WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 24: An attendee looks at a series of banners for National Crime Victims' Rights Week Candlelight Vigil on the National Mall a on April 24, 2024 in Washington, DC. The Justice Department’s Office for Victims of Crime held the event to pay tribute to victims and survivors of crime and individuals who provide service and support. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Groups that assist crime victims across the United States are bracing for significant financial pain after the amount available from a major federal victim services fund plunged $700 million this year.

Congress recently lowered spending to $1.2 billion from the fund, which provides grants to nonprofit and local programs across the country.

This latest round of cuts has sparked widespread concern among district attorney’s offices, rape crisis centers, domestic violence shelters, child advocacy centers and law enforcement agencies that offer victim support services. Many of these organizations and agencies now expect to have to close locations, lay off staff and cut back on services.

Meanwhile, the drop in dollars has many experts and advocates rethinking the current, uncertain system of helping crime victims. How much federal money is available every year is determined by a complex three-year average of court fees, fines and penalties that have accumulated — a number that has plummeted by billions during the past six years. The fund does not receive any taxpayer dollars.

Karrie Delaney, director of federal affairs for the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, said the slowdown of court cases during the COVID-19 pandemic and the last administration not prosecuting as many corporate cases has affected the fund more than usual.

RAINN is the country’s largest anti-sexual-violence organization. It operates the National Sexual Assault Hotline (800-656-HOPE) alongside local organizations and runs the U.S. Defense Department’s Safe Helpline. It “also carries out programs to prevent sexual violence, help survivors, and ensure that perpetrators are brought to justice,” according to its website.

“I think what’s important from RAINN’s perspective is the actual impact that those fluctuations have on the survivors that we support and organizations and service providers across the country,” Delaney said.

When the federal cap decreases, she said, organizations that support crime victims often turn to state and local governments to make up the gap. And a lot of the times there isn’t enough money to do that.

Victim services providers say that smaller groups or branches, particularly those in rural towns or counties, are at an especially high risk of closing because of the expected cutbacks. Many rely solely on federal dollars.

Shakyra Diaz, the chief of federal advocacy with the Alliance for Safety and Justice, which advocates for crime victims, said many groups are “seriously in a situation where they may have to close their doors, they may have to cut services, they may have to cut staff, they may have to tell crime victims, ‘I cannot help you right now. You have to wait six months.’”

In at least three states — California, Colorado and Maine — state legislators have proposed bills that would create new avenues for state-based funding for victim services. A couple of bills would inject general state dollars into victim services to offset the federal cuts, while one would create a new tax on firearms and ammunition, and yet another would increase criminal penalties on corporations. The money collected from taxes or fines would then go toward supporting victim services.

The federal crime victims fund gets its money from fines, forfeited bonds and financial penalties in certain federal cases.

The year-by-year uncertainty around how much money will come from federal crime cases, which directly affects how much will be available to states to distribute to victim services providers, makes it challenging for groups to budget over the long term.

“Services for victims and resources for victim services are already so tight. And so when you’re talking about taking a pot of money that’s already stretched at its best and making it smaller — it’s frankly terrifying,” said Renée Williams, the executive director of the National Center for Victims of Crime.

The federal fund was established in 1984 under the Victims of Crime Act, known as VOCA. Congress tried to stabilize the fund in 2000 by setting an annual cap on withdrawals. The cap remained below $1 billion a year until 2015, but Congress raised it to $2.3 billion that year, and in 2018 it peaked at $4.4 billion.

Then, the cap plummeted, and by fiscal year 2023, Congress had set it at $1.9 billion, according to data from the U.S. Department of Justice.

This past March, Congress again lowered the cap, to $1.2 billion, a drop of more than 35%. The cuts will not take effect until October of this year, when the federal government’s next fiscal year begins.

Victim services groups say that the demand for help has continued to surge. Some anticipate the grant process to become even more competitive.

They’re asking state lawmakers for help.

State legislation

For Stand Up Placer, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault and human trafficking in Placer County, California, the anticipated federal cuts are expected to slash about $700,000, or 22%, of the group's budget, according to Cheryl Marcell, the organization's CEO.

Some of the group’s services, such as legal counseling, are likely to be scaled back. Instead of serving the current caseload of 500, the group may only be able to accommodate 200 clients, Marcell said.

In California, local district attorney's offices are grappling with how to address this funding shortfall, according to Jonathan Raven, assistant CEO of the California District Attorneys Association and former Yolo County chief deputy district attorney.

Offices are considering options such as laying off staff, requesting local funding or scaling back services altogether, Raven told Stateline.

“The people that are victimized that are the most vulnerable are no longer going to get the services that they should expect and they do deserve,” Raven said. “It's really going to be a significant impact across California and across the country.”

State legislators in California have proposed two bills aimed at mitigating the federal cuts.

One of the bills would require state supplemental funding whenever the federal VOCA award is reduced more than 10% than the amount awarded the prior year. The bill is in committee.

The other bill, which is still under consideration in the Assembly, would increase fines levied on corporations convicted of misdemeanor and felony offenses. These fines would be used to fund a new California Crime Victims Fund.

In Colorado, the legislature passed a bill proposing a more permanent state funding source for victim services through a 9% gun and ammunition excise tax. The tax revenue would be spent on crime victim support services, mental health services, school safety and gun violence prevention.

The bill is now headed to Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, who has until June 7 to sign or veto it, according to his press secretary. If he signs it, the measure will go before voters on the November ballot.

Meanwhile, in Maine, Democratic Gov. Janet Mills signed a budget bill in April that includes a one-time allotment of $6 million for victim services.

Effects on services for victims

There are about 12,200 victim services providers in the United States, with nearly a quarter of them located in the country's most populous states — California, Florida, Texas and New York, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics' 2017 census.

Ohio has more than 400 victim services providers, many of which receive funding from the federal crime victims fund. Last year, the state received $46.6 million.

But for fiscal year 2024, Ohio has been awarded just $26.7 million, a 42.8% decrease from 2023 and a 77% decrease from 2018.

With such a steep cut, some victim services providers in Ohio fear they will no longer be able to serve rural communities, particularly those in the Appalachian region. For the Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence, a statewide coalition that supports rape crisis centers, losing funding could reduce its support to the 12 counties that do not have local rape crisis centers or programs.

“It's the places that already don't have great access to services and that have never had access to services [that] will be the ones to have whatever access they have further reduced,” said Emily Gemar, the group’s director of public policy.

Court-appointed special advocate programs in Appalachian counties also are expected to bear the brunt of the funding cuts, according to Doug Stephens, the executive director of Ohio CASA, which oversees 47 local programs covering 60 counties that support children navigating the court system. Stephens anticipates as many as 10 local programs shutting down.

“They are working very hard to provide the same services as the big cities,” he said in an interview. “The only way they can stay open is with VOCA funding.”

In South Carolina, victim services providers and Republican Attorney General Alan Wilson are urging the state legislature to offset the looming federal cuts. Wilson has requested $15 million, which is just enough money to keep existing services.

The state Senate has proposed a $5 million allotment, while the House has put forward a $3 million proposal. Under either plan, current projects could face cuts ranging from about 15% to 30%, according to the attorney general’s office.

Richland County, South Carolina, Sheriff Leon Lott, whose department receives VOCA funding and employs victim advocates who help people go through the criminal legal system, said the state should offer more support.

“When things like this happen, people just think about dollars. What we see is the real people, we see the feelings, we see the pain and emotions they're going through,” said Lott, a Democrat. “This loss of funding, I'm afraid, will have a negative impact on the things that we try to do with victims and may end up victimizing them even more.

