The Sconi

Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions is sounding the alarm about rising violent crime and a record-setting murder rate that shows few signs of slowing.

“New FBI statistics show that our nation is suffering a historic surge in violent crime — one that was entirely predictable,” Sessions wrote in a recent New York Post op-ed. “From 2019 to 2020, the US murder rate rose by an astounding 27 percent, the largest annual increase in at least the past 100 years. This spike is so far off the charts it’s hard to fathom.”

Sessions attributes much of the spiraling rise in crime to a slew of democratic policies, adding in his opinion piece “tragically, they (Democrats) ignored the warnings of law-enforcement officials and abandoned policies shown to work, replacing them with naïveté and wishful thinking. The results are now clear for all to see.”

In Sessions’ view, the big cities now experiencing the largest crime spikes are the ones that turned their backs on police. He cites an FBI statistic that concludes arrests dropped 25% in 2020, coinciding with the 27% increase in murders. In Portland, Sessions says homicides tripled from 2016 to 2020 and are still on the rise to the point of a homicide now taking place every four days on average.

In advancing his “woke policies make America more dangerous” argument and blaming the “left” for such policies taking hold, Sessions also points out since 2019 homicides have almost doubled in both Minneapolis and New York.

Across the country, the FBI Crime Data Explorer reports in 2019 there were 448,783 violent-crime incidents and 520,209 offenses reported by 9,042 law enforcement agencies. In 2021, the number increased to 694,050 violent-crime incidents and 817,020 offenses reported by 11,794 law enforcement agencies.

In 2019, in Wisconsin, the FBI Crime Data Explorer lists 13,358 violent crime incidents and 14,930 offenses reported by 187 state law enforcement agencies. In 2021, the number increased to 15,808 violent crime incidents and 17,998 offenses reported by 324 Wisconsin law enforcement agencies.

According to the City Journal, the country’s largest crime survey the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) by the Bureau of Justice Statistics recently found the violent crime rate in urban areas from 2018-2020 was anywhere from 29-42% higher than rural areas. In 2021, that number rose to 121%. In addition, the City Journal says, “the property-crime rate in urban areas was nearly twice as high in 2021 as in suburban areas (157.5 to 86.8 victimizations per 1,000 households) and nearly three times as high as in rural areas (157.5 to 57.7 victimizations per 1,000 households).

The data on crime from 2021 also reveals a dramatic spike of 29% in violent crimes in cities and urban areas from 2020-2021, while crime in rural and suburban areas did not show much change, with violent crime victims increasing from 19.0 to 24.5 persons per 1,000 people.

Even with the data being collected from asking people if they were a victim of a violent crime, the City Journal concedes the data from NCVS is not as reliable because of the pandemic. Still, the organization argues the rise in violent crime is not random, placing much of the blame on the “Broken Windows” theory, which Britannica defines as believing ignoring minor crimes will lead to more serious crimes, especially in an urban environment.

Here in Wisconsin, The Center Square laments the criminal justice system “is failing,” pointing to how Milwaukee saw a significant spike in violent crime in 2021.

“Milwaukee has 10% of the state’s population, but it has an enormous share of the state’s crime,” Mike Nichols said on Badger Institute. “In 2021, Milwaukee had 60% of homicides, 53% of aggravated assaults, 68% of auto thefts. It’s so hard to talk about statewide crime without talking about Milwaukee."

The Badger Institute report also claims car thefts are up, police enrollment is down and the state has a record number of prisoners (20,000), with The Center Square adding many of them will be released eventually.

Through it all, the Washington Free Beacon reports that Mandela Barnes, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, has earned a reputation for being “soft on crime” and is now struggling to get support from sheriffs across the state. Out of the 72 sheriff departments in Wisconsin, two have endorsed Barnes, while 51 have endorsed Barnes’ opponent, incumbent Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI).

With a Marquette University poll finding that 61% of local voters are “very concerned” about crime in their state, Pete Deates, the President of the Kenosha Professional Police Association Board, charges that Barnes’ comments as Lieutenant Governor led people to riot in 2020.

While his website says he does not support defunding the police, the Free Beacon adds Barnes gave “the headline speech at the Center for Popular Democracy, one of the leading anti-police groups and a sponsor of defundpolice.org” where he commended the organization for their “amazing work.”

 According to Reuters, Republicans have an edge in the upcoming midterm election due to high crime rates in Democrat-controlled cities, with a recent poll finding that the GOP is likely to win the House and the Senate. The Reuters poll asked 4,415 U.S. adults across the country and had a “credibility interval, or measure of precision, of between 2 and 5 percentage points.”

Conducted from Sep. 27-Oct. 3, the poll also found that 39% of registered voters would choose a Republican to “solve crime” while 30% would choose a Democrat. Alex Conant told Reuters the top issues on the ballot are inflation, the economy, immigration and crime.

"A lot of voters care about crime and a lot of voters care about immigration," Conant added. "Right now, those are winning issues for Republicans."