"These attacks assume that the changes in criminal-justice policies that some states and many cities have pursued over the past few years are undermining public safety and fueling higher crime rates. But an exhaustive new study released today by the Center for American Progress refutes that allegation."
OCTOBER 20, 2022
by Ronald Brownstein
Turn on a television in any state with a competitive Senate or gubernatorial race, and you’ll see that the criminal-justice reform agenda is under constant attack.
Republicans are pinning higher crime rates on Democrats who have expressed sympathy for almost any aspect of the movement to confront racial inequities in the criminal-justice system. In New York, a conservative super PAC opposing Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul is slamming her for defending “the state’s disastrous cashless bail experiment” and refusing to “remove liberal prosecutors, like [Manhattan’s] Alvin Bragg, who too often downgrade charges for dangerous criminals.” In Pennsylvania, the National Republican Senatorial Committee links John Fetterman to “sanctuary cities, weak prosecutors, crime skyrocketing—failed liberal policies, making us less safe.” In Wisconsin, Republican ads ominously ask, “What happens when criminals are released because bail is set dangerously low?” and accuse Mandela Barnes, the state’s lieutenant governor, of wanting to completely eliminate cash bail (not surprisingly, the full story is more complicated).
These attacks assume that the changes in criminal-justice policies that some states and many cities have pursued over the past few years are undermining public safety and fueling higher crime rates.
But an exhaustive new study released today by the Center for American Progress refutes that allegation. Conducted by a team of seven academic researchers, the study compares cities that have elected so-called progressive prosecutors with places whose district attorneys continue to pursue more traditional approaches.
Countering conventional wisdom, the study found that homicides over recent years increased less rapidly in cities with progressive prosecutors than in those with more traditional district attorneys. It also found no meaningful differences between cities with progressive or traditional DAs in the trends for larceny and robbery. “I think it’s really important to emphasize the extent to which we looked for a relationship and found none” between a prosecutors’ commitment to reform and crime rates, Todd Foglesong, a fellow in residence at the University of Toronto and one of the co-authors, told me.
The data, from CAP, a liberal think tank and advocacy organization, reinforces the message from a study released earlier this year by Third Way, a centrist Democratic group. That report found that per capita murder rates in 2020 were 40 percent higher in states that voted for Donald Trump than in those that voted for President Joe Biden. The study found that eight of the 10 states with the highest per capita murder rates in 2020 have voted Republican in every presidential election in this century.
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