Reviving the myth of “American carnage”: What Jeff Sessions gets wrong about crime
Jeff Sessions (Credit: AP/Shutterstock/Photo montage by Salon)
On Tuesday, USA Today published an editorial by Attorney General Jeff Sessions��in which he claimed that President Donald Trump had kept his inaugural promise to stop the “American carnage” of violent crime. One Harvard professor,��however,��is not��buying the propaganda from America’s top cop.
In the op-ed, Sessions insisted that policies implemented by Trump and himself had caused a decline in violent crime throughout the United States. “We have placed trust in our prosecutors again, and we���re restoring respect for law enforcement,” Sessions wrote. “We have invested in new resources and put in place smarter policies based on sound research.”
He added, “Ensuring every neighborhood in America is safe again will take time, but we are already starting to see results.”
Sessions then proceeded to take credit for the decline in the number of police officers killed, increasing the number of cases brought against violent criminals and causing a decline in violent crimes and murder rates.
“In 2017, we brought cases against more violent criminals than in any year in decades. We charged the most federal firearm prosecutions in a decade,” Sessions wrote. “We convicted nearly 500 human traffickers and 1,200 gang��members,��and helped our international allies arrest about��4,000 MS-13 members. We also arrested and charged hundreds of people suspected with contributing to the ongoing opioid crisis.”
Thomas Abt, a��Senior Research Fellow��with the Center for International Development at��Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, was having none of it.
1/ This op-ed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions audaciously claims credit for stopping so-called American Carnage. Wrong wrong wrong. Read on.https://t.co/6cmONvVbkS
— Thomas Abt (@Abt_Thomas) January 24, 2018
2/ "I was a federal prosecutor… Working closely with our law enforcement partners, we learned together what worked and what didn���t, and departments developed innovative new policing and other strategies." Really, Jeff? Really?
— Thomas Abt (@Abt_Thomas) January 24, 2018
3/ Sessions claims to be on the front lines of the war against crime, yet doesn't mention a single program. Why? Because if he did, it would be obvious that either (a) that program didn't actually work or (b) he had nothing to do with it.
— Thomas Abt (@Abt_Thomas) January 24, 2018
4/ "Congress enacted important bipartisan legal reforms that gave prosecutors and law enforcement new tools to take criminals, gangs, guns & deadly drugs off of our streets. We went to work, and the results were transformational. Crime in America began to decline." OM freaking G.
— Thomas Abt (@Abt_Thomas) January 24, 2018
5/ Sessions links to a 1991 Sentencing Commission report on mandatory minimums as support for this statement, but is simply no evidence of what effect, if any, federal mandatory minimums have had on crime.
— Thomas Abt (@Abt_Thomas) January 24, 2018
6/ Criminologists generally agree that increased incarceration played a part in the great crime decline, but (a) it was a relatively modest role that was (b) played overwhelmingly by state and local, not federal, law enforcement.
— Thomas Abt (@Abt_Thomas) January 24, 2018
7/ The research is also clear that deterrence depends more on the certainty and swiftness of punishment than on its severity. Criminals are more worried about getting caught than about being sentenced, so longer prison terms don't always mean lower crime.
— Thomas Abt (@Abt_Thomas) January 24, 2018
Abt was particularly dismissive of Sessions’ attempt to confuse readers into mistaking mere statistics with concrete accomplishments.
8/ "In 2017, we brought cases against more violent criminals than in any year in decades. We charged the most federal firearm prosecutions in a decade. We convicted…" Blah blah blah. He's talking about outputs, not outcomes.
— Thomas Abt (@Abt_Thomas) January 24, 2018
9/ Increased arrests, convictions, and sentences are not the same thing as reduced murders, robberies, and other forms of crime. One does not necessarily lead to the other.
— Thomas Abt (@Abt_Thomas) January 24, 2018
10/ Here's the kicker: "In the first six months of last year, the increase in the murder rate slowed and violent crime actually went down… Our strategy… has proven to work." I can't even.
— Thomas Abt (@Abt_Thomas) January 24, 2018
The “strategy” in question is worth quoting in full.��“Our strategy at this department of concentrating on the most violent criminals, taking down violent gang networks, prioritizing gun prosecutions, and supporting our state, local��and tribal law enforcement partners has proven��to work,” Sessions wrote.
11/ Jeff, you guys didn't even start nominating US Attorneys until JUNE. You had (and still do) high-level vacancies all over DOJ. Your team wasn't even on the field, and yet you're claiming victory?!
— Thomas Abt (@Abt_Thomas) January 24, 2018
12/ To be clear, I support targeted enforcement strategies to fight gangs, guns, and drugs. I also believe federal prosecutors can play an important role in supporting those strategies. But this op-ed's claims are just laughable, or would be if the stakes weren't so high.
— Thomas Abt (@Abt_Thomas) January 24, 2018
13/ Sessions and Trump are #CrimeDinosaurs, peddling out-of-date tough-on-crime policies that went extinct years ago. Effective crime-fighting today is highly targeted, balances enforcement with prevention, and uses reliable research and data. Get with the program guys.
— Thomas Abt (@Abt_Thomas) January 24, 2018
“In his op-ed, Attorney General Sessions makes several unremarkable claims regarding violent crime. He describes its rise and fall, the terrible consequences of violence for poor communities of color, and the necessity of targeted enforcement in order to get gangs and guns off the street,” Abt told Salon in an email. “What is remarkable, and mistaken, is Sessions��� claim that he, as a U.S. Attorney in the 90s or as U.S. Attorney General today, deserves any significant share of the credit for improvements in public safety. There���s simply no evidence to support such a self-serving statement.”
