Polling showed that crime was a major issue for midterm voters. Republicans tried to capitalize on those concerns, but it wasn’t a surefire strategy, especially in races for prosecutor and sheriff’s offices. It’s not surprising since in many cases, criminal justice reform is a bipartisan issue.
While the U.S. prison population has declined since 2009, the nation’s incarceration levels still stun. About 1.2 million people are currently behind bars in state and federal prisons, and local jails admit 8.7 million people every year. Recognizing that this level of incarceration has dire societal consequences, from disproportionately punishing people of color to exacerbating economic inequality, the last few decades have seen a remarkable bipartisan effort to reduce unnecessary incarceration at both the state and federal levels.
This is perhaps best illustrated by the First Step Act, which was passed by Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support and signed into law by President Trump in 2018. The law has already cut the federal prison population by several thousand, restored judicial discretion in some drug cases, and retroactively reduced certain drug sentences.
More recently, cities across the country have seen increases in some crimes, although today’s crime levels are significantly lower than they were in the 1980s and early 1990s. The causes of these increases are complicated, and the pandemic played a significant role in disrupting communities: economic uncertainty spiked, after-school programs shut down, and there was greater gun availability.
With crime on people’s minds, it soon became the focal point for many Republican candidates’ campaigns. Vox reported that Republicans had spent $157 million on crime-related ads at the national level by November 3, and the Wall Street Journal reported that crime was highlighted in more than a third of all congressional campaign television ads that aired after Labor Day in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Of course, many factors were at play in the election — from the economy to the candidates themselves — but it’s clear that painting an opponent as “soft on crime” did not necessarily prove to be a ticket to victory. In the Pennsylvania Senate race, for example, Republican candidate Mehmet Oz tried to make an issue of Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman’s advocacy for criminal justice reform, such as his support for reducing the number of people who served life sentences in Pennsylvania. Oz’s first television ad in the general election claimed, “John Fetterman wants to release one-third of prisoners and eliminate life sentences for murderers.”
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