counselors, people running after-school programs. Furthermore, the timing of the homicide decline lines up with local nonpolice government employment returning to its pre-pandemic levels.

Now, I’m not saying Roman’s theory is the only explanation (and I doubt he would either), but it merits careful consideration. Yet as far as I can tell, it has received almost none. The asymmetry here—deep explorations of rising homicides, passing references in political stories to sharp declines—has very real political costs. Crime is a powerful issue politically, but also one that is quite geographically concentrated. Most people go through their days with little direct exposure to it. Unlike other politically salient topics such as the economy and employment, most people’s understanding of crime is heavily shaped by how the media chooses to frame and discuss a phenomenon they do not personally experience. If the media highlights the increases and downplays the declines, it will help produce an electorate that is excessively pessimistic about crime and how to respond to it.

The politics of crime in New York in 2021 and 2022 highlights the role the media can play. In the wake of the Covid homicide spike, the state’s bail reform law faced intense opposition—and legislative rollbacks—from politicians and other defenders of the criminal legal system’s status quo. And it’s likely that appeals to people’s fears about crime helped propel Mayor Eric Adams to his razor-thin victory in 2021. They may have flipped just enough upstate House seats to give the GOP its increasingly narrow control of the House. As a 2022 Bloomberg piece pointed out, however, violent crime in New York City was far lower than in the 1980s and 1990s, and actually pretty stable during the Covid era. Media coverage does not correlate much, if at all, with actual crime trends. It does, however, seem tightly linked to politicians’ efforts to exploit crime as a political tool.

That the media is not covering a decline in violence as much as an increase is perhaps unsurprising: “If it bleeds it leads” has been an adage for a long time. 

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Murder declines nationally at record pace

 There is a lot of evidence that murder is falling faster nationally than it has ever before — with the caveat that official murder data only exists through 1960, according to Jeff Asher at Jeff-alytics.

We won’t know just how fast murder fell in 2023, but all of the available data points to a decline that was at or near the fastest pace ever recorded last year. Murder was down 11.7 percent in our sample of 214 cities (see the link to 2023 data at the bottom) with available data, it was down 13.2 percent in the FBI’s quarterly data through Q4 2023, and it was down 12.2 percent in the 31 states that had published data as of about a month ago. Other sources such as CDC’s WONDER and the Gun Violence Archive also point to large declines in homicides and fatal shootings respectively.

One reason to suspect that last year was at or near the largest ever recorded is that murder usually doesn’t decline all that fast from one year to the next. The largest decline ever recorded came in 1996 and that was just 9.1 percent (by contrast, there had been 7 one-year increases that were larger than 9.1 percent before 2020’s monumental increase), so even a double-digit decline in murder would be the largest ever recorded.

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Lawmakers nationwide rolling back criminal justice reform

California, once a leader in finding ways to lock up fewer people by lowering sentences for some drug and property crimes, is now considering reversing course. And it is not alone. Lawmakers across the country have rolled back reforms meant to decrease reliance on police and prisons, even though data suggests that crime rates are broadly trending down, reported The Marshall Project.

In California, a new ballot initiative could toughen sentences for shoplifting and selling fentanyl. Earlier this year, Louisiana all but eliminated parole, expanded execution methods in capital cases and increased the time people spend behind bars. The changes came after a period of reform, during which the state shrank its prison population by a third. Kentucky also passed sweeping legislation that criminalizes sleeping in the streets, limits charitable bail organizations and prohibits probation and parole for some incarcerated people.

“This is a time of extraordinary political divisiveness. It's a time of economic confusion and upheaval. It's a time where, frankly, we're still recovering from the significant social impacts of COVID,” said Lenore Anderson, co-founder and president of Alliance for Safety and Justice, which advocates for community-based approaches to safety. “When things around us start to feel more like quicksand, voters get nervous about everything, right? And crime is among the things.”

This article was published in partnership with USA Today.

In other states, recently enacted reforms are holding up, but in moments of uncertainty like these, Anderson said politicians often reach for old playbooks and “tough-on-crime” messages. That is what she sees playing out in California, where Proposition 36, a measure on the November ballot, would roll back parts of Proposition 47, a decade-old law that downgraded some drug and property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors, among other reforms.

The law played a big part in driving down mass incarceration in the state and addressing chronic overcrowding. But Anderson argues it did something else that voters want to see: It improved public safety by investing money previously spent on incarceration in drug treatment, prevention, mental health care and victim services.

One lesson those advocating reform should learn, she said, is that it’s urgent to discuss how changes can improve public safety. “We have to not only talk about safety — we need to lead with it,” Anderson said.

The news in many places has been dominated by a narrative of out-of-control crime, featuring videos of coordinated shoplifting or stories about people who repeatedly commit crimes and don’t remain behind bars.

Despite those portrayals, the data paints a much more nuanced picture, and violent crime is trending down. But researchers at Vera Action, an organization working to end mass incarceration, argue that focusing on statistics isn’t convincing for many voters.

Brian Tashman, deputy director at Vera Action, said if people who have witnessed or experienced violence feel unsafe, citing data about dropping crime rates can make them feel unheard or misunderstood. Instead of messages about “dropping crime” and increased funding for police, Vera’s polling suggests voters want to hear about new approaches to safety that don’t increase incarceration, like improved access to schools, jobs and housing.