“If the feds are not going to provide the money, then the state needs to do it.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

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A drag performer by the name of Champagne Monroe reads the children's book "Rainbow Fish" to a group of kids and parents at the Mobile Public Library for Drag Queen Story Hour in Mobile, Ala. on Sept. 8, 2018. The event, sponsored by LGBT group Rainbow Mobile, involves local drag queen performers reading to children. (AP Photo/Dan Anderson)

Drag performances used to be found mostly in the confines of nightlife venues such as clubs and bars.

But drag has stepped into the daylight, with elaborately costumed and made-up performers appearing at library readings and kid-friendly brunches, and a newfound visibility for gender-bending entertainment and self-expression.

“Drag now versus 15 years ago is like night and day,” said Dr. Lady J, a Cleveland-area performer with a doctoral dissertation in drag history. “Drag is so mainstream now. … I grew up in a world where drag queens were this mysterious thing that maybe existed in New York or San Francisco.”

The growing visibility has made drag performances a target for conservative legislators. Although polls show most Americans don’t support laws to restrict drag performances, lawmakers in states including Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota and West Virginia have considered or enacted legislation this session that would prohibit businesses from allowing minors to attend drag shows. Several would impose stricter business regulations on establishments that host drag shows or would ban “obscene live conduct” at state universities.

Supporters of these bills say they are designed to protect children from entertainment that is not appropriate for them, not to target the transgender community. But critics warn that such laws could be used to file criminal charges or discriminate against people who identify as transgender outside of drag performances. This year, 21 drag-related bills have been considered in 12 states, according to the ACLU’s LGBTQ+ bill tracking database. (Some were carried over from last year’s legislative sessions.)

Most of them failed. Of 15 drag bills considered last year, only three were carried over to this year’s legislative sessions, according to the ACLU’s database. Those that become law often face significant legal challenges.

In Montana, where a law explicitly restricting drag performances was enacted last year, federal court orders have rendered it unenforceable.

Courts also have deemed the laws in Florida, Tennessee and Texas — all of which use similar language about “adult cabaret entertainment” or “sexually oriented businesses” — unenforceable. A federal court ruled that the Texas law was unconstitutional and violated the First Amendment.

Legislation restricting gender-affirming care, transgender girls’ participation in school sports and restroom access is also on the table in many states.

Dr. Lady J says drag-related bills deflect attention from deeper issues facing the LGBTQ+ community.

“[These drag-related bills are] distracting people from the actual anti-trans laws that are being passed,” she said. “It’s flashier to talk about drag than it is to talk about what it means to tell a 12-year-old, 14-year-old trans kid they can have hormones one day and the next day to tell them that thing that you thought was going to save your life … the government decided yesterday you don’t get it anymore. Good luck surviving, kid.”

Largely backed by GOP lawmakers, bills affecting drag performances have often surfaced during election cycles, experts pointed out, deployed to mobilize conservative voter bases.

“[Drag] is the latest in a series of LGBTQ-related issues that [some Republicans] have found compelling as a way of firing up their base and getting folks either to contribute money or to come out and vote for them,” said Melissa Michelson, a political scientist and LGBTQ+ politics expert at Menlo College in California.

The focus on drag-related legislation is likely to wane as election season fades, Michelson added. “It’s all about riling up the public. There’s no actual threat. It’s very much an electoral politics phenomenon.”

Dr. Lady J said these efforts aren’t about protecting children but rather about erasing LGBTQ+ visibility from public spaces. When she performs at kid-friendly events, she is deliberate about selecting music and attire that are both appropriate for and captivating to younger audiences, such as a headdress adorned with pony figurines inspired by the popular toy and show “My Little Pony,” Dr. Lady J told Stateline.

“The reality is that a lot of these people just don’t want queer people anywhere near their kids,” she said. “They don’t want their kids to see that you are allowed to grow up and be happy and be a queer person.”

Many who are backing the bills disagree, saying they’re worried about how adult content is seeping into everyday life.

“We’ve really come to a place where things that were always considered adult-oriented have moved into the public sector and have been marketed and advertised at family-friendly events, when truly they were very sexual in nature,” Kentucky Republican state Sen. Lindsey Tichenor said in an interview.

State legislative efforts

Tichenor has sponsored a bill targeting performances “with explicitly sexual conduct” in “adult-oriented businesses” near places children might be.

Her bill would restrict these businesses from operating within roughly a city block’s distance — about 933 feet — of other establishments serving children, such as schools, playgrounds or day care facilities. Violators risk losing business or liquor licenses and may face cease-and-desist orders. Local governments also would have the power to impose stricter rules.

“A lot of the opposition really isn’t informed [about] exactly what is in the legislation. And it’s really, very simply, putting adult-oriented businesses in the proper place where minors can’t have access to it,” said Tichenor.

When initially introduced, the bill contained language that redefined as adult-oriented businesses establishments that “host sexually explicit drag performances.” Tichenor said she made several adjustments to the bill after meeting with performers who were concerned with the proposed revised definition. The current version of the legislation no longer references all drag, but describes adult cabaret that contains “explicitly sexual conduct.”

“I thought it was very important that we had that definition specific to drag performances that are of a sexual nature and where those can be and where they cannot be,” she said.

This legislative session, only one related measure has been signed into law, in South Dakota. Approved in early March, the law prohibits the state Board of Regents and the public universities it oversees from using state funds or property for “obscene live conduct.”

While the law does not explicitly ban drag shows, some opponents believe it’s a veiled attempt to target them because two bills with similar language, with one explicitly banning drag, died earlier this year.

“It’s kind of impeaching on First Amendment rights –– free expression, freedom of speech,” said Everett Moran, a legislative intern with the Transformation Project Advocacy Network, a South Dakota-based trans advocacy group.

The bills come after controversy erupted in 2022 over a drag show held at South Dakota State University in Brookings that was advertised as kid-friendly. There was backlash, and the Board of Regents set a policy that prohibits programs on campus where minors are present from including specific sexual activities, obscene live conduct or any material meeting the definition of “harmful to minors.”

Proponents of the law said it reflects that policy.

“This [bill] complements [the board’s policy] and says, you know what, this is more than just a policy. This is a law. You broke a law,” Republican Rep. Chris Karr, the bill’s lead sponsor, told colleagues ahead of the bill’s vote in the House in early February. Karr could not be reached for comment for this story.

No one from the Board of Regents testified in favor of or against the bill, but when asked about how the new law would be enforced, the board said in a statement that it “does not currently authorize or expend public funds to support obscene live conduct, as defined in codified law 22-24-27, on any South Dakota public university campus.”

South Dakota state Rep. Linda Duba, a Democrat who voted against the measure, said the law will not affect the transgender community. Still, she said, the law is unnecessary and “purely political.”

“It’s an election year, and the [Republican] supermajority decided this would be something they thought we should do even though we have policies in place that make this bill unnecessary,” Duba said in an interview. “We’ve already defined in current statute what obscenity is, and we have a policy in place by the Board of Regents, and the bill doesn’t do anything different.”

A different time

In West Virginia, a bill introduced in January would have amended the state’s indecent exposure law to criminalize engaging in “obscene matter.” The bill’s definition of “obscene matter” includes “any transvestite and/or transgender exposure, performances, or display to any minor.”

The bill’s lead sponsor, Republican Sen. Mike Azinger, could not be reached for comment, and co-sponsor, Republican Sen. Robert Karnes, declined Stateline’s interview request. Before the state’s legislative session ended, the bill was sent to the Judiciary Committee.

In Missouri, a Senate and House bill would each add performances featuring male or female impersonations to the definition of sexually oriented businesses. Both bills are in committee. Under the bills, performers could potentially face felony charges for performing in public spaces where the show could be viewed by a child.

