by mapi
“As Republicans revive familiar warnings about out-of-control crime in pursuit of regaining power, the prominent moderate Democratic group Third Way has a different message for the party: Don’t take the bait; it’s a lie.”
“Contrary to the media narrative, overall crime decreased in 2020 compared to 2019. There appears to be no difference in crime trends between states that enacted police reforms and those that did not.”
“There seems to be a hysteria that began about a year and half ago to try and convince Americans that we’re undergoing another crime wave,” said Jim Kessler, Third Way’s executive vice president for policy. “At a certain point, we just wanted to look at what the actual data was. And it doesn’t bear up.”
“People’s view of crime is going to be shaped by their own world that they live in, which feels safe, and then the wider world that they experience through television and media. And so on an issue like crime, it’s pretty easy to manipulate people to say it’s really bad,” Kessler said.
“Nearly all state and local spending on police, corrections, and courts in 2018 went toward operational costs such as salaries and benefits (96 percent for both police and courts and 97 percent for corrections). Capital spending accounted for only 4 percent of both police and courts expenditures and 3 percent of corrections expenditures.”