The Real Solution to Crime

Way back in April 2022, we published, “The crime rate is way up. What is the best way to prevent crime in America?”

Here are some excerpts from that post, which continues to be relevant:

Every politician wants to be known as “tough on crime.” No one wants to be seen as “soft on crime.”

The Republicans especially like to rage at crime, especially when the criminals are immigrants, poor, black and not Christian — not so much when the criminals are white, Christian, and Republican.

We’ll interrupt here to explain that for the typical American voter, “crime” means “violent street crime.

The “Central Park 5” are the faces Americans see in their imagination when demanding politicians be “tough on crime.” These young boys were convicted, though innocent, and only later, exonerated. 

It does not seem to include white-color crime of the sort Donald Trump has been accused, convicted, and even paid fines for. Daft-dodging, Trump U., Trump Foundation, tax cheating, assaulting women, and all the assorted low-life cons and lies that don’t involve extreme physical violence or the threat thereof are not included in the “crime” we should be “tough” on.

The average American visualizes “crime” as something that involves a black or brown teenage boy pointing a gun. Being “tough on crime.” means locking up said teenager for long stretches of his life.

You don’t hear the same Fox News outrage when it comes to Trumpers Rep. Matt Gaetz, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Steve Bannon, and all the other traitors who defended and/or attempted what previously was unthinkable in America –a coup — so inconceivable, that many people still refuse to believe the crime they have seen actually occurred.

We also don’t hear much from Republicans regarding gun control while guns are used in thousands of crimes, annually,

Even a respected judge is not immune to “soft-on-crime” criticism. Here are excerpts from a Fox News article written by none other than Sen. Josh Hawley, who, as a coup encourager and thus a traitor to the U.S., is not the best one to complain about criminals.

Supreme Court nominee Judge Jackson’s soft-on-crime sentences are disturbing By Josh Hawley

“While serving on the Sentencing Commission, she (Judge Jackson) supported eliminating the existing child pornography mandatory-minimum sentence.)

(She opposes all mandatory minimums as being blind to circumstances and substituting generalizations for specifics.)

“Those views carried over to Judge Jackson’s time on the bench. Over and over again, she handed down sentences well below the congressionally endorsed Sentencing Guidelines recommendations.)

(Not to mention the many times all judges do that — it’s the purpose of using human judges rather than robots — and she often handed down sentences above those guidelines, but why quibble about facts when you are a typical mean-spirited Trumper writing for Fox News?)

“Unfortunately, Jackson is not the first judge to do that.”

Right, judges normally impose a range of punishments.

“But she stands out because she also consistently sentenced child pornography offenders below even what liberal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., were seeking.”

(It wasn’t consistent, and prosecutors always ask for the maximum. In most cases, judges look at circumstances and don’t grant the maximum the prosecutors seek. All of Hawley’s shrieking is about normal judicial procedure. The notion that Judge Jackson encouraged child pornography stretches credulity.)

Hawley knows all this, but he is a renowned liar who writes for Fox,, a proven-to-be-lying network. They are Trumpers, and we expect nothing less from them.

But even the most softhearted, squishy Democrats have no idea what “tough on crime” really means:

The Washington Post
The 5-Minute Fix
By Amber Phillips with Caroline Anders

Crime is looking like it’s going to be a big issue in November’s midterm elections — and that has Democrats on the defensive.

“We must invest in our police departments,“ said Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.), a former police chief who is running for Senate in Florida.

Ask virtually anyone, winged right or left, about being “tough on crime,” and you will hear such suggestions as:

• • More police
  • More money spent on policing
  • More laws
  • Tougher judges
  • Longer jail sentences
  • Harsher jail conditions

Everything has to do with increasing the punishment for committing crimes and nothing for reducing the cause of crimes.

Republicans especially are interested in punishment, especially of the aforementioned poor immigrant, brown, non-Christian, blacks:

It (crime) has been fed and fueled in multiple ways by the Democratic Party’s far-left turn,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said of the country’s recent crime wave.

Strange, how Mitch suddenly seems unconcerned about a mob of people attacking the nation’s capital, attempting to overthrow the United States government, and even causing death and injuries. And for certain, he is not worried about gun crime.

To Mitch, criminals are street, not white-collar, criminals, who are born bad and born black.

Syracuse Police Handling of 8-Year-Old Black Boy Reminds Us How Anti-Black Blue Lives Can Be

From 2019 to 2020, the homicide rate in the United States jumped nearly 30 percent, according to FBI data, marking the largest increase since we started keeping track of those stats. 

Third Way, a Democratic think tank, found that cities (run by Democrats) in red states were hit harder by the 2020 murder surge than blue states were.

Democrats who have been recently elected as mayors in liberal cities such as New York and Seattle have campaigned on being tough on crime.

“There is little doubt that the sheer stress and strain of the pandemic, not to mention the economic dislocation, helped to push up homicide rates,” criminologist Richard Rosenfeld told Witte.

Democrats are nervous about getting tagged as anti-police — again. This time, they’re already campaigning on more funding for police departments.

And none of this “tough on crime” blustering addresses the root cause of most street crime: Poverty. 

Poverty is the mother of crime.

Yes, crime has many parents — that “stress, strain, and economic dislocation” to name three. But walk through any wealthy area, and you will fear street crime far less than in an impoverished area.

Republicans are adamant in their desire to apprehend and punish street criminals. However, while apprehending and punishing after the fact may be their focus, Republicans have no desire to address cause and prevention.