And in Nebraska, legislation that would restrict minors — defined by state law as anyone under 19 — from attending drag shows, appeared to die after the legislature’s Judiciary Committee voted against advancing it. The proposed legislation would have imposed misdemeanor charges, carrying a maximum penalty of up to a $1,000 fine and one year in jail, against anyone — including parents — who brings a child to a drag event.

Fifty-eight percent of Americans oppose laws that would impose restrictions on drag shows or performances in their state, while 39% support such legislation, according to a 2023 NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist poll.

Despite the varied opinions among Americans, these drag-related bills have emerged at a time when drag has become a form of mainstream entertainment and widely popular, said Michelson, the political scientist and LGBTQ+ politics expert. This differs from previous attacks on members of the LGBTQ+ community throughout history, who were targeted during a time when stigma was rampant, Michelson added.

“These bans aren’t going to be particularly successful or popular in the way that folks are maybe hoping they will be. It’s kind of too late,” Michelson said. “If they had gone [after] drag performers a decade ago, 15 years ago, it probably would have hit more successfully.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

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(Photo by Edwin J. Torres | Governor's Office)

Fueled by public outrage over the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer and other high-profile incidents of police violence, a seismic shift swept across the United States shortly afterward, with a wave of initiatives aimed at reining in police powers and reimagining criminal-legal systems.

Yet less than half a decade later, political leaders from coast to coast are embracing a return to “tough-on-crime” policies, often undoing the changes of recent years.

This resurgence is most palpable in the nation’s major urban centers, traditionally bastions of progressive politics. San Francisco voters earlier this month approved ballot initiatives that would require drug screenings for welfare recipients and would loosen restrictions on police operations. The District of Columbia, too, has pivoted toward a harder stance on crime, with its mayor signing into law a sweeping package that toughens penalties for gun crimes, establishes drug-free zones and allows police to collect DNA from suspects before a conviction.

Local and state leaders in blue and red states — including California, Georgia, Louisiana, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont — also have looked to toughen their approaches to crime and public safety in a variety of ways. Lawmakers have proposed bills that would stiffen retail theft charges, re-criminalize certain hard street drugs, keep more suspects in jail in lieu of bail and expand police powers.

Many are passing with bipartisan support.

Policymakers are responding to public concerns over rising crime rates and heightened fear and anger due to a surge in offenses such as carjackings and retail theft. To some criminal justice experts, the legislative actions represent more of a partial rollback of progressive criminal justice changes rather than a complete return to past punitive policies.

“The issue for most people isn’t whether something is up or down by 10%. It’s that they are seeing randomness and brazenness, and getting a sense of lawlessness,” said Adam Gelb, the president and CEO of the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank. “Some of what we’re seeing is more like … shaving off the edges of some of the policies that felt too lenient.”

The percentage of Americans who think the United States is “not tough enough” on crime grew for the first time in 30 years, according to a Gallup poll released in November. Fifty-eight percent of respondents said they believe the criminal-legal system is too soft, up from 41% in 2020.

While national crime data is notoriously difficult to track and understand, violent crime across the United States decreased in 2022 — dropping to about the same level as before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the FBI’s annual crime report. Property crimes rose during the same period. Crime data compiled by the Council on Criminal Justice also suggests that most types of crime are reverting toward pre-pandemic levels.

Georgia’s legislature earlier this year passed a bill that would add 30 additional felony and misdemeanor crimes to the state’s list of bail-restricted offenses, meaning that people accused of those crimes would be required to post cash bail. Republican Gov. Brian Kemp hasn’t said whether he will sign the bill.

Last week, the Tennessee Senate passed a bill that would prohibit local governments from altering police traffic stop policies. If signed into law, it would overturn a Memphis city ordinance that bans pretextual traffic stops, which is when police use minor traffic infractions such as broken taillights as grounds to investigate motorists for more serious crimes.

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, a Democrat who leads the first state to decriminalize drugs, announced in early March she plans to sign legislation that would redefine the possession of small amounts of hard drugs, such as fentanyl or methamphetamine, as a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum of six months in jail.

The bill also would allow law enforcement to take action to prevent the distribution and use of controlled substances in public areas, such as parks or sidewalks.

“What we did is we tried to make sure that we could blend together our public safety in a behavioral health approach when folks are caught with drugs,” said Oregon state Rep. Jason Kropf, a Democrat and one of the bill’s lead authors.

Still, critics of the new legislation argue that re-criminalizing drug use would disproportionately affect Black, Latino and Indigenous communities, and further burden Oregon’s already overwhelmed criminal justice system. There are more than 2,800 people in the state currently unrepresented in court and about half are facing misdemeanor charges, according to the Oregon Judicial Department’s dashboard.

Some of these concerns are why Oregon state Sen. Floyd Prozanski, a Democrat, voted against the new legislation.

“I do believe that this [bill] will in fact reinstitute the war on drugs,” Prozanski said in an interview. “We’re just gonna compound the problem to what’s happened in the current caseload without attorneys — cases being dismissed, cases being delayed. And that doesn’t help anyone in the system, including victims of crime.”

Why some lawmakers are reworking policies

Some criminal justice advocates and experts perceive the recent trend of states dialing back reforms as impulsive reactions to what might be a temporary, pandemic-related spike in certain crimes. They argue that these measures are more about sending a political message than finding solutions.

“Some of the knee-jerk reactions aren’t even responsive to the actual problem at hand,” said David Muhammad, the executive director of the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, an advocacy and research group.

Others, though, say recent votes are a “rejection of pro-criminal policies” that prioritized the rights of offenders over the needs of crime victims.

“This is a return to normalcy — to common sense. The fact is that their ideas failed. They were bad,” said Charles Stimson, a senior legal fellow and deputy director of the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

“This isn’t a Democrat or Republican thing or a blue or red state thing. This is a law and order versus chaos thing. Period.”

In Vermont, Republican Gov. Phil Scott urged lawmakers this year to revisit criminal justice reform legislation passed a few years ago, bills that he signed into law. Among them is the state’s “Raise the Age” law, which reclassified 18-year-old adults as juveniles within the criminal justice system. He has urged lawmakers to postpone the plan to do the same for 19-year-old adults. Scott said the state isn’t ready to house those suspects as juveniles.

“I wish I had better anticipated the challenge,” he said in his State of the State address earlier this year.

Last week, the Vermont House approved a bill that would stiffen repeat retail theft violations, allowing aggregation of stolen goods’ value to shift charges from misdemeanors to felonies. The bill will now go to the Senate for consideration.

Meanwhile, in California, a bipartisan effort is underway to amend Proposition 47, which was passed by voters in 2014. It raised the threshold to $950 of stolen goods for shoplifting to be considered a felony and reclassified some drug charges from felonies to misdemeanors. The proposition was widely supported as a way to reduce prison overcrowding. Now, a new bill would, as in Vermont, allow prosecutors to charge repeat retail theft offenders on a cumulative basis for goods stolen.

“Shoplifting, smash-and-grab thefts, and other acts of retail theft trends are causing retailers to close their businesses and endangering customers and employees,” Democratic Assemblymember James Ramos, the bill’s lead author, said in a news release. “Since the pandemic, these crimes have increased. That is not the direction California needs to go.”

Rollbacks in Louisiana

Louisiana earned national attention in 2017 when then-Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, signed a legislative package intended to reduce the state prison population and bolster alternatives to incarceration. Louisiana saved nearly $153 million, and the number of people held in state custody decreased by 1,627 people, or 11%, from 2016 to 2023, according to state records.

