Crime is down nationally, but Republicans keep pretending otherwise

“There’s no one answer” to explain the 2020 jump, says Jillian Snider, a lecturer at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, but key factors probably include the social disruption of the pandemic and the fallout around George Floyd’s murder, which increased distrust of the police and led to police in some localities withdrawing from enforcing the law…

Oklahoma has long had higher rates of violent crime than California or New York, even though it has also long been run by conservative Republicans. It’s not just Oklahoma. “The states that mostly have the highest rates of homicide are also the most red states,” Snider notes. “The ones with the highest incarcerated populations … consistently have very high crime rates…”

“If the community thinks there is no accountability,” because of the way potential reforms are discussed in the news, Snider told me, “the community themselves will just automatically assume crime is up even if it’s not.”