The Limits of Progressive Crime Experiments

This article is available as a YouTube podcast.

If you like the quote, "I'll believe it when pigs fly," then get ready for Democrats to change their tune when it comes to crime.

Before continuing, I need to remind readers that many Democrats insist on accountability for criminal offenders while supporting social programs for those in need, including my father and grandfather, who were active in Democratic politics at the local level. Nothing is gained by attacking all Democrats.

You may be influenced by the negative publicity regarding ICE in Minneapolis and other cities, but there are fundamentals in American society that won't change:

• Per multiple polls, most Americans, regardless of demographics, support law enforcement and want cops in their communities.
• The vast majority of Americans express very high (almost historic) fear of crime, according to Gallup.
• Crime is routinely a very hot topic in Presidential and local elections.
• Crime is the second-most-covered topic in news coverage. 

What Progressives Want

Progressives want ICE and immigration efforts banished or greatly reduced. They want a decrease in funding for law enforcement and a greater reliance on violence interrupters and social programs for offenders. They would like to see a dramatic reduction in prison capacity. They want progressive prosecutors to limit prison for the most violent repeat offenders, while everyone else walks. They want cash bail eliminated. They believe that crime victims have too much influence on policy questions.

They want criminals to be referred to as "clients," and those released from prison as "returning citizens," per the US Department of Justice under Biden. They point out that we have lost a ton of cops, yet crimes reported to law enforcement are dropping like a rock in cities. So who needs cops?

Many still want to defund the police, described by Democratic strategist James Carville as "the three stupidest words in the English language. Carville's criticism of the phrase, which became prominent amid 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, has been consistent, with recent commentary highlighting its detrimental impact on the Democratic party's image and electoral success. 

In their defense, progressives want a kinder, gentler criminal justice system (who doesn't?), and there's nothing wrong with their ideas beyond the fact that it destroys Democratic candidates in elections (unless they are from extremely liberal cities). Party bosses and left-leaning think tanks seem to agree.  

Biden and Progressives

Why bring up former President Biden? Because many Democrats want to return to his former policies. It's as if Biden was behind the effort described below.

Progressives made life miserable for President Biden as he began his run for a second term. Biden was a long-term tough on crime member of the US Senate. He was Vice President under President Obama, who deported over three million illegal immigrants (far more than any other President, including President Trump), and the Obama-Biden team was known as the "deporters in chief."

Who was in charge of immigration efforts for President Obama and Vice President Biden? It was Tom Homan, the same person who is now President Trump's Border Czar. President Obama recognized Homan with the Presidential Rank Award in 2015 for his work. He was the ICE Executive Associate Director for Enforcement and Removal Operations under Obama.

Progressives had an array of priorities that they wanted Biden to run on during the last election, and they attempted an influence campaign. Biden understood that most Americans supported law enforcement and wanted accountability for criminal offenders.

But Biden Needed Progressives To Win in 2020

The former president tried to bring progressives into his campaign. During his 2020 presidential run, Joe Biden promised to end private prisons, cash bail, mandatory-minimum sentencing, and the death penalty.

Candidate Biden also said the U.S. could reduce its prison population by more than half. While he didn't put forward as progressive or as detailed a platform as many of his competitors for the Democratic nomination (including his running mate Kamala Harris), Biden was, nevertheless, quietly elected on the most progressive criminal justice platform of any major party candidate in generations," The Marshall Project.

But This Was A Dramatic Change From His Previous Crime Policy Issues

"Give me the crime issue... and you'll never have trouble with it in an election," was a phrase Joe Biden reportedly used in meetings with party leaders during his earlier Senate career to signify his desire to take the lead on tough-on-crime legislation, ensuring Democrats would not be seen as weak on the issue. This approach was aimed at neutralizing Republican attacks on Democrats being "soft on crime" during election cycles. 

Democratic Party Leadership Understands the Current Dynamics And Biden's Senate History
 
Criminal Justice Journalists: A left-leaning think tank is urging more spending on police, the latest sign that many Democrats want to shake the "defund the police" label and strike a tougher tone on crime, even as they condemn President Trump's aggressive use of federal law enforcement.
 
"Voters barely believe Democrats even care about fighting crime or respect police," according to a slide presentation prepared by a sister group for the Center for American Progress (CAP), a think tank that has served as a political and policy workshop for leading Democrats, reports the Washington Post. The think tank released a plan it hopes will help rewrite that image — calling for more local police officers, a focus on crime "hot spots" and "swift and certain consequences" alongside the social-service-focused solutions favored by the left.
 
Democrats see both opportunities and pitfalls on crime as Trump uses the issue to justify deploying the National Guard and surging immigration officers to liberal cities. Many on the left say the president is overplaying his hand, alienating voters with heavy-handed tactics that have sometimes turned deadly. Some are wary of fanning GOP claims they are soft on crime after paying a political price for activist calls to "defund the police" amid 2020 racial justice protests.
 