The state again earned national attention this winter after lawmakers met for a special session on public safety and considered a slew of bills. These included allowing 17-year-olds to be charged as adults, unsealing some juvenile criminal records, limiting post-conviction appeals and expanding the state’s methods of performing executions to include nitrogen gas and electrocution.

A proposal to move Louisiana’s public defender system under the governor’s direct control was also discussed. The bill raised concerns among attorneys, public defenders and retired judges, according to the Louisiana Illuminator.

“I definitely believe there’s a fear now that public defense will be affected by politics,” said Alaina Bloodworth, who is from Louisiana and is the executive director of the Black Public Defender Association, in an interview.

To date, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry has signed 19 bills into law, encompassing measures such as allowing concealed carry of a gun without a permit, imposing harsher penalties for carjackings and treating all 17-year-olds charged with crimes, including misdemeanors, as adults.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

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FILE - A prisoner stands inside an isolation cell at the Dane County Jail in Madison, Wis., Sept. 16, 2014. Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin and other states are pushing to increase the use of cash bail and pretrial detention. (AP Photo/Morry Gash, File)

Crime is shaping up as a potent election issue, and one of the key points of debate is over bail: Which suspects should be jailed before trial, and which ones should be released on bond — and for how much money?

Some conservatives argue that lenient bail policies put suspects who are likely to commit crimes before their upcoming court hearings, or who might skip bail altogether, back on the street. But some progressives say research does not support that contention. They argue that detaining defendants because they can’t afford financial bonds is unfair, and note that such defendants are disproportionately Black, Latino and low income.

Illinois, New Jersey and New Mexico have moved away from the use of money bonds. But other states, such as Georgia and New York, are moving in the opposite direction, implementing stricter rules. Tennessee is considering a constitutional amendment that would give judges more discretion to deny bail amid concerns about rising crime rates.

Politicians on both sides of the debate often connect bail policy to crime rates. But experts say doing so is problematic, because so much of the crime data that states and cities use is unreliable.

The reality, experts say, is that most crime data is too unreliable to pinpoint specific policies as the sole cause of increasing or decreasing crime rates. The bail system also is oftentimes misunderstood as a form of punishment rather than the process for releasing individuals before trial under certain conditions.

“There’s nothing out there that shows a correlation or a connection of any sort between increasing the rates of pretrial release and the rates of crime,” said Spurgeon Kennedy, vice president of the Crime and Justice Institute, a nonprofit criminal justice research organization. Kennedy previously served as president of the National Association of Pretrial Services Agencies.

These misconceptions about crime can leave voters vulnerable to misinformation ahead of local and national elections.

“If you ask the typical person on the streets, ‘Do you think crime is up or down over the last year,’ they will tell you, ‘Oh, it’s up. It’s way up.’ But we’ve seen reductions in crime overall and also in violent crime,” Kennedy said. “So the facts don’t follow the argument, and that’s unfortunate because that makes it much more easier to keep this out as a political football.”

Both chambers of Georgia’s legislature passed a bill this month that would add 30 additional felony and misdemeanor crimes to the state’s list of bail-restricted offenses, which means that people accused of those crimes would be required to post cash bail. They include charges of unlawful assembly, racketeering, domestic terrorism and possession of marijuana.

The bill also would prevent any individuals or organizations from posting cash bail more than three times per year unless they establish themselves as bail bonding companies, severely limiting charitable bail funds. The bill is now headed to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk.

Some criminal justice advocates say the bill, if enacted, would clash with changes made by a 2018 law to the state’s legal system for people accused of misdemeanors. That law, which was championed by former Republican Gov. Nathan Deal, mandates that judges take into account the financial circumstances of the accused when setting bail.

Proponents of the new bill, which was first introduced last year, argue that the measure is necessary to deter crime, support victims of crimes and hold repeat offenders accountable. State Sen. Randy Robertson, who sponsored the bill, said it focuses on people accused of violent crimes.

“What we’re focusing on is trying to get the nonviolent individuals back out into the workforce and back to their families,” Robertson said in an interview. Robertson, a Republican, argued that the bill would also lead to a “dramatic decrease” in the state’s jail population because it offers a pathway for organizations, such as churches and nonprofits, to set themselves up as bail bonding companies.

Those organizations would have to meet the same legal requirements as bond companies, including undergoing background checks, paying fees, and having an application approved by a local sheriff’s department.

Some opponents, though, argue that it would lead to overcrowding of jails and disproportionately harm low-income and Black and Hispanic communities. The ACLU of Georgia has threatened to sue the state if the bill is signed into law, arguing that it’s unconstitutional.

Robertson said that some of the criticisms raised are “rehash complaints” he has heard for the past 25 or 30 years.

“There has been no evidence, independent research that shows placing low bails, allowing judges to set bails at whatever they choose to, keeps a disproportionate amount of individuals held in our jails,” Robertson said. “I don’t think that [this bill] touches the third rail of constitutionality at all.”

Pretrial data and research

Several research studies, though, suggest that setting money bail isn’t effective in ensuring court appearances or improving public safety.

Pretrial policy experts say that being in jail for even a few days or weeks can cost people their homes or jobs or damage their personal relationships, said Matt Alsdorf, an associate director with the Center for Effective Public Policy and the co-director of the group’s Advancing Pretrial Policy and Research project.

“The use of unnecessary detention has negative impacts, even if you’re just looking at it through a public safety or crime prevention lens,” he said.

Pretrial recidivism has long been studied by criminal justice experts: A 2013 study of more than 150,000 people who were jailed in Kentucky found that longer detention periods increased the likelihood that people would be rearrested both during the pretrial period and within the first two years following the closure of their case. The study also found that people who were held for two or three days had a 9% greater likelihood of failing to appear in court than people who were held for one day.

Furthermore, a study published in the Criminology & Public Policy journal last year found that Black defendants were 34% more likely than white defendants to be recommended to be held behind bars until their cases were resolved.

“The money bond system is a very regressive system that effectively ends up acting as a means of incarcerating populations that are typically already disadvantaged,” Alsdorf said.

In places that have relaxed their bail practices, audits show that pretrial jail populations usually drop following the changes. In some jurisdictions, there also are fewer arrests for certain types of offenses.

In Houston, a lawsuit claiming misdemeanor bail practices in Harris County were unconstitutional led to a settlement and consent decree in 2019. The county is required to release most people charged with misdemeanors on a personal bond, meaning defendants simply promise to attend their next court date.

In the latest independent monitoring report on the system, from 2023, observers wrote that the changes “have saved Harris County and residents many millions of dollars, improved the lives of tens of thousands of persons,” and resulted in “no increase in new offenses by persons arrested for misdemeanors.”

Brandon Garrett, the lead monitor and a Duke University School of Law professor, said in an interview that racial disparities "vanished overnight" after bail practices were relaxed. The monitors have also found an overall decline of about 8% in misdemeanor arrests between 2019 and 2022.

“There were real concerns about the racial disparities of the old cash bail system, and it was pretty remarkable just how quickly those disparities — in terms of who ended up in jail and who didn't — vanished,” Garrett said.

‘Intentional and deliberate’

In 2017, New Jersey moved away from the use of cash bail in favor of the Public Safety Assessment, an algorithm tool that uses nine factors from an individual’s criminal history to predict their likelihood of returning to court for future hearings and remaining crime-free while on pretrial release.

The changes encouraged more “intentional and deliberate” detention hearings, recalled now-retired trial court Judge Martin Cronin, who sat on the committee that unanimously recommended the switch to a more risk-based bail system.

Cronin, now a consultant with Pretrial Justice Solutions, LLC, said the state’s new system offers more accountability and transparency.

