A nationwide violent crime surge during and after the Covid-19 pandemic led to calls for new approaches to the problem in the United States. While many forms of violent crime are now back to pre-pandemic levels, the presidential campaign of former President Donald Trump has nevertheless sought to capitalize on the supposed issue by promising toughness — as well as an array of policies designed to appeal to voters concerned about law and order.
What policies will Trump enact to cut crime?
“As we gather today, American cities, suburbs and towns are totally under siege. Kamala Harris and the communist left have unleashed a brutal plague of bloodshed, crime, chaos, misery and death upon our land,” said Trump while accepting the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police in Charlotte, North Carolina on Sept. 6. The idea that the United States is suffering from an out-of-control epidemic of violent crime, while not supported by official data, is central to his campaign’s appeal.
Trump’s Agenda 47 policy package has a detailed page about the kinds of policies his administration would pursue if he wins the election. He promises to revive “stop-and-frisk” practices, hire and train an unspecified number of new law enforcement officers, pursue the death penalty for drug traffickers and call in the National Guard to places where he determines order has broken down. The Trump campaign also backs an unexplained revision of federal standards concerning the discipline of minors, which may involve a federal takeover of school disciplinary procedures by the Department of Justice and Department of Education. That plan may be complicated by a promise he sometimes makes to shut down the Department of Education.
Trump has consistently sought to lay blame for violent crime at the feet of reformist prosecutors elected on promises of reducing police shootings and the number of incarcerated citizens. The campaign frequently links progressive prosecutors to the “defund the police” movement that emerged during the George Floyd protests in the summer of 2020. To that end, Trump also pledges a standoff with such prosecutors in big cities. “President Trump will direct the DOJ to open civil rights investigations into radical leftist prosecutor’s officers,” said Trump in his Agenda 47 platform. Elsewhere in Agenda 47, he promises to fire “dangerous Marxist prosecutors.”
Is there a link between crime and immigration?
As with many other issues, the Trump campaign has sought to link crime to immigration, in part by depicting immigrants as criminals and highlighting news stories where undocumented immigrants have committed crimes. Trump has also regularly claimed that the Biden-Harris administration admitted tens of thousands of violent criminals into the country and that other countries are sending convicted criminals from their prisons directly to the United States. Yet “there is no evidence that any country is emptying prisons to allow violent criminals to come to the U.S. border as migrants,” said Russell Contreras, Delano Massey and Erin Davis in Axios. Nevertheless, the Trump campaign says that its plan for mass deportations will help bring violent crime down.
How will police be involved?
Trump recently speculated about how crime could be brought down with a “day of violence,” during which law enforcement would presumably be freed of constitutional restraints on the use of force against lawbreakers. Property crime and retail theft could be halted “if you had one day, like one real rough, nasty day,” Trump said at a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania on Sept. 29. “The word will get out and it will end immediately,” Trump added.
The remarks reflected the campaign’s pessimistic rhetoric about crime and drew widespread criticism. “A ‘day of violence’ by vengeful police is not, of course, authorized by existing laws anywhere,” said Ed Kilgore at New York magazine. “His vision for a far more savage standard of American policing is fundamental to understanding the former — and perhaps future — president’s deeply authoritarian policy proposals,” said Asawin Suebsaeng and Tim Dickinson at Rolling Stone.
The former president was “clearly just floating it in jest,” said campaign spokesman Steven Cheung.