FBI's Latest Crime Stats Continue To Undermine AG Sessions' Criminal Apocalypse Fantasies

Legal Issues

from the WE'RE-ALL-GONNA-DIE!-EVENTUALLY.-OF-NATURAL-CAUSES,-MOST-LIKELY... dept

Crime rates continue to remain at historic lows. We’re safer than we’ve been since the mid-1960s. We should be celebrating this. Law enforcement should be celebrating this. But there’s no celebration. Certainly not at the federal level. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has made remarks at a number of law enforcement events in recent months. And they’ve all been loaded with doom, gloom, and questionable citations.

Here’s Sessions on September 19, 2018:

Colossal mistakes have been made by politicians and leaders that have had particular catastrophic consequences for the people of cities like Chicago, Baltimore, and St. Louis.

From 1991 to 2014, we saw an historic nationwide decline in violent crime. Murder dropped by half. Violent crime overall dropped by half.

Rape decreased by more than a third, and robbery plummeted by nearly two-thirds.

But nationally in the last two years of the previous administration, the trends ominously reversed.

From 2014 to 2016, the violent crime rate went up by nearly seven percent. Assaults and rape went up nearly 10 percent. Murder shot up by more than 20 percent.

Here’s Sessions a week later:

Big mistakes were made, some saw police as the problem. And as a result, in the last two years of the previous administration, the violent crime rate went up by nearly seven percent. Assaults went up nearly 10 percent. Rape went up by nearly 11 percent. Murder shot up by more than 20 percent. That’s what was happening when he took office.

This was especially shocking because from 1991 to 2014, violent crime had dropped by half. Murder dropped by half. So did aggravated assault. Rape decreased by more than a third, and robbery plummeted by nearly two-thirds.

From a month earlier:

We know whose side we’re on. We’re on the side of the good people, public safety, law, faith, and community. We defend our people and our values against outlaws.

You know the challenges we face. From 2014 to 2016, the violent crime rate stopped declining and went up by nearly seven percent. Robberies went up. Assaults went up nearly 10 percent. Rape went up by nearly 11 percent. The murder rate increased by more than 20 percent.

These numbers are shocking. They cannot continue.

But the numbers aren’t shocking. There have been increases over the last couple of years, but violent crime rates are still lower than they were a decade ago and have decreased considerably over the last 20 years. The population of the US grew by 55 million over that period. Despite that, 300,000 fewer violent crimes were reported in 2018 than in 1998.

Sessions wants Americans to believe a couple of years of increases in isolated areas represents an irreversible trend brought on by a collective lack of respect for law enforcement and interference by groups that defend the public’s rights, like the ACLU.

The FBI’s latest crime stats have been released. They show the categories Sessions is hot and bothered about have reversed their two-year “trend.”

Compared with last year, the national rate for property crime has declined by 3.6 percent, the violent crime rate is down by 1 percent, and the homicide rate has decreased by 1.9 percent.

What will the administration do with crime rates that won’t conform with the narrative? Will Trump and co. take credit for the reduction, citing their full-blooded support of anything law enforcement-related? Or will it simply be glossed over to take potshots at activists for somehow ruining policing with their insistence on Constitutional law enforcement activities?

The messages AG Sessions delivers won’t change. As the head of the DOJ, he has something to sell. It isn’t justice, despite the name over the door. It’s prosecution, which is only part of the justice equation. All crime news is bad news, even as crime rates continue to decline. Welcome to America, where the crime rates are at historic lows but everyone thinks each successive year is the worst it’s ever been.

Filed Under: crime, doj, jeff sessions, stats