“You're focused on what are the permissible reasons for detention and how does the record tie into that, individualized to that defendant who's in front of you,” Cronin told Stateline. “There is real accountability there. … It's a fundamentally different process.”

Between 2015 and 2023, New Jersey’s pretrial jail population decreased by 27.2%, according to the state judiciary’s Criminal Justice Reform Statistics report last year.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

The post Releasing suspects pretrial doesn’t lead to higher crime rates, experts say appeared first on New Jersey Monitor.

Police units responds to the scene of an emergency.

Carjackings and car thefts are up significantly compared with the number of incidents before the pandemic, prompting fear and calls for action in many American cities.

Motor vehicle thefts increased by 29% in 2023 compared with the previous year, while carjackings slightly decreased by 5% in nearly 40 American cities, according to the Council on Criminal Justice’s most recent crime trends report. But between 2019 and 2023, both car thefts and carjackings increased dramatically, by 105% and 93%, respectively, according to the report.

The five cities with the highest year-over-year increases in motor vehicle theft between 2022 and 2023 were Rochester, New York; Baltimore; Buffalo, New York; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Cincinnati. The cities with the highest carjacking rates per 100,000 residents in 2023 were the District of Columbia; Baltimore; Memphis, Tennessee; Chicago; and Denver.

Many have blamed the surge in auto theft on a social media trend among teenagers that exposes vulnerabilities in certain kinds of cars, especially Kia and Hyundai models. But the varying reliability of motor vehicle theft data at different law enforcement levels and the scarcity of national carjacking data make it hard to determine what — or who — is responsible for the spikes.

As with many other crimes, there is limited FBI data on carjackings and motor vehicle thefts because law enforcement agencies differ in how they collect and submit their data. The federal Bureau of Justice Statistics also has not released any updated statistics on carjackings since October 2022, which tracked crimes committed through 2021. That poses a significant challenge for policymakers trying to allocate police resources to the communities that need them most.

“We certainly don’t want people flying blind making decisions with respect to public safety,” said Alex Piquero, a criminology professor at the University of Miami and the former director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Anecdotal evidence on social media can heavily shape public perceptions of safety and crime, Ernesto Lopez, a research specialist at the Council on Criminal Justice, wrote in an email to Stateline.

Josh Rovner, the director of youth justice at The Sentencing Project, agreed that “the scraps of information that we have about youth involvement is very easy to overstate and misunderstand.”

Carjacking data, especially at the national level, is hard to come by. And despite the greater availability of motor vehicle theft data, its reliability varies across different law enforcement levels, with some local departments failing to submit their data to federal agencies and others not collecting the information at all.

“We need more local law enforcement agencies to produce that data — not just internally for their own community to report out to the community, but also for policy action,” Piquero said.

What the data says

Since reaching its peak in the 1990s, overall crime in the United States has declined. In 2022, the most recent year with available data, there were 23.5 violent crimes for every 1,000 Americans aged 12 and older, according to the National Crime Victimization Survey.

The violent victimization rate increased by 42% in 2022 compared with 2021, but the past three decades have seen an overall decline.

Carjackings and motor vehicle thefts, however, are up compared with before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. It’s hard to say exactly what’s behind the surge, but some crime experts suggest that the economic turmoil during the pandemic, coupled with the relative ease of stealing cars or parts for financial gain, increased the attractiveness of car-related crime.

Carjackings are less common than auto thefts but more violent. In a carjacking the perpetrator directly confronts the vehicle's owner, while auto theft typically occurs when a car is unoccupied. Motor vehicle theft includes stealing entire cars or specific parts such as tires, rims or catalytic converters. The difference between the two offenses is whether force is used to steal a car.

In the District of Columbia, the city's police department recorded 958 carjackings last year but only made 173 arrests, according to the Metropolitan Police Department’s carjacking dashboard. Sixty-two percent of those suspects were under the age of 18.

Juveniles might be overrepresented in D.C.’s arrest numbers because they are easier to apprehend, or because they tend to commit crimes together, said Rovner, of The Sentencing Project.

Nationwide, the number of adults and juveniles arrested for motor vehicle theft has consistently declined since the 1980s, according to data from the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the juvenile arrest rate was about four times higher than adults, an analysis of federal data by the Council on Criminal Justice found. By 2020, the rates for both adults and juveniles were about the same.

Misconceptions such as an overemphasis on the role juveniles play in carjackings and auto thefts can lead to misguided policies that may not enhance public safety and, in some cases, may exacerbate the situation, according to Josh Weber, deputy director in the corrections and reentry division of the Council of State Governments Justice Center, a think tank focused on breaking the cycle of incarceration.

“[These misconceptions] tend to lead to more reactionary and punitive policies rather than policies that are necessarily grounded in research and data,” said Weber, who also directs the center’s juvenile justice program.

“Research has consistently shown that detaining more kids, incarcerating more kids, pushing more kids into the juvenile justice system is a bad public safety strategy,” Weber added. “It actually increases the likelihood that kids will reoffend.”

Addressing the surge in vehicular crime

The “super predator” mindset of the 1990s, fueled by fears of a generation of remorseless and violent young offenders, significantly shaped criminal justice policies for decades. This crime theory led to harsher penalties, higher juvenile incarceration rates and a focus on punitive measures rather than rehabilitation.

“We are always at risk when people are afraid of crime and instinctually just up penalties. We’ve been here before,” Rovner said. “One of the responses that comes up is the idea that a serious response is about sending kids to adult courts or adult jails or adult prisons, and that is absolutely the worst response when it comes to public safety.”

Instead, some experts say shifting toward evidence-based approaches that not only address crime but also provide support for youth, such as investing in behavioral health services and community-based initiatives aimed at reducing and preventing violence, would be more effective.

“Despite the rhetoric, despite the media stories — it’s really focusing on data- and research-driven policies and not just things that sound good,” said Weber, of the Council of State Governments Justice Center.

“This shouldn't be a partisan issue,” Weber said. “Having data-driven and research-based practices is something that should appeal to both sides of the aisle.”

Crime experts say vehicle owners also can take simple yet crucial precautions, such as avoiding leaving cars unlocked or running unattended, to significantly reduce the risk of theft. And policymakers at all levels of government are increasingly urging car manufacturers to be held accountable for the design of vehicles that might be vulnerable to break-ins.

“It’s important to recognize that the data can certainly guide us,” Rovner said. “Regardless of whether arrests go up or arrests go down, what we should be interested in is what's best for kids and what's best for public safety.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

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MINNEAPOLIS, MN - FEBRUARY 23: A city worker clears snow outside a bank while wearing a frost covered ski mask on February 23, 2023 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A winter storm has caused major travel disruption across the country. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

Amid concerns about crime and public safety, at least two major U.S. cities recently considered banning ski masks or balaclavas to prevent criminal behavior, despite a lack of academic research about the effectiveness of such bans.

Last month, Philadelphia became the latest city to enact a ban in some public spaces, including parks, schools, day care centers, city-owned buildings and public transit. The ban comes with exceptions for working in cold weather, religious expression and activities such as protesting and playing winter sports.

The ban, introduced last June, came after a series of fatal shootings involving masked suspects.

“In Philadelphia, there’s been a siege of violence,” Democratic Philadelphia Councilmember Anthony Phillips, who sponsored and pushed for the ban, said in an interview with Stateline. “Ski masks are oftentimes the reason why there’s a lot of crime and lawlessness happening.”

Meanwhile, the Atlanta City Council considered a similar proposal but tabled it amid concerns about racial profiling and doubts over whether it would make a difference.

