In many ways, the 2024 presidential election campaign has already been unusual. Beyond the change of office between Biden and Harris, the political landscape defies the expected constellation.
This is most evident in the area of crime and criminal justice. It looks as though we have two months to decide whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris will be tough or even tougher on crime.
For more than half a century, our presidential campaigns have been characterized by one party, the Republicans, portraying themselves as the law-and-order party and accusing the other of being too soft on crime. The Democrats have largely rejected the tough-on-crime strategy.
Not so much this year.
While former President Trump and his MAGA allies focus on the law-and-order issues that have served Republican presidential candidates well since 1968, Democrats, who have nominated a former prosecutor as their candidate, seem determined not to cede the tough-on-crime terrain to them.
The dilemma for Vice President Harris and the Democrats is that they will have to remain silent on crime during the campaign, limiting their ability to be credible advocates for criminal justice reform when they take power next January. The criminal justice reform agenda they are expected to put forward is quite extensive.
This includes addressing the problems of American policing, eliminating mandatory minimum sentences, dealing with our still-heavy reliance on incarceration, and abolishing the death penalty – to name just a few.
It will be difficult for Vice President Harris to be tough on crime and still have room to maneuver. She must make it clear that the best way to be tough on crime is to, as she once put it, “be smart on crime.”
As anyone who follows her campaign knows, Harris has made her crime-fighting record a central focus of her presidential campaign. Over the past month, she has used the same slogan repeatedly in her speeches to the American people: “Before I was elected vice president, I was elected United States Senator, I was elected Attorney General… of California. And before that, I was a district attorney.”
“In those roles,” she continues, “I've dealt with all kinds of offenders – sex offenders who abused women, fraudsters who defrauded consumers, con artists who broke the rules for their own benefit. So listen to me when I say: I know Donald Trump's type.”
In her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention last week, Harris again emphasized her background as a prosecutor, saying one of the reasons she became a prosecutor was the experiences of one of her friends, Wanda, who was sexually abused as a teenager.
“I became a prosecutor,” Harris explained, “to protect people like Wanda. Because I believe everyone has a right: to safety. To dignity. And to justice.” Harris reminded her audience that “as a prosecutor, when I had a case, I did not prosecute on behalf of the victim. I prosecuted on behalf of the people.”
She argued: “In our legal system, a harm done to one of us is a harm done to all of us.” No one, she said, “should be forced to fight alone. We are all in the same boat. Every day, I stood proudly in the courtroom before a judge and said five words: 'Kamala Harris, for the people.'”
Later in her speech, she gave further insight into her tough fight against crime.
She urged her audience to look at her record, not just her rhetoric. “As a young district attorney in Oakland, I stood up for women and children against sex offenders. As Attorney General of California, I took on the big banks. I provided $20 billion for middle-class families facing foreclosure. And I helped pass a Homeowners' Bill of Rights – one of the first of its kind.”
She described her work as “advocating for veterans and students who are being defrauded by large, for-profit colleges. For workers who are being cheated out of their wages. For seniors who are facing mistreatment.” She pointed to her successes in pursuing “cartels that traffic in guns, drugs and people and threaten the security of our borders and our communities.”
However, neither in her acceptance speech nor during her campaign appearances did Vice President Harris make any concrete promises about how she would handle the criminal justice reform that lies ahead of her.
Harris' determination not to be outdone by the right on the crime issue represents a marked departure from her approach when she ran for president four years ago. New York Times notes: “She described herself as a progressive prosecutor and proposed abolishing the death penalty, mandatory minimum sentences and bail.”
What Time calls the “departure from Harris' previous efforts to downplay her record as a prosecutor a clear indication of a broader shift within the Democratic Party” and a “changing political landscape” in which Harris' background in law enforcement is “more acceptable to a broader electorate.”
But as she tries to navigate the changing political landscape on crime and criminal justice, Harris must avoid taking Donald Trump's bait on crime. She will have to work hard to avoid turning the 2024 campaign into a contest to see who is most extreme on crime.
And there will be plenty of bait that she will have to do without.
On Friday, for example, after the conclusion of the Democratic Party Convention, the Trump team released the following: Kamala is DESPERATE!—Violent crime is not 'down' but has increased by nearly 25% in 66 major U.S. cities, even though Kamala was in charge of three of the four most murderous years of the past 25 years.”
“Under Kamala,” it said, “the illegals she allowed into the country are raping and murdering our citizens in the most brutal ways. – As district attorney, Kamala was known for her lenient attitude toward crime, while San Francisco had its highest murder rate in a decade as Kamala became the 'role model' for Soros-backed prosecutors across the country. – Drug cartels have not been 'shut down,' they have ravaged our communities by smuggling deadly drugs across the border in unprecedented quantities.”
A day later, Trump himself said: “Kamala Harris is the weakest presidential candidate in history when it comes to crime.” JD Vance picked up on these themes, using a Wisconsin appearance to remind his audience that Harris has publicly advocated cutting police funding. He repeated the tried and tested Republican line, accusing her of not being “on the side of the Democrats” and of being soft on crime.
At this point, it is not yet clear how important the crime issue will be in the election and whether it will sway independent voters one way or the other.
A Gallup poll conducted last November found that “63 percent of Americans describe the crime problem in the United States as extremely or very serious (up from 54 percent when last measured in 2021), but far fewer, 17 percent, say the crime problem in their area is extremely or very serious.”
Furthermore, Gallup notes that only “3% say crime is the most important problem facing the country.” That pales in comparison to 1994, “when an average of 42% of Americans… named crime as the most important problem facing the United States, making it the biggest problem overall that year…Crime remained a major issue in subsequent years, with as many as 10% citing it between 1995 and mid-2000.”
Other polls show that most Americans today prefer to focus on crime prevention rather than harsh punishments. “A prevention-first approach to safety, meaning fully funding things that have been proven to create safe communities and improve people's quality of life, like good schools, a living wage and affordable housing,” was more popular than traditional, tough-on-crime measures.
Younger voters “are particularly likely to support candidates who favor crime prevention tactics…” And while black and Latino voters say crime is a major problem in their area, “the majority of these voters are more likely to favor crime prevention strategies over tough crime-fighting policies.”
Kamala Harris seems uniquely suited to understand and respond to the crime problem without simply repeating the same old solutions that haven't worked in the past. She can also use her credibility as a former prosecutor to lead the fight against crime by addressing its root causes.
As the 2024 campaign progresses, Harris will have the opportunity to show that she can get tough on crime, but not on the terms of Donald Trump and JD Vance.
