The crime wave is over but Republicans can’t let go

“Horrific crimes. Murders. Gang attacks against our police. Child sex crimes. And the brutal killing of a nursing student on her college campus.”

That’s the kind of rhetoric Republican convention-goers were exposed to in Milwaukee on Tuesday, after an ominous video — narrated with a deep voice that sounded like it came out of a 2000s action movie trailer — depicted a dystopian version of Joe Biden’s America.

The theme of the Republican National Convention’s second night was “Make America Safe Again,” and the roster of speakers repeatedly criticized Biden’s record on crime and immigration: Randy Sutton, a retired police officer, said there was a “war on cops.” Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird said that Biden treats “police like criminals, and criminals like victims.” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz declared that “your family is less safe, your children are less safe, the country is less safe,” as a result of Biden’s presidency.

But the Republican speakers’ rhetoric on crime spiraling out of control was out of touch with reality.

While there was indeed a rise in crime during the pandemic, recent data has shown that crime is declining nationwide. According to the FBI, murder is down 26 percent and robberies have declined by 18 percent in the first three months of 2024 compared to the same time last year. That didn’t stop Republican speakers throughout the night from singling out incidents of heinous crimes and drug overdoses to conjure up an image of lawlessness and disorder.

So why are Republicans plowing ahead with their “Make America Safe Again” messaging despite data that shows America is already getting safer? The answer is simple: Most Americans believe that crime is getting worse, so it’s not a particularly tough message to sell.

The convention made clear that Republicans are running yet another law-and-order campaign, drumming up fear among voters by leaning on racist tropes and dog whistles. Their insistence that cities are crime-ridden, though, is not only a means to spark fear in voters; it’s also a window into how they will approach public safety legislation if Donald Trump wins in November.

Since the pandemic, the conservative backlash to progressive criminal justice reforms, including lowering penalties, has grown. While some Democrats have joined Republicans in passing tough-on-crime legislation in the past year, Republicans have been harsher and more extreme in their response to the 2020 crime spike.

Louisiana, for example, passed a slew of punitive measures that included harsher penalties for various offenses and reduced parole eligibility, and even allowed for 17-year-olds to be tried as adults instead of in the juvenile justice system.

Republican politicians have also been outspoken critics of progressive district attorneys who have taken a softer approach to enforcing petty crimes. Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a second Trump administration, calls on the Department of Justice to compel local DAs to enforce the laws that the federal government sees fit — including extreme right-wing policies — rather than leave that up to local prosecutors, as has long been customary.

A Trump win would embolden Republicans to continue undoing the criminal justice reform that, in recent decades, reduced the prison population and lowered penalties for petty crimes. The result could be a renewed and further entrenched era of mass incarceration.

Surveys have shown that Americans always tend to think crime rates are getting worse, even when the opposite is true, but there’s a limit to how successful law-and-order campaigns can be. Recently, the Republican messaging hasn’t necessarily paid electoral dividends.

According to the Vera Institute of Justice, for example, the 2022 midterms showed that Republicans’ fear-mongering rhetoric on crime didn’t seem to resonate with voters. Republicans spent millions of dollars on campaign ads focusing on crime and public safety, but according to exit surveys commissioned by Vera Action, the lobbying group aligned with the Vera Institute of Justice, while voters were concerned about crime, they didn’t necessarily believe in more punitive policies.

Still, there’s a reason Republicans are focusing their rhetoric on crime: Democrats have been on the defensive on the issue, despite the fact that the data is in their favor.

Instead of continuing to champion progressive changes to the criminal justice system, many Democrats have reversed course and pushed for harsher enforcement, fearing voter sentiment around crime. That was the case in New York, for example, where the Democratic governor sent the National Guard to patrol the subway, and in Oregon, where lawmakers recriminalized drugs after voters in 2020 decriminalized them.

If the second night of the Republican convention was any indication, it’s that, despite falling crime rates, the GOP’s old law-and-order campaign playbook isn’t likely to go away anytime soon.