For some, ski masks are synonymous with criminal activity. Several cities and states already have blanket bans against masks that conceal one’s identity. The banned masks include ski masks, which cover all but one’s eyes, nose and mouth; balaclavas, which cover necks and the lower part of one’s face; and costume masks that might cover the whole face except the eyes.

While mask bans in some states, such as California and New York, date as far back as the 1800s, most states enacted their bans in the middle of the 20th century. The COVID-19 pandemic prompted some jurisdictions to temporarily suspend their bans, as many residents wore masks to protect themselves from the airborne virus. Meanwhile, the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 raised awareness about racial profiling by law enforcement.

Crime and public safety are likely to figure prominently in the upcoming elections. Some experts expect politicians to implement ski mask bans and other measures to convince voters that they’re tough on crime — whether or not there is evidence to support such strategies.

“There’s this idea of running to a policy that seems to, quote-unquote, make sense, but to which there is no effectiveness,” Alex Piquero, a criminology professor at the University of Miami and former director of the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, told Stateline.

“Anytime you make policy based on no research, that’s not a really good idea,” Piquero said.

Youth advocates say mask bans disproportionately target Black and brown youth, limit self-expression and may infringe on people’s constitutional rights.

“Banning ski masks doesn’t deter crime. It creates a new crime that people can be charged with. It creates a justification for police to stop a larger group of people,” said Vic Wiener, a staff attorney with the Juvenile Law Center, a nonprofit law firm and advocacy group that represents children. “It creates a tremendous risk of harassment and more over-policing, especially of young Black people.”

Philadelphia’s ski mask ban

Phillips said Philadelphia’s ban will help police solve crimes and protect the city’s young people.

“This bill was not meant to profile anyone,” he told Stateline.

Those caught wearing ski masks in prohibited areas may face a $250 fine, while those wearing them during criminal activities could incur fines up to $2,000, in addition to other penalties. People will not be charged with a crime just for wearing a ski mask.

Some members of the Philadelphia Police Department have voiced support for the ban. Deputy Commissioner Francis Healy told a council committee last November that it’s unlikely officers will cite every person wearing a ski mask.

“It will give us a tool to intervene and hopefully stop some criminal activity from happening,” Healy told the committee. “It allows my officers to take some proactive action.”

Healy said the ban will give officers “lawful authority” to stop people, which will be helpful because under a yearslong monitoring agreement with the Pennsylvania ACLU, Philadelphia police must document every pedestrian stop and the legal reasoning behind it.

But Solomon Furious Worlds, an attorney with the Pennsylvania ACLU, told councilmembers before they voted on the measure in November that the ban “violates the spirit” of the ACLU’s monitoring agreement with the city. The agreement aims to address policing practices, such as stopping and frisking, that are applied disproportionately to Black and Hispanic youth.

“There’s no evidence to suggest that ski masks cause or encourage violent crime,” Worlds told councilmembers, according to a transcript. “If you’d like to address violent crime, I’d suggest housing, food assistance, child care, things like that.”

Worlds said that police officers might enforce the ban selectively, and that it “seems like another targeted attempt to get at young people of color.”

The Philadelphia Police Department is not yet enforcing the ban because the city has not reviewed the final legislation to determine how best to enforce it, according to Shawn Ritchie, a department spokesperson.

During the debate over the proposed ban, some Philadelphia councilmembers warned that it would poison relations between police and the community, and that it would increase stop-and-frisk interactions without reducing crime.

“If we demand that officers start policing people’s clothing and accessories, we will be causing more harm than good,” Councilmember Kendra Brooks of the Working Families Party wrote in an emailed statement. “[The ban] will further criminalize Black and brown youth in our city and will not meaningfully reduce violence or crime.”

New York City and the District of Columbia used to ban masks, but they repealed those ordinances in 2020 and 2023, respectively. New York City repealed its ban because it conflicted with pandemic-era mask mandates.

Last March, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, urged store owners to request that shoppers remove their masks, including surgical ones, before entering, as a precaution against robberies.

State masking laws

At least 15 states ban mask-wearing or outlaw it under certain circumstances, according to the Free Speech Center, a nonpartisan and nonprofit public policy center at Middle Tennessee State University.

Many states’ anti-mask laws ban the coverings if a wearer is using them to commit a crime, to infringe on others’ rights, to intimidate law enforcement and/or to evade arrest. Those states include California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota and Ohio.

Some states, including Georgia, Virginia and West Virginia, allow exceptions for face coverings for medical reasons, part of a theatrical production, holiday costume, profession or while playing a sport.

New York approved its anti-mask law in 1845, becoming the first state to do so. Other states followed over the next century, in many cases to combat the terror inflicted by the Ku Klux Klan, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The District of Columbia’s mask law, which was repealed last April, was originally enacted in 1982 in response to anti-Black and anti-Jewish hate crimes committed by mask-wearing perpetrators.

Kristin Henning, a law professor and the director of the Juvenile Justice Clinic and Initiative at Georgetown Law, opposed the District’s ban, and said it was ironic that a law designed to fight against racial terror was being applied against youth of color.

She successfully defended a teen who was stopped and tackled to the ground during an altercation with a police officer over wearing a ski mask, she said.

“Statutes like this increase the contact with police officers, but then you have to understand how these encounters go from zero to 100 — literally in an instant,” Henning said in an interview.

Mike Willis, a former police officer and the national training and program director with the United States Deputy Sheriff’s Association, said he doesn’t think ski mask bans will become a national trend. “I definitely see it as a safety issue for the public, Willis said in an interview. “Whether or not it’s going to deter a lot of crime, I can’t say that it will.”

Policing fashion and culture

For Jordan Williams, donning his balaclava serves as a fashion statement, protection against the cold and a shield against viruses and germs.

Williams, a 25-year-old Black man from the District of Columbia, understands why some are wary of people wearing ski masks. To avoid weird looks from others or being stereotyped, he said, he makes a point of taking it off when entering stores and other buildings. But he thinks mask bans are “kind of silly.”

“The thing about criminals is they don’t necessarily follow laws,” Williams said. “I don’t think it would really make a big difference.”

For many young adults and teens, wearing a ski mask or balaclava is primarily a nod to fashion trends. The cold-weather gear surged in popularity during the pandemic, propelled by Memphis rapper Pooh Shiesty, who also lent the accessory its current moniker, a “shiesty.”

Clothing items and how they’re styled, such as hoodies, head wraps and baggy pants or jeans, have undergone similar bans or scrutiny, according to Henning, of Georgetown Law, whose book, “The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth,” examines how popular fashion and culture among Black youth has been politicized and then targeted by police.

“White children are allowed to enjoy the privileges of what it means to be a teenager,” Henning said. “Black children are often criminalized for everything that we know is important to adolescents. They are criminalized for all those — the music they listen to, the clothes they wear, the way they wear their hair.”

Henning pointed out that attire that can be linked to mass shootings, such as all-black clothing, or to white supremacist groups, such as combat boots with red laces, remains legal. What’s outlawed, instead, targets “fashion statements uniquely associated with Black culture.”

“We demonize attire when it’s associated with a certain subset of people that we want to exclude or make presumptions about,” Henning said.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

The post Philadelphia is latest city to restrict ski masks in public spaces appeared first on New Jersey Monitor.

An incarcerated student raises his hand during a Mount Tamalpais College English class called Cosmopolitan Fictions at San Quentin State Prison April 12, 2022, in San Quentin, Calif. The community college, the first in California with a campus inside a prison, is the latest addition to San Quentin's numerous rehabilitation programs that have made it a desired destination for inmates throughout the state. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

Several states this year have reported lower rates of recidivism, showing that fewer convicted criminals are being re-arrested after leaving prison.

