Crime is NOT a National Issue

Marsha, Marsha, Marsha

Over the last couple of months, I’ve done two long series on this newsletter. The first was about political polarization and the demagoguery that feeds it. The second was on the criminal justice system and how it works (or doesn’t).

When a Twitter friend commented on a Monday tweet about crime from Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn¹, it caught my attention. She was responding to the horrific news of the Memphis shooter who killed four people over the weekend. Here’s a screen shot of that tweet:

Without rehashing all of my earlier criminal justice arguments, I will concede that crime is up². I don’t know where the “spiking” threshold is, but I’m not sure we’re there when you look at increase in actual incidents rather than percentage increases compared to last year. I don’t know which “soft on crime” policies she’s referring to but I’d guess its about cash bail proposals (in a later tweet she blamed this on Soros-funded liberal prosecutors) or the decriminalization of marijuana. The “support our law enforcement” piece is a reference to the “defund the police” slogan from 2020 (that she blames “the squad” for) that was never a serious policy initiative.

In response to my friend’s now-deleted comment, I wrote “She should resign her Senate seat and run for mayor since law enforcement is a local not national issue.”

Here’s a list of what Senators or Congresspeople can do about crime in cities.

1. Pass legislation increasing discretionary spending for the Department of Justice that can be used to incentivize crime reduction initiatives.

2. Pass legislation to allow federal, state, and local law enforcement entities to collaborate on task forces or equipment.

3. Pass legislation to increase sentencing for federal (not local) offenses.

4. Hold hearings on the federal responses to federal crimes occurring in cities.

The list for state level politicians is nearly identical — just substitute state where it says federal.

Politicians like Senator Blackburn make these claims to establish pro-law enforcement bona fides. Because the media loves reporting on crime, they are eager recipients of these critiques. With a populace shaped by police procedurals where everything is resolved by heroic cops in one hour (not counting commercial time), this demagoguery is very effective.³

Just once, I want a journalist to stop politicians like Blackburn and ask them a simple, straightforward question: What will you personally do about crime?

When the politician defaults to “we need to support our local law enforcement.”, ask them “how would you do that in your role as a senator/representative?”

When the politician tells you that “we need to stop these liberal prosecutors!”, ask them how, in their official role, they’d go about removing prosecutors elected by the voters.⁴

Politicians know that nobody is going to ask these questions. So they get away with their talking points to look tough on crime and make their opponents look weak.

A related trick that Blackburn and others like is to cite the number of people apprehended by Border Patrol as if they are actually all just coming into the country without apprehension. Or citing the quantities of drugs seized at the border as if those were just randomly distributed to our school children instead of being confiscated by enforcement entities (who, remember, we’re supposed to support).

But on issues of crime or education or homelessness, Senators and Representatives have little to no influence. These are local, not national issues. We should stop allowing them to repeat bland talking points pointing fingers are imaginary others.

If they really care about these issues, let them resign their seats and work at the local level to address them.

1. Senator Blackburn just got my attention as I have many Tennessee friends on Twitter. But you can substitute your favorite Republican politician and my argument stands.

2. Violent crime. Property Crime is down.

3. You should pause your reading of this newsletter right now and watch John Oliver’s report on the Law and Order franchise from his show on Sunday.

4. In my imagination, this interview is being conducted by Denver’s own Kyle Clark.