"It's important for Democrats to demonstrate that they understand that crime is an issue and that they have solutions around it," said CAP president Neera Tanden, domestic policy council director under President Biden (emphasis added). She argued the party should be "on their front foot" talking about the subject and offering an alternative to the "terror tactics" on display in Minnesota.

 

Politico: The 'Woke' Words Democrats Should Cut From Their Vocabulary

A new memo identifies 45 words and phrases for Democrats to avoid, alleging the terms turn voters off. They span six categories — from "therapy speak" to "explaining away crime."

In a new memo, shared exclusively with POLITICO, the center-left think tank Third Way is circulating a list of 45 words and phrases they want Democrats to avoid using, alleging the terms put "a wall between us and everyday people of all races, religions, and ethnicities." It's a set of words that Third Way suggests "people simply do not say, yet they hear them from Democrats."

"We are doing our best to get Democrats to talk like normal people and stop talking like they're leading a seminar at Antioch," says Matt Bennett, Third Way's executive vice president of public affairs. "We think language is one of the central problems we face with normie voters, signaling that we are out of touch with how they live, think and talk.

In recent weeks, this has become a bit of a thing, with comedians like Jimmy Kimmel and Sarah Silverman highlighting how insane Dems can sometimes sound. 

Erickson (Third Way's senior vice president) mentioned crime as a key issue on which Democrats need to recalibrate, citing Trump's "invasion of D.C."

"It shows that people don't think Democrats want to hold criminals accountable at all," she said. "Like we don't care about violent crime and we don't care if someone hurts someone, that they should be held accountable. That's not true. We're afraid to say that because we're afraid that someone is going to criticize us for being too 'tough on crime."

But Wait-There's More

There are many additional examples of Democrats and left-leaning think tanks expressing similar views. See Rahm Emanuel, considering White House bid, urges Dems to move center on crime in Politico.

Working-class voters think Dems are "woke" and "weak," new research finds.
The extensive research project shows the challenges and openings for the party in winning back working-class voters, also in Politico.

There are additional examples I could cite.

Are The Proposals From The Center For American Progress Believable?

I encourage you to read the proposal from the Center for American Progress (CAP). Beyond swipes at President Trump's crime agenda, it sorta sounds like proposals from national police and conservative groups. It sounds like President Biden's former crime philosophies. "Protecting people from crime is one of the government's most fundamental and urgent responsibilities" is something conservatives have been saying for decades.

It's obvious that left-leaning think tanks are co-opting conservative speech and ideology. They wouldn't be doing this unless they believed that they have the ear of top Democratic strategists. They wouldn't be doing this unless they believed that traditional progressive ideology has cost Democrats multiple elections.

A Lack of Evidence

But their proposals have fundamental flaws. There is little to no empirical evidence (based on independent researchers using accepted methodologies and replication in other locations) to back their belief that violence interrupters and social programs for criminal offenders work. 

Per University of Virginia law Prof. Megan Stevenson, in Boston University's Law Review, "This article is built around a central empirical claim: most reforms and interventions in the criminal legal space are shown to have little lasting impact when evaluated with gold-standard methods of causal inference."

"This claim will not be controversial to anyone immersed in the literature (emphasis added). But, like a dirty secret, it almost never gets seriously acknowledged or discussed. Nor is it widely known beyond the small circle of people trained in statistical methods of causal inference. The research that people hear about shows the rare cases of success; the remainder gets filtered from public view."

"When it comes to the type of limited-scope interventions evaluable via RCT  and other quasi-experimental methods, the engineer's view appears to be mostly a myth. More than fifty years of RCT evidence shows the limits in our ability to engineer change with this type of intervention (emphasis added)."

Throughout my career, I was told over and over by justice professionals that rehabilitating criminal offenders was massively difficult, an observation supported by the statement above. This conclusion is based on USDOJ-funded comprehensive literature reviews of programs for offenders. Most did not reduce recidivism, and when they did, the results were minimal. 

If programs for offenders worked, every state in the country would rush to implement them because it would save states billions of dollars (in diminished recidivism based on new crimes) over time. Why don't they do it? Because, based on the available evidence, no one believes programs for offenders are sufficiently effective.

The overwhelming percentage of people released from prisons are re-arrested and re-incarcerated, per the USDOJ's Bureau of Justice Statistics and the federal judiciary's US Sentencing Commission, regardless of the rehabilitation programs they participated in. The data on people doing well on parole and probation (same study) is not impressive.

USDOJ Data Suggests A Huge Increase in Crime

Then we have claims from the Center for American Progress' proposal that reported crime has dropped considerably throughout the US. They credit progressive programs and police strategies for the reductions.

Yes, reported violent crimes reported to law enforcement have dropped 3 to 4.5 percent for the last two national reports, according to the FBI. Independent analysts and the Major Cities Chiefs Association report that crime in cities is receding considerably.

The problem? Per the US Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics, the majority of crime in the US is not reported to the police. Per BJS's recent report, 38 percent of urban violent crimes are reported. Only 13 percent of urban rapes and sexual assaults are reported to law enforcement. How can we make assumptions about crime if only 13 percent are reported in cities?

