There is an inclination on the part of many to characterize law enforcement in the United States as unnecessarily harsh or overbearing. The reality is quite different.
Hillary Clinton incorrectly stated during her September 26 debate that violent crime was down in the United States. FBI statistics indicate that she has her facts wrong. Murder rose 10.8% from 2014 to 2015, and violent crime in general rose about 4%. Ms. Clinton also incorrectly alleged that murders in NYC were down. The FBI reports, however, that homicides increased by 6% in the Big Apple from 333 in 2014 to 352 in 2015.
Ignoring the very recent increase in violent crime, or overlooking the strategies that led to the success achieved against violent crime two decades ago, could lead to a return to the dark days that plagued the nation with far too many murders and other vicious acts. Far too often, ideological agendas lead advocates to ignore the facts.
Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) speaking at New York’s Hudson Institute, noted:
“We’re currently reaping the benefits of one of the great public-policy achievements in modern times: a dramatic, generation-long drop in crime… this drop in crime followed a decade-long spike in crime arising out of the drug epidemic of the 1980s and early 1990s. That epidemic turned streets into literal battlefields, teenagers into foot soldiers, and too many citizens into casualties of the drug wars. It may seem like a distant nightmare now, but make no mistake: 30 years ago, our cities were slowly dying. At the peak of New York’s crisis, the city had 2,245 murders in one year-that’s over six murders every single day. In Los Angeles, a city half the size of New York, there were 1,094 murders. Nor was the crisis limited to the biggest cities….At one point, Little Rock had the highest per capita murder rate in America…
“We turned our society around and we made our streets safe again…it happened because of policy changes like broken-windows policing techniques, mandatory-minimum sentences for violent criminals, 3-strikes laws, and other reforms…Too many people, it would seem, have forgotten these hard-learned lessons. They take our historically low crime rates for granted, acting as if safe neighborhoods are the natural state of man. They often speak and act as if criminals are victims, too.
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“This disturbing amnesia also comes with a policy agenda as ambitious as it is wrongheaded. Some members of Congress would reduce mandatory minimum sentences for drug traffickers and other violent felons, while giving liberal judges more discretion in sentencing again. Others want to prohibit employers from inquiring about criminal history in job-application forms; some states have already done so. Just last month, one governor restored voting rights to more than 200,000 felons, regardless of the offense committed or evidence of rehabilitation. And, of course, a nationwide movement is afoot to stigmatize law enforcement and the proven policing strategies of the last 25 years.”
The U.S. Department of Justice is on the incorrect side of this debate As noted in a recent New York Post editorial, Attorney General Loretta Lynch wants courts to replace fines and jail time for some offenses with “community service” and “amnesty days,” (whereby outstanding arrest warrants are cleared for nominal fees.)
There is truth to the argument that the U.S. has a large prison population. Peter Wagner and Bernadette Rabuy, writing in Prison Policy notes that The American criminal justice system holds more than 2.3 million people in 1,719 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 2,259 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,283 local jails, and 79 Indian Country jails as well as in military prisons, immigration detention facilities, civil commitment centers, and prisons in the U.S. territories.
There is, however, no accuracy in the claim that low-level drug offenses or racism are the reason. Stephanos Bibas, writing in National Review reports: “As Fordham law professor John Pfaff has shown, more than half of the extra prisoners added in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s were imprisoned for violent crimes; two thirds were in for violent or property crimes. Only about a fifth of prison inmates are incarcerated for drug offenses, and only a sliver of those are in for marijuana. Moreover, many of these incarcerated drug offenders have prior convictions for violent crimes. The median state prisoner serves roughly two years before being released; three quarters are released within roughly six years. For the last several decades, arrest rates as a percentage of crimes — including drug arrests — have been basically flat, as have sentence lengths. What has driven prison populations, Pfaff proves convincingly, is that arrests are far more likely to result in felony charges: Twenty years ago, only three eighths of arrests resulted in felony charges, but today more than half do. Over the past few decades, prosecutors have grown tougher and more consistent.”
The reality that violent crime threatened the very existence of far too many American cities just a few decades ago should not be forgotten. The solutions to that crisis, including tougher sentencing and larger and more involved police departments (now too frequently incorrectly labelled as racist or oppressive) should not be undone if the nation is to avoid a return to the unwanted conditions of the past.