During this past election season, whenever crime was discussed, many of us felt like we were stuck in Groundhog Day 1988, watching Michael Dukakis’ Presidential campaign being torpedoed by Willie Horton ads.
Too many Democrats in key Senate, gubernatorial, and Congressional races seemed to be goaded into what Cristina Greer labeled the “false binary conversation….where it’s either you want police or you want crime.”
When accused of being “soft on crime,” they stammered and stuttered, often backtracked on support for bail and other reforms, denounced “defund the police” and tried hard to change the subject. Many came off as Republican-lite and defensive.
But then this funny thing happened: the attacks were not as effective as Republicans had hoped or Democrats had feared. It turns out that at least some of the public has been paying attention to these past decades of turmoil, protests, viral videos and volumes of research chronicling the harms of mass incarceration, over-zealous prosecutions and racially discriminatory policing.
Still, the “soft on crime” accusations likely cost the Democrats at least one Senate seat in Wisconsin and a few Congressional races in New York and elsewhere. If Democrats dodged a bullet this election cycle, there will soon be another, and then another after that.
Rather than, in the words of Joan Walsh of The Nation, be caught “flatfooted” again, now is the time for Democrats to craft and test out new alternative messages about the relationship between crime, public safety and community health that do not undermine the hard-won successes that advocates for reform have achieved over the past decade.
Granted, this is not an easy task. We know from research conducted by FrameWorks Institute (full disclosure, I have worked with FrameWorks Institute and co-written articles with its Executive Director) that Americans tend to view crime from an individual perspective.
Unless redirected to think systemically, most will, by default, endorse harsh penalties as deterrents. Therefore, it’s hardly surprising that, when crime is increasing—or at least when the public thinks it is—most will, instinctively, trust Republicans more than Democrats, since they are the ones associated with “tough on crime” messaging.
But in the past decade, two well-respected national communications organizations—FrameWorks Institute and Opportunity Agenda—conducted extensive research on how to “frame” the issues of crime and public safety so as to increase public support for reforms.
FrameWorks tested the use of the metaphor “Justice Gears” in focus groups as a way to help the public understand the need for a variety of non-carceral approaches to combating violence and crime:
Think about how a bicycle works and how it needs to have and use different gears to work effectively and efficiently. If that bike is going to work it needs different gears to use in different situations. The criminal justice system that we have now is trying to deal with a wide variety of situations using only one gear…prison.We need to have other justice gears for people who come into the system, like mental health services, addiction services or juvenile justice services. We need to change the criminal justice system to make sure it has different gears for different purposes and that it’s set up in a way that it uses the right gear in the right situation. If we do this we can improve outcomes and all get to where we need to go.
FrameWorks researchers found this metaphor helped the public pivot away from a focus on individual actors toward understanding the need for systemic reforms. FrameWorks also found leading with the value of “pragmatism” increased support for progressive reforms. The following message was tested on 8,000 respondents:
We know that communities with high unemployment, underachieving schools and a lack of other resources have high rates of crime. This problem particularly hurts children and young adults who may end up in the system. If we take a commonsense approach to solving our communities’ problems, we can decrease crime and enhance public safety.
Specifically, we need to identify practical things we can do to address these and other issues.
On the other hand, if we spend resources sending more people to prison instead of using proven alternatives, these problems will remain. A responsible approach to criminal justice will make our country safer and help all Americans.
The Opportunity Agenda recommends “promoting a new narrative about what community safety looks like” and reframing the conversation to remind people that reforming the system is a path toward true community safety.
“We don’t need to rely on punishment and harshness to keep everyone safe,” Opportunity Agenda offers in their Criminal Justice Reform ‘Phrase Guide.’ The following is one of their recommended responses to calls for “law and order:”
We are all safer when we look at the system as a whole; when we support people as they reenter their communities; and when we adopt policies that keep people within their social support network.
We should examine criminal policies by looking at their effects on the whole system. We should not allow politicians to sensationalize individual instances to promote policies that do more damage than good.
How do we put these pieces together into a compelling vision? Thomas Abt laid it out in an article for Newsweek, directly challenging the “false choice” that Republicans constantly impose, and much of the media seem to reflexively accept:
The public is consistently presented with a false choice between absolutes: it’s all about tough policing and prosecution, or it’s the police and prosecutors who are the problem … This us versus them dynamic is profoundly destructive to sound anti-violence efforts because everything we know about violence reduction tells us that we need law enforcement, but we need community and other partners as well.
…We have to remember that it’s about solving a deadly serious problem, not winning an abstract argument. It’s about bringing people back together, not pulling them apart.
Lest a pivot by candidates or public officials away from punishing crime to building strong communities provoke accusations of “bleeding heart” or “hug a thug” liberalism, there is some compelling research that could be used to support the larger narrative.
For example, we know that too much incarceration can de-stabilize communities to the point where they actually become less safe. We know that the few modest bail reforms that were implemented across the country were not responsible for the uptick in crime, and, that, by allowing individuals to return to their homes, jobs, and families, they almost certainly prevented further criminal activity.
We know that more police does not mean more safety, and that they only spend, on average, 4% of their time addressing violent crime. We know that graduating more people from high school is a more effective strategy for reducing violent crime than adding police officers.
We know that better lighting in certain neighborhoods in the evening can significantly reduce violent crime rates. We know that community-led programs can be far more effective—and cheaper—in curbing violence than over-reliance upon the criminal justice apparatus.
In other words, there are lots of strategies for reducing crime that are simpler to implement, more cost-effective, less cruel and racially disparate than increasing the length of prison sentences (which has been shown to be ineffective as a deterrent), locking more people up pre-trial, and putting more police in already over-policed communities where inhabitants are routinely harassed for minor offenses and violent crime is ignored.
These strategies create stronger, healthier communities for all. There is no reason why candidates for office can’t drop their defensiveness and proudly articulate such a vision.
One successful candidate–Wes Moore, now Governor-elect of Maryland—came close to following this formula. He started discussions about crime by validating the very real concerns of much of the public about increasing violence: “There is no greater priority or responsibility for the chief executive than ensuring the public’s safety, and rising crime is a statewide problem requiring statewide leadership.”
In doing so, he followed the advice of Anand Giridharadas in a recent New York Times column: “Meet people where they are…and then try to move them in the desired direction.”
While reiterating his support for law enforcement, he did not call for increased penalties, but rather for a multi-tiered response that included the following:
We have to address head-on the underlying issues that drive crime. We must empower communities as part of the answer to intervene on the front end, before crime occurs and before people become involved in the criminal justice system… Crime is a complex socio-economic problem, and it requires a comprehensive and aggressive approach that includes supporting law enforcement, empowering communities, coordinating with local jurisdictions and being laser-focused on outcomes.
In other words, he embraced a multi-tiered strategy–Justice Gears—and evoked the value of pragmatism with his statement about “being laser-focused on outcomes.” Importantly, he won.
Johanna Wald
The good news is that fearmongering about crime may no longer be as effective an electoral strategy as the Republicans believed it would be.
If true, then the public may be open to a more nuanced message than most Democrats provided—one that prioritizes safety, community-building, and evidence about what works–not punishment and harsher law enforcement.
As Thomas Abt wrote: “we can have justice and safety at the same time.” We need some prominent spokespeople to give others the courage to proudly and unapologetically make that argument.
Johanna Wald is a writer and researcher who has written and presented extensively about issues related to criminal and juvenile justice reform, educational equity and implicit bias. She is the former Director of Strategic Planning for the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute and currently consults for several not-got-profit organizations.
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