What’s Really Going On With the Crime Rate?

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