The United States experienced a temporary, violent crime wave during the Covid-19 pandemic. According to official data, many violent crimes are currently on track to be at or near historic lows since the FBI began tracking data. Even though the worst of that post-pandemic crime wave has passed, public concern about crime remains high. A September 2024 Pew survey found that violent crime was fifth on voters’ list of priorities this year. That means that both major party campaigns are trying to reassure voters that their policies will address the problem.
From reformer to hardliner
Vice President Kamala Harris promised to “fundamentally transform how we approach public safety” as a candidate for president during the summer and fall of 2019. Harris – then a U.S. Senator from California – released a criminal justice reform platform in September 2019 that promised to end mass incarceration, abolish private prisons, abandon the war on drugs and establish a new national commission to study the criminal justice system and recommend reforms. She also sought to reform the juvenile justice system. The proposal promised to “end life sentences of children and offer opportunities for sentence reduction to young people convicted of crimes.”
During the George Floyd protests in the summer of 2020, after she dropped out of the 2020 presidential race but before she was selected as Joe Biden’s running mate, Harris appeared to endorse aspects of the “defund the police” movement, arguing that funding police departments to the exclusion of social priorities was misguided. The Biden-Harris ticket that year then promised significant reforms to the criminal justice system.
Yet the pandemic crime wave put the brakes on Harris’ criminal justice reform platform almost immediately, as the newly-inaugurated administration realized that the public appetite for reform had been eclipsed by fears of a violent crime wave. Leading Democrats have yet to return to their previous messaging about tackling police violence and addressing systemic racism in the criminal justice system despite the drop in crime rates. “The change reflects a broader shift in thinking among Democrats and their nonpartisan allies who work in violence reduction, criminal justice and police reform,” said Marin Cogan in Vox.
A promise to legalize marijuana
Since becoming the Democratic Party nominee in August after President Biden withdrew from the race, Harris has had very little to say about crime or criminal justice. One exception is federal marijuana policy. Despite the increasing number of states that have fully legalized recreational marijuana, more than 200,000 people were arrested on marijuana charges in 2023. As a senator, Harris cosponsored a bill in 2019 to decriminalize marijuana.
The Biden-Harris administration announced in April 2024 that it would ask the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to change its appraisal of marijuana to classify it as a less harmful substance that has medical uses but stopped short of recommending outright legalization or decriminalization. And then on October 14, Harris said that as president she would support legalization of marijuana, a stance that goes much further than the official policy of President Biden. In 2023, 70% of respondents said that they supported legalizing the drug, a record high in Gallup’s long-running poll of the issue.
Harris has made few concrete promises about either criminal justice reform, violent crime or policing. There is no section on crime or law enforcement in her campaign’s 82-page policy booklet that was released in September. In her convention speech, she did not address crime directly but said that as a prosecutor she worked on behalf of victims and that “everyone has a right to safety, to dignity and to justice.” She has instead positioned herself as a tough-on-crime prosecutor who supports law enforcement.
Harris is “embracing her identity as a prosecutor in a way that would have been unimaginable four years ago,” said Shaila Dewan in The New York Times. That posture may also be an effort to portray former president and Republican nominee Donald Trump – who was convicted on 34 felony counts by a New York jury in May – as a criminal. How well that plays with voters remains to be seen.