But those statistics hardly tell the full story.

Recidivism rates across the country can vary greatly because of how they’re defined, how the data is collected and how it’s presented to the public. So it can be difficult to say that, for example, one state is doing better than another in rehabilitating formerly incarcerated residents.

“You have to be very, very careful. You have to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges,” Charis Kubrin, a criminology, law and society professor at the University of California, Irvine, said in an interview with Stateline. Kubrin also is a member of the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan research think tank.

The statistics are used to evaluate a corrections system’s performance. They can help assess how effective rehabilitative or reentry programs and post-sentence probation programs are in lowering the number of reoffenders with certain criminal histories, such as substance use.

Recidivism data tracks the number of convicted offenders who engage in new criminal activities after being released from prison or jail within a specific time frame, typically ranging from one to five years.

A reduced recidivism rate may indicate that efforts by prison staff and probation or parole officers to rehabilitate individuals are effective, said Evan Green-Lowe, the director of state engagement at Recidiviz, a tech nonprofit that partners with state criminal justice agencies.

“It is one of the metrics that state correctional leadership and state community supervision leadership pay close attention to,” Green-Lowe wrote in an email to Stateline.

Among the states that reported lower recidivism rates this year, Iowa, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia all have pointed to reentry or other rehabilitative programs as part of the reason.

“These programs make a huge difference,” said Scott Richeson, the Virginia Department of Corrections’ deputy director of programs, education and reentry, in an interview with Stateline. Richeson said the recividism rate for incarcerated people who participate in career and technical education programs is 12%.

Some criminologists argue that attributing lower recidivism rates to a specific program fails to consider other influencing factors, such as population shifts and — recently — the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Over the next couple of years, state-reported recidivism rates likely will continue to decline for individuals who were released in 2019 and 2020, as prisons and jails released more people during the peak years of the pandemic, said Shawn Bushway, an economist and criminologist with the nonprofit and nonpartisan research group RAND Corporation.

Most states measure recidivism by tracking former inmates who were held in state prisons or facilities and return to the state prison system within three years. Experts say the absence of a national standard makes it challenging to compare jurisdictions and programs.

State officials should specify how the rate was calculated, what type of offenses or acts count as recidivism, potential limitations, such as incomplete data, and the frequency of reoffenses, according to Elsa Chen, a professor and the chair of the political science department at Santa Clara University.

Public understanding of recidivism

Politicians and officials sometimes use flawed crime data to burnish their crime-fighting bona fides, and they can tout lower recidivism rates as evidence of their success in rehabilitating criminals.

In May, for example, just five months before Kentucky’s gubernatorial election, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear announced at a news conference that the state had achieved its lowest recidivism rate in history at 27.15% for individuals held in state custody. Kentucky defines recidivism as a return to state custody within two years of release, either due to committing a new felony or a technical violation of supervision.

“When we get somebody who is leaving prison in a stable position — in a good job, with the services they need, maybe in treatment if they need it — they are less likely to reoffend, which makes our communities safer,” Beshear said during the news conference. “It means fewer crimes are happening.”

The Kentucky Department of Corrections didn’t answer emailed questions and didn’t make anyone available for an interview.

But some experts argue that Beshear’s characterization — implying a connection between recidivism and public safety — is inaccurate because recidivism solely gauges whether an individual reoffends.

“It can have harmful effects on public understanding because the public believes they’re being told something by a responsible person that directly assesses public safety, and [recidivism] does not measure public safety,” Jeffrey Butts, a research professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told Stateline.

Some state officials say recidivism rates show how effective their programming is, while acknowledging the state-by-state differences.

“I don’t think it’s misleading at all because I see all the work and the data that we have available is very reliable,” said Richeson, with the Virginia Department of Corrections. “It’s hard to compare across states because there are differences in every system.”

Virginia measures recidivism by tracking former state inmates who return to the state prison system within three years post-release.

“We feel that’s the best indicator of services that we are providing,” she said.

Richeson said her state’s emphasis on safety within the prisons helps incarcerated residents feel more comfortable being involved in rehabilitation.

“We could not do any of these programs were it not for having safe and secure prisons, so it really is how the whole system works together. It’s not just one program,” she said. “We want to create long-term public safety when people get out.”

What the data says

In recidivism studies, the act of reoffending may be defined differently. It can, for example, include violating parole, being arrested, being convicted of a crime or returning to prison. Some studies consider all these outcomes as recidivism, while others count only one or two.

Some states only consider felonies as recidivism, excluding less serious misdemeanors that may result in local jail time rather than a state prison sentence. And states vary in categorizing crimes as felonies or misdemeanors, adding even more complexity.

“Those are policy differences that end up structuring or creating the metric of recidivism,” Butts said. “Unless you investigate all those things and can control for them, you’re still not informing the public in a responsible way.”

States also are inconsistent in the time periods covered by recidivism studies. Most include new offenses within three to five years; others examine a much shorter time frame, such as six months to a year.

Recidivism rates might appear higher in highly policed areas, where residents are more likely to come into contact with police. And in some states, recidivism includes missteps such as missing a meeting with a parole officer, technically not a criminal offense but still counted as one.

“When somebody has recidivated, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ve committed any new crimes,” Chen said. “That’s something that is not obvious to most people in the public.”

Official data also can miss counting former prisoners who break the law but go undetected. This is why some criminologists argue that recidivism studies should include self-reports of criminal behavior and differentiate among various types of recidivism, such as violent crimes, property crimes and technical violations.

“In an ideal system, you would have measures of recidivism that span all of these different things,” Kubrin, the law and society professor, said.

State recidivism rates

States this year have pointed to rehabilitation and reentry programs as major contributors to their drops in recidivism.

In Iowa, the recidivism rate for fiscal year 2023 stands at 34.3%, down 2.7 percentage points from last year. The state defines recidivism as an individual being released from an Iowa prison and being re-incarcerated within three years for any reason.

A news release announcing Iowa’s third consecutive drop in recidivism attributed the decrease to various programs, improved reentry practices and increased access to educational and job skills training.

The Iowa Department of Corrections also examines outcomes such as employment and wages, housing stability, program completion and probation, parole and work-release revocations, according to Sarah Fineran, the agency’s research director.

Tennessee saw its recidivism rate drop to 29.6% this year for people released in 2019, the lowest rate in more than a decade. The Tennessee Department of Correction defines recidivism as re-arrest, re-conviction or return to prison within three years after release.

The Virginia Department of Corrections in January announced its recidivism rate dropped to 20.6%, which includes people released from the state prison system in 2018 who were re-incarcerated within three years.

This is the seventh consecutive year that Virginia has had the second-lowest or the lowest rate of recidivism in the nation, according to the department’s news release and analysis.

South Carolina, too, boasts one of the lowest recidivism rates in the country at 17%. The South Carolina Department of Corrections defines recidivism as someone who is re-incarcerated within three years of release.

“It’s never just one thing, but a combination of interventions. [The South Carolina Department of Corrections] takes a holistic approach based on the needs of the individual offender,” Chrysti Shain, the department’s director of communications, wrote in an email to Stateline. “We want to release inmates who have a real second chance.”

Measuring success

Some advocates say that using alternative factors such as employment or housing provides much better indicators of success after being released from prison.

“Recidivism by itself is not a true measure of the success of reentry programming or of incarceration rates,” said Ann Fisher, the executive director of Virginia CARES, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting formerly incarcerated people in Virginia. “It’s just not a true picture.”

A 2022 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine suggests pairing recidivism rates with indicators that capture progress away from crime, such as reductions in the seriousness of criminal activity or an increased duration between release and a criminal act, known as “desistance.”

