There’s a crime divide between Americans and politicians, and voters are watching

With the announcement that President Biden and former President Trump will debate in Atlanta in June, the 2024 election cycle is in full swing. Many Americans are not enthused.

Earlier this year, 67 percent of respondents told a pollster that they were “tired of seeing the same candidates in presidential elections and want someone new.” In fact, 30 percent of voters think that neither Biden nor Trump “did more to help people like them,” 29 percent think that neither will be a good president and 26 percent of Americans have a negative view of both candidates.

And with just a few races likely to decide control of the U.S. Senate, what stands to sway Americans' votes? For many voters, the answer is simple but profound: They want to feel safer in their neighborhoods.

According to a Harvard CAPS-Harris poll conducted this May, crime and drugs ranked fourth out of the 30 issues Americans believe are most important right now behind only immigration, inflation and jobs. The issue seems particularly important to Republican primary voters. In the week leading up to Super Tuesday, crime was the top issue searched on Google across the 15 states with Republican primaries.

But it’s not just Republicans who are concerned about crime. A recent poll in reliably blue Maryland found crime to be the issue voters were most concerned about — more than they were worried about “affordable housing, public education, taxes, jobs and the economy, roads and transit, climate change or 'something else.'"

Maryland is home to one of the nation’s most-watched Senate races as former Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican and the most popular governor in the country for much of his tenure, attempts to flip an open Senate seat.

Crime, especially violent crime, saw its peak as an election issue in the mid-1990s, when voters demanded a more serious approach to the violence and chaos in America’s urban cores. While rates of violent crime have not returned to their early 1990s peak, we have seen dramatic increases in violence, especially homicide, since 2014.

While the most recent data suggest that the homicide explosion of the last few years has crested, data from the National Crime Victimization Survey show that other violent crime continues to spike. According to an analysis of that data by former director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics Jeffrey Anderson, total violent crime up 58 percent in urban areas since 2019. If you remove simple assaults, more serious violent crimes are actually up 73 percent.

Voters are fed up. Even in progressive enclaves, they are rejecting elected officials who don’t share their concerns. In crime-riddled Washington, D.C., recall efforts have been initiated against two District Council members. In deep-blue Portland, Ore., voters recently ousted one of the nation’s most progressive and permissive prosecutors in favor of a more traditional law-and-order challenger. Voters had previously done likewise in San Francisco.

Voters instinctively know what policymakers would do well to remember: Rising crime is a policy decision, not a circumstance. People are demanding better because policy can produce better.

At the height of public scrutiny over urban crime and disorder in the 1990s, policymakers responded and drove down serious violence, both making cities safer and improving upward mobility, making families and communities more prosperous as a result. 

So for those seeking office this November, whether they’re at the top of the ticket or the very bottom, they need to ensure they’re not only sharing voters’ concerns about crime, but that they do what voters want once in office. Fund the police. Hold violent offenders accountable. Ensure a fair, just system that doesn’t let fear and lawlessness reign.

Joshua Crawford is the director of Criminal Justice Initiatives at the Georgia Center for Opportunity and a policy leader with Public Safety Solutions for America.