The polling indicates voters are more open to approaches that emphasize prevention than traditional “tough-on-crime” policies like harsh sentences.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that efforts to undo criminal justice reforms in California have been led by Republicans and funded by large retailers like Target and Walmart. But some Democrats are also throwing their support behind the rollbacks, including San Francisco Mayor London Breed, who did not return a request for comment.

Anderson, of the Alliance for Safety and Justice, said she believes elected officials like Breed are afraid of being attacked as “soft on crime,” a strategy that has been effective in the past. In a report focusing on California, Vera Action researchers wrote that California Democrats lag behind Republicans in voter trust on crime and safety. But, they argue, the “confidence gap” can be narrowed by discussing how progressive policies improve safety and security. “It’s the silence that’s deadly,” they wrote. The study pointed to Illinois as an example of a state where reformers successfully owned the issue of safety, without returning to “tough-on-crime” tactics.

In 2021, Illinois state Sen. Robert Peters stood behind Gov. J.B. Pritzker as he signed a historic law that made Illinois the first state in the nation to completely eliminate cash bail — so that no one would be in jail awaiting trial because they didn’t have enough money. It was supposed to be a day of celebration, but he remembers bracing himself for backlash.

Peters is a student of history, and knew about the backlash that came after the civil rights movement. He’d seen more recent examples, too. In 2019, New York passed a law limiting, but not abolishing, the use of cash bail. Politicians immediately faced negative media coverage. Within weeks after the law went into effect, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo was saying the law would need to be adjusted. And politicians soon expanded the number of crimes that would allow a judge to assign cash bail.

The attacks Peters feared did eventually come in Illinois. Campaign ads connected to Republican operative Dan Proft, deceptively designed to look like newspapers, attacked supporters of the reforms for ushering in the “end of days” and “murder, mayhem.”

But as the attacks flew, Illinois organizations that advocate for the rights of victims and survivors of violence voiced their support for the reforms. Groups working to end domestic and sexualized violence, like the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, had been deeply involved in shaping the law. The same bill that ended cash bail also included increased access to funding for victims of crime, more opportunities to file for protective orders and a requirement that prosecutors notify survivors about pretrial hearings.

“We’re finally going to have a system that centers survivors more and takes the time to review their cases, hear back from them, notify them about what the circumstances are of their cases, or what decisions are being made and how they can contribute,” Madeleine Behr of the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation told The Chicago Sun-Times just before the elimination of cash bail went into effect in 2023.

A coalition of organizations supporting the law, which included violence prevention organizations like Mothers/Men Against Senseless Killings, pointed to a study that showed, despite fears of spikes in violence, a decreased use of cash bail in Cook County had no statistical effect on crime. But they went beyond numbers, and also argued that when people are held in jail because they can’t afford bail, they risk losing their jobs, housing, health care and family connections. That kind of destabilization makes communities less safe, they argued, but eliminating cash bail would make it easier to maintain stability and security.

Politicians in the state, from Pritzker on down, stood by the law. The reforms remained in place, and despite attacks, the politicians who supported it kept their jobs. Lawmakers have since expanded the law by investing additional funds in mental health treatment, child care and transportation for defendants awaiting trial.

Peters, the Democratic state lawmaker, said the involvement of survivor organizations has been critical because it’s hard to attack a law for being “soft on crime” when victims and survivors are loudly arguing that it makes them safer.

Zoë Towns, executive director at FWD.us, a bipartisan organization advocating for reforms in criminal justice and immigration, said talking about how progressive criminal justice policies improve safety and assist survivors isn’t new. But in recent years there has been greater emphasis from politicians and activists in communicating that the country doesn’t have to choose between safety and justice. “These are two sides of the same coin. You have to be thinking about them together,” Towns said.

There are also plenty of reforms that are holding strong, Towns added. In moderate and conservative places like Lincoln, Nebraska, and Jacksonville, Florida, candidates who promoted justice reforms have weathered attacks that they were soft on crime. Missouri passed a law allowing recreational marijuana use and expungement of past offenses, which remains in place and is helping to fund drug treatment and legal services. And in Mississippi, a state dominated by conservatives, lawmakers recently extended a measure allowing increased parole eligibility, so more people can get released from prison.

Rafael Mangual, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, pointed out that many reforms remain in place despite attempts at rollbacks. But Mangual doesn’t believe the enduring reforms are a reflection of what voters actually want, and he said he was skeptical that progressives could own the issue of safety. He thinks voters will ultimately decide against experiments limiting cash bail and decreasing the use of police and prisons. Mangual pointed to the current ballot initiative in California as one sign of that tendency.

But Anderson of the Alliance for Safety and Justice, which has backed reforms in California and Illinois, said she still thinks the California reforms have a chance of being upheld. She said that, as in Illinois, the way the law addresses safety and crime victims is key. For example, Proposition 47 reallocated money from prisons to victim support groups.

“We can't just sort of say okay, we're going to reduce incarceration. Everything will be fine. That's not the end goal. The end goal is a transformed approach to public safety,” Anderson said.

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