They are adamant in their opposition to gun control, to keep guns out of the hands of potential criminals, and to reduce the lethality of the guns being sold, which would have a significant impact.

Similarly, Republicans vote against anti-poverty benefits, i.e., Social Security for All, Medicare for All, School lunch programs, housing aid, food aid, college for all, and the myriad other easily affordable (by the federal government) programs that would reduce poverty and crime in America.

Punishment, punishment, punishment; that is all the right-wing knows. One reasonably might think putting blacks, browns, and immigrants in jail is the real motive, and crime is just the convenient excuse.

The right dismisses them all with one word, “socialism,” then blindly continues to chatter about the need for tougher police and harsher sentences.

(White-color crime and political crime are OK, except if found on a Hunter Biden laptop)

Even the Democrats have been dragged into the false rhetoric:

“Fund the police,” Biden roared at his State of the Union address this spring, to bipartisan applause.

Yes, fund the police. We do need well-trained, well-paid police.

But, digging recruits from the bottom of the barrel, and then without training, setting them loose on the public, is no way to be tough on crime.

Fund the police, but also fund the people.

Our Monetarily Sovereignfederal government, having the infinite ability to spend dollars, can reduce poverty in America — and thus reduce crime — without levying one cent in taxes or causing inflation.

There is a reason why poor areas of the country endure more street crime than wealthy areas. It’s not that poor people are innately more dishonest. They simply have less money and less of what money can buy. 

They have the same desires the rich have but fewer means of satisfying them. So they steal. It has been the same for time immemorial. 

We can curse the darkness by arresting a hungry kid for stealing food from a grocery store and locking him up forever, or we can light a candle by giving him food, shelter, and reasonable hope for his future.

For some reason, we have lately shown a greater desire to beat down than to lift up, and that truly is wrong. It is wrong morally and wrong an effective solution.

Beating down may satisfy the mob’s bloodlust, but it will not reduce crime, and it will turn on the innocent.

I was reminded of the 2022 article (above) when I read this yesterday:

Voters want solutions to crime, not fighting from Trump, Harris
Ana Zamora, Chicago Tribune
Americans aren’t interested in overheated rhetoric or petty name-calling. What people want are real solutions to make our communities safer and more just.

Last year, Gallup showed that when you ask Americans whether the criminal justice system is “too tough” or “not tough enough,” most say it should be tougher.

But then the pollsters went a level deeper and asked people what should actually be done.

The top answer wasn’t to hire more police. It was to address the social and economic problems that drive crime in the first place — by a margin of 2 to 1.

Typically, such social efforts as enhanced Medicare and more generous Social Security, unemployment compensation, free school lunch, free housing, and other anti-poverty measures are not considered “tough on crime,” and that is the problem.

Efforts to reduce poverty and its associated hopelessness, lack of education, and lack of stable home life are the best ways to be “tough on crime.” Still, too many Americans, especially those on the right, consider such benefits to be unaffordable, socialist, and soft-hearted rewards for indolence.

The reform movement has notched remarkable wins, beginning with the fact that 3 in 4 Americans— Democrats and Republicans — now believe in its aims, according to a report from the bipartisan group FWD.us.

Many of its solutions enjoy broad political appeal — among voters and legislators alike. States have passed laws to give police the resources they need while improving oversight and accountability.

They’ve also pushed ahead on other fronts — strengthening the public defense system, ending mandatory minimum sentencing and juvenile life without parole, creating deflection and diversion programs, funding education and workforce development in prisons, expanding access to parole, sealing criminal records and making sure people who leave the prison system have the support they need to reenter society successfully.

The above all are worthwhile, but most don’t address the fundamental cause of street crime: Poverty.

Now the prison population is shrinking in many places, and crime rates are plummeting. We have to protect those precious gains. And we can’t let the overheated rhetoric of a presidential election keep us from making more.

The bright-red state of Oklahoma just passed a law to help survivors of domestic abuse who were imprisoned because they committed a criminal act while defending themselves.

Their sentences will now be reduced, thanks to a politically diverse group of advocates, legislators, funders and community members who spent two years working to right an obvious wrong.

Stories like this remind us that “tough on crime” policies aren’t the only option. Even in an era of profound political division — and a moment when the presidential election will pry us even further apart — we are still capable of crossing party lines to make change.

It’s only when we lose sight of that fact that we end up with laws such as the Safer Kentucky Act, which promises to sweep even more people into the state’s bulging prison system, some for life, while doing nothing to prevent crime.

Give voters a choice between senseless punishment and pragmatic solutions that deliver safety, accountability and justice, they’ll pick the better option.

(Ana Zamora is founder and CEO of The Just Trust, which advocates for bipartisan criminal}

SUMMARY

Americans and their politicians continue to eschew crime prevention in favor of punishment.

It’s as though we believed the way to prevent and cure illness was to pack sick people into miserable quarantine camps rather than to give them medical care and healthful diets and surroundings.

Ironically, punishment feeds recidivism whereby those coming out of prison are more, not less, likely to recommit crimes.

They have lost the crucial education and orientation years and, upon release, are thrust unprepared into a world that does not offer them reasonable possibilities for honest lives.

Rather than preventing or curing crime, being “tough on crime” begets more crime, and not just by the criminals but by their friends, parents, spouses, and children in an unending cycle of failure.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

Monetary Sovereignty Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell; MUCK RACK: https://muckrack.com/rodger-malcolm-mitchell; https://www.academia.edu/

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The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.

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