However, according to the US Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics National Crime Victimization Survey (the premier method of counting crimes in America, as cited by the US Census), there was a significant increase in rates of violent crime in 2022 (44 percent, according to independent analysts). Rates have remained almost unchanged for 2023 and the most recent report for 2024. Violent victimization settled at a much higher level than expected, and stayed there.

The National Crime Victimization Survey states that urban violence increased in its latest 2024 report. Independant alalyists say that reported violent and property crimes are falling considerably in cities.

One source claims the increase in rates of violent crime is 80 percent, based on the National Crime Victimization Survey. That finding, however, includes a baseline of 2020 when the pandemic raged, and surveys and counts of crime were impacted.

So it's plausible, based on the totality of crime as measured by the National Crime Victimization Survey, that there have been historic increases in violent crime during recent years. The NCVS does not count homicides (you can't interview dead people), and it excludes business crimes, those under the age of 12, and other categories.

We should also note that per Gallup, the overwhelming majority of those polled indicate a fear or concern about crime, with half expressing serious concerns.

Conclusions

In defense of progressives, Jesus explicitly called for people to visit and assist prisoners, a core tenet of Christian charity. The New Testament reinforces this message. Christianity calls for second chances (but based on criminal history, a tenth chance would be more accurate) and compassion for wrongdoers. Other religions express similar philosophies. 

According to Gallup polling, a majority of Americans, 67%, believe that addressing social and economic issues such as drug addiction, homelessness, and mental health is more effective in reducing crime than strengthening law enforcement. Only 29% favor prioritizing law enforcement. 

Some think that progressives are clueless, but they embrace a philosophy that many agree with. How many of our national leaders called for compassion? Wasn't it Abraham Lincoln who said, "I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice." Many of our modern Presidents made similar statements to advance their social agendas.

This article is not an attack on social programs. We should try anything and everything as long as it's properly evaluated. Programs for criminal offenders are humanitarian regardless of the best available evidence that they do not reduce recidivism.

Yet I find it interesting that Democrats are finally getting the message that they can't win elections unless they demand accountability for criminal offenders and support for law enforcement. People who harm people need to be held accountable.

It's what the American public wants.

So now it's interesting. Think tanks will convince party leadership that they have to claim conservative values on crime to win elections. Traditional progressive thought will be partially (not fully) discarded.

The Joe Biden of earlier days demanded a tough-on-crime agenda. We are about to return to the days when Biden said, "Give me the crime issue... and you'll never have trouble with it in an election."

Sorry, progressives, you (and your crime publications) pushed the agenda way too far, you were disingenuous with the data, and it cost you the Presidency and both houses of Congress.

Author

Leonard Adam Sipes, Jr.

Former Senior Specialist for Crime Prevention and Statistics for the Department of Justice’s clearinghouse. Former Director of Information Services, National Crime Prevention Council. Former Adjunct Associate Professor of Criminology and Public Affairs—University of Maryland, University College. Former police officer. Retired federal senior spokesperson.

Former advisor to presidential and gubernatorial campaigns. Former advisor to the “McGruff—Take a Bite Out of Crime” national media campaign. Produced successful state anti-crime media campaigns.

Thirty-five years of directing award-winning (50+) public relations for national and state criminal justice agencies. Interviewed thousands of times by every national news outlet, often with a focus on crime statistics and research. Created the first state and federal podcasting series. Produced a unique and emulated style of government proactive public relations.

Certificate of Advanced Study—The Johns Hopkins University.

Author of Success With The Media: Everything You Need To Survive Reporters and Your Organization, available at Amazon and additional bookstores.

Crime in America.Net—“Trusted Crime Data, Made Clear.”

Quoted by The Associated Press, USA Today, A&E Television, the nationally syndicated Armstrong Williams Television Show (30 times), Department of Justice documents, multiple U.S. Supreme Court briefs, C-SPAN, the National Institute of Health, college and university online libraries, multiple books and journal articles, The Baltimore Sun, The Capital Gazette, MSN, AOL, Yahoo, The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post, JAMA, News Break, the National Institute of Corrections, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the Bureau of Justice Assistance, Gartner Consulting, the Maryland Crime Victims Resource Center, Law.com, The Marshall Project, The Heritage Foundation via Congressional testimony, Law Enforcement Today, Law Officer.com, Blue Magazine, Citizens Behind The Badge, Police1, American Peace Officer, Corrections.com, Prison Legal News, The Hill, The Journal of Offender Monitoring, Inside Edition Television, Yomiuri Shimbun (Asia’s largest newspaper), Le Figaro (France’s oldest newspaper), Oxygen and allied publications, Forbes, Newsweek, The Economist, The Toronto Sun, the Homeland Security Digital Library, The ABA Journal, The Daily Express (UK), The Harvard Political Review, The Millennial Source, The Federalist Society, Lifewire, The Beccaria Portal on Crime (Europe), The European Journal of Criminology, American Focus, and many additional publications.

Sign up for notice of new articles on the front page of this site.

A comprehensive overview of crime for recent years is available at Violent and Property Crime Rates In The U.S.