Republican leaders took to the stage at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Tuesday to paint a dire picture of the United States, suggesting the South was overrun by an “invasion” of “illegal aliens” and “Chinese fentanyl.” violent crime.
Louisiana House Speaker Mike Johnson echoed many other speakers that night, calling Republicans a “law and order team” while President Biden and Democrats are committed to “no borders and no law.” responsible for a “dramatic increase” in violence in the future.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said Americans are being killed and raped “every damn day” by illegal immigrants Democrats allow into the country. “Every damn day,” the crowd chanted.
Crime in the United States is more nuanced than one might think, according to federal and state data, which vary across the country and from city to city.
For example, Los Angeles officials announced in January that violent crime rates were down significantly in 2023 compared with the previous year — homicides were down 17% and shootings were down 10%, according to LAPD data.
But just last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom said he would quadruple the California Highway Patrol’s presence in Oakland, which last year saw a 21% increase in violent crime according to city data , robberies increased by 38%, and vehicle thefts increased by 43%.
The clearest recent trend in state crime data is a decline in violent crime, and Democrats have cited the data to counter claims by Republicans, who say the data is misleading.
Jeff Asher is a crime analyst and co-founder of AH Datalytics and has been studying national crime trends for years. He told The Times in an interview that Republican talking points about rising violent crime “will be better in 2021 and 2022 than in 2023 and 2024.”
In the early years, violent crime, including homicides, did increase, and significantly so, due to the social unrest associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. However, Asher said there has been a clear decline in the last two years, based on available federal data and state data he collected.
“All the data we have shows that, particularly on murders, last year was a very steep drop,” Asher said. “So far this year, the drop is even bigger.”
He said the decline was “not everywhere, but in large swaths of American cities” and was “reaching pre-COVID levels in some places.”
“Reasonable people may disagree about who is responsible, why, what policies worked, what policies didn’t work, where there was coincidence,” Asher said. “However, the evidence that gun violence and murders have declined in the United States is indisputable.”
Asher said economic downturns in both blue and red states have helped improve conditions across the country.
California reported 1,892 homicides in 2023, which is “roughly in line” with annual numbers from 2016 to 2019 and well below the state’s all-time high for homicides and levels seen at the height of the pandemic.
In 1992, there were 1,092 homicides in Los Angeles alone. In 2022, there will be 392.
There were 253 homicides in Los Angeles in 2019, so the recent decline still hasn’t returned the city to pre-COVID levels of violence.
As for immigration crimes, Cruz and others cited specific cases to support the idea that such incidents are common.
Again, the data shows a more nuanced picture.
Ran Abramitzky, an economics professor at Stanford University, helped lead a nationally representative study looking at incarceration rates for immigrants and U.S.-born citizens from 1870 to 2020. All immigrants, not just those living illegally.
Abramecki said in an email to The Times that the study found that “immigrants as a group have been incarcerated at lower rates than the U.S.-born for 150 years.”
The report also found that “relative to U.S.-born immigrants, incarceration rates for immigrants have declined since 1960,” and that “immigrants today are 60 percent less likely to be incarcerated,” and “even compared to U.S.-born whites. , this possibility is also reduced by 30%.” ” This is true for immigrants from all regions, he said.
Abramecki said he also studied political rhetoric surrounding immigration, analyzing “200,000 congressional speeches and 5,000 presidential speeches since 1880.”
He said the study found “general improvements in attitudes toward immigration in congressional speeches over the past few decades, but also increasing party polarization.”
“Democrats are increasingly positive and point to the contributions of immigrants to the United States,” Abramecki continued, “while Republicans remain negative and increasingly focus on issues of crime and legality when talking about immigration.”
Data shows that fentanyl-related deaths in the United States have indeed increased under Biden. But those numbers also increased under then-President Trump.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in May that U.S. drug overdoses, including fentanyl, declined in 2023 for the first time since 2018. people.
