Lone Candle

“the Gallup trend shows that since 1993, as violent crime rates have steadily fallen, Americans’ perceptions have shifted based on their partisan affiliation and the occupant of the White House: In 2004, during President George W. Bush’s first term, the 53 percent of respondents who thought crime had risen included 39 percent of Republicans but 67 percent of Democrats. (FBI statistics for that year indicated that both violent and property crime each declined by just over 2 percent in that year.)

On the other hand, Americans in general just seem particularly bad at judging crime trends: In 2014, 63 percent of all respondents told Gallup that crime was up over the previous year, including 57 percent of Democrats and 72 percent of Republicans. Meanwhile, 2014 turned out to be the least violent year in decades.
But Americans’ views on crime and criminal justice, no matter how capricious and ill-informed they may seem, are extremely consequential. After all, while the president likely has very little direct influence on criminal justice trends in your local police precinct, voters have the power to elect prosecutors, who wield tremendous power in deciding who faces prison time and how punitive their sentences could be. And there is evidence that voters’ perceptions of crime affect what kind of prosecutor they’re likely to favor.

“The growth in incarceration rates in the United States over the past 40 years is historically unprecedented and internationally unique,” a 2014 study found. “Local elected officials—including state legislators who enacted sentencing policies and, in many places, judges and prosecutors who decided individual cases—were highly attuned to their constituents’ concerns about crime. Under these conditions, punishment policy moved in a more punitive direction.”

Prosecutors recognize this, as well. In a 2022 draft policy paper, Harvard Ph.D candidate Chika Okafor found that “being in a [district attorney] election year increases total admissions per capita to state prisons and total months sentenced per capita,” meaning that prosecutors are more likely to seek prison time and longer sentences for offenders during election years.”

https://reason.com/2024/10/30/partisanship-determines-what-americans-believe-about-crime/