IdeaLog
Recent statistics destroy conservative arguments about crime
Posted on July 23, 2025
In the first half of 2025, crime plummeted across the United States. Over the past few years, there has been an extraordinary reduction in violent crime and homicide, especially in major cities. This trend proves that the conventional right-wing arguments about crime prevention are demonstrably false.
Let’s start with the latest nationwide data from Jeff Asher:
Crime almost certainly fell considerably in the United States in the first six months of 2025. The decline in crime that began in 2023 and picked up steam in 2024 has accelerated even faster so far in 2025. Both violent and property crime likely fell with large drops in both murder and motor vehicle theft leading the way.
The national decline in murder stands out due to extraordinary drops in many cities. New Orleans recorded fewer murders through June 2025 than any year since 1970 even in spite of the January 1st terrorist attack. New York City has only recorded fewer murders once through June since 1960 (136 in 2017). Philadelphia recorded the fewest murders since 1969, Los Angeles since 1966, Baltimore since 1965, Detroit since 1964, and San Francisco had the fewest ever recorded (monthly data available to 1960)…. [T]he US is on track to have the largest one-year drop in murder ever recorded for the third straight year in 2025.
As you know, this is entirely the opposite of the public narrative about crime. Year after year, Americans think that crime is going up. That’s because nobody publicizes it when crime goes down.
Donald Trump, for example, has complained over and over that crime is rising in the District of Columbia. But, in fact, violent crime in D.C. declined by 25 percent in the first half of 2025 compared to 2024 and violent crime plummeted by one-third from 2023 to 2024. The city’s crime rate is now lower than it has ever been since the 1960s!
So, what does that mean for crime prevention?
(1) Obviously, homicide and violent crime do not go down because of more police. Across the country, big city police departments have become smaller and smaller. We are having fewer crimes with fewer police.
(2) Stricter sentences do not lower the crime rate. Crime has substantially dropped without any real increase in sentences across the U.S.
(3) Special programs by local law enforcement don’t play a significant role in crime rates. There was a nationwide wave of crime, first rising after the beginning of COVID and then falling over the past few years, regardless of whether local police implemented one strategy or another. Sure, police and police strategies matter, but they don’t drive the crime rate.
The conventional political arguments over crime are simply wrongheaded.
Of course, It is easier to write about what is happening with crime than why it is happening. Let’s admit that we just don’t know for sure and there is extremely little real evidence of cause-and-effect.
We do know that murder and aggravated assault (the biggest category of violent crimes) are overwhelmingly emotional, not logical, acts. As Jens Ludwig demonstrates in the recent book Unforgiving Places, about 75 or 80 percent of these kinds of crimes are not planned. Reality is totally different from murder mysteries and crime shows.
It seems reasonable to guess that the closings and restrictions that came with COVID increased perpetrators’ psychological and mental health problems—they had fewer things to do and reduced access to health care and social welfare programs. Those may have been the major factors that caused murder and, to a lesser extent, violent crime to rise. And the end of COVID had the opposite effect. But, again, it’s just an informed guess.
Robinson’s rules for campaign staffers
Posted on July 9, 2025
Thirty years ago, Democratic political consultant Will Robinson wrote a simple list of rules that, over time, became very well known. They still hold up. The tools have changed. Attention spans have shrunk. But...
The anthropology of MAGA
Posted on June 25, 2025
The MAGA worldview isn’t just political—it’s emotional, symbolic, and tribal. If we want to defend democracy, we need to understand what we’re really up against. That is a direct quote from “Understanding MAGA: A...
Trump’s Razor—it’s always money and power
Posted on June 12, 2025
Like Occam’s Razor (the simplest explanation is usually best), we should recognize Trump’s Razor—that the truest motive for any of his actions is personal power and/or money. A corollary is that his actions are...
Despite right-wing lies, crime is down
Posted on May 28, 2025
Trump and his allies rely on fear to advance their authoritarian agenda. A favorite tactic is to spread fear about crime, with the explicit or implicit message that they are talking about immigrants and...
Will SCOTUS uphold the rule of law?
Posted on May 13, 2025
Right now, the federal judicial system is keeping our government from sliding into a dictatorship, but just barely. With six aggressively right-wing Justices, the Supreme Court will side with Trump as much as it...
A blitzkrieg of lawlessness
Posted on May 1, 2025
We are missing the forest for the trees. Nearly everything Trump and his administration have done is illegal, and that is the whole point. It is an all-out attack on the rule of law...
Push back on the media’s normalizing of Trump
Posted on April 16, 2025
The media has been normalizing Trump for the past decade. They do this, in part, by inventing semi-rational policy explanations for irrational proposals. We should push back. Here are three examples: Tariffs and other...
MAGA’s Musk mistake
Posted on April 2, 2025
Tuesday’s elections brought good news. MAGA candidates ran at least 10 points behind 2024 Trump votes and, perhaps best of all, Elon Musk dragged them all down. How should you use this in messaging?...
How to deal with a bully in the White House
Posted on March 18, 2025
Trump is doing horrible things. But, like any bully, much of his perceived power is based on threats that he doesn’t carry out. By reacting to every threat, no matter how absurd, Democrats are...