The report also recommends developing new measures of post-release success that consider factors such as personal well-being, education, employment, housing, family and social supports, health, civic and community engagement and legal involvement.

“Measures of desistance from crime are much more accurate and realistic in looking at changes in criminal activity after release from prison,” said Chen, of Santa Clara University, who is one of the report’s authors. “Those are much more nuanced than just whether or not they’ve had another interaction with the criminal legal system.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

The post How many inmates return to prison? Inconsistent reporting makes it hard to tell. appeared first on New Jersey Monitor.

New Jersey State Prison in Trenton (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor)

More states are making it easier for residents to clear or seal their criminal records.

The effort has drawn bipartisan support, as lawmakers across the political spectrum say it will help people find jobs and housing, in turn boosting local economies and reducing reliance on social services.

“Folks that get out of jail or prison with criminal records, it’s like getting out with the handcuffs still on,” Keith Wallington, the director of advocacy with the Justice Policy Institute, a nonprofit criminal justice research and advocacy group, told Stateline.

But the shift has created some new concerns. The surge in applications after lawmakers eased rules created a major backlog in several states. Some residents struggle to pay the required fees. And some prosecutors and legislators worry that people who commit additional crimes after their records are expunged may not be held fully accountable.

At least four states — Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota and New York — passed legislation this year that would make clearing or sealing one’s criminal record easier. Michigan and Ohio also had similar laws go into effect this year.

Expungement removes arrests and convictions from a criminal record as if they never existed, while record sealing hides records from the public but allows access by court officials and some law enforcement agencies. Almost every state has some form of expungement or record sealing policy. Though they can vary widely, most policies require individuals to be crime-free for a set amount of time, usually tied to how serious their conviction was.

Over the past five years, more states have moved to offer automatic expungement or sealing, which generally uses a computer system to wipe or shield people’s criminal records when they become eligible. At least 26 states and the District of Columbia have an automatic system already in place or in the works.

“More lawmakers recognize the barriers that come with having a criminal record,” said Lauren Krisai, deputy director of the Justice Action Network, a bipartisan criminal justice advocacy group. “They recognize that this is actually bad for employers. It’s bad for employment. It’s bad for the workforce and the economy.”

Some state Republicans have “abandoned this mentality of tough on crime,” according to Nino Marchese, the director of criminal justice and civil justice at the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative nonprofit membership organization that drafts model legislation. Marchese said state legislators in the group are increasingly inclined toward evidence-based policymaking, which typically involves analyzing research and data, to draft criminal justice policies.

But some residents haven’t been able to get their records expunged because of the fees and large backlogs.

Backlogs and accessibility

In 2021, Oregon passed a law eliminating fees and expanding expungement eligibility to include non-conviction records, such as arrests, dismissals and acquittals. The law also removed filing fees and adjusted waiting periods for specific offenses. The surge in applications created a backlog of approximately 15,000 cases in Multnomah County, which includes Portland, and a 16-month waiting period for application reviews, the Willamette Week reported.

In Utah, expungement application fees quadrupled in July after the legislature failed to pass a bill to extend its pilot program, which previously lowered fees to $65. The state also is facing a backlog of automatic expungements and of petition-based applications, which are expected to take several months, according to Nicole Borgeson, the assistant director of the Utah Bureau of Criminal Identification, the agency tasked with handling applications.

A staffing shortage and an influx of applications just before the pilot program shut down contributed to the state’s backlog, Borgeson said in an interview. The bureau hired new employees in August who are undergoing training, and aims to review applications within 30 days, she said.

“It’s very important to us to make sure that we’re doing these in a timely manner — not only for us, but also for the applicants,” Borgeson said. “We know that this can be an impact on their lives and livelihoods. … We are concerned about that. We are trying to get caught up.”

Republican state Rep. Jim Dunnigan, who designed the pilot program, introduced legislation earlier this year to continue offering reduced fees, but withdrew his bill after receiving pushback from other lawmakers. Dunnigan said that some legislators who opposed the bill believe people seeking expungements should pay their own filing fees because they made the decision to commit a crime. Now, Dunnigan is negotiating with concerned colleagues before the state’s upcoming legislative session.

“We’re still working on it, and I don’t know where we’re going to end up. We’ve tried to come to a compromise — probably a little farther than some legislators want to go. It’s not as far as I want to go,” Dunnigan told Stateline. “I’m hopeful, I think we’ll see something that will pass.”

Many Utahns with records can’t afford the increase in fees, according to Noella Sudbury, founder and CEO of Rasa Legal Public Benefit Corporation, also known as Rasa, a company that aims to make expungement more accessible by offering low-cost legal services.

“A just society is one in which access to justice is available to not just those who have money, but to all members of the society,” Sudbury wrote in an email to Stateline.

The New Jersey State Police, facing a backlog of approximately 46,000 expungement applications, has fallen up to two years behind in processing, according to a class-action lawsuit filed by the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender against the state police in October.

The lawsuit alleges that this delay has led to the illegal disclosure of sealed criminal histories to potential employers, landlords and others conducting background checks. Residents have suffered job losses, housing denials and missed professional opportunities because of the state police’s failure to adhere to judges’ orders, the lawsuit alleges.

“Every day that passes is a day that these people who are entitled to the relief and the benefit of their expungement order can’t actually benefit from the expungement statute that was passed to help them,” Michael Noveck, assistant deputy public defender with the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender, said in an interview.

Spokespeople from the state police and the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General, which oversees the state police, declined to comment on pending litigation. New Jersey’s expungement statute does not specify a time frame for the state police to process expungement orders.

In 2019, the state police received $15 million to improve and modernize its expungement processing systems, but it is unclear whether it has made changes to handle the increase in expungement orders. The state police also declined to answer questions about the funding and any upgrades to its systems.

To address processing delays, the legislature should amend the statute to include a specific time frame, such as 60 or 90 days, during which the New Jersey State Police must process granted expungement orders, said Meredith Schalick, the director of the Expungement Law Project at Rutgers Law School, which has helped hundreds of people since 2018 get criminal expungements.

Broadening eligibility

Some critics argue that broadening eligibility for expungements or the sealing of criminal records will put the public at risk by cloaking violent crimes.

In Wisconsin, a bipartisan bill failed earlier this year because of objections from Republican senators. Despite being introduced multiple times over the past few years and successfully passing the Assembly, the bill has consistently faltered in the Senate.

During a public hearing on the bill in April, Republican state Sen. Andre Jacque suggested the bill’s proposed one-year waiting period was too short compared with neighboring states such as Illinois, Iowa, Michigan and Minnesota, whose waiting periods range from two to eight years. “It’s a pretty stark difference,” he said. Jacque also expressed concerns about overloading the court system and withholding criminal records from employers.

Wisconsin is the only state where past and closed cases are ineligible for expungement, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum, a nonpartisan policy research organization.

Wisconsinites must apply for expungement at the time of their sentencing. Wisconsin also is among a few states that restrict expungement eligibility solely to young offenders, with the state’s age cap set at 25.

The bill would eliminate the age cap and shift the expungement application process to after the sentence has been served.

“I’m optimistic that this is the session that we finally get it across the goal line … and make some forward progress that’s hugely needed in Wisconsin,” state Rep. Evan Goyke, a Democrat and former public defender, told Stateline.

Prosecutors in Maryland worry that under the state’s new law, they may not be able to consider the past crimes of someone who commits another crime after having their record expunged, Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger said. The REDEEM Act, which went into effect in October, halves the waiting period for filing a petition to expunge criminal records for certain offenses.

Someone who gets their record expunged can legally say they have no criminal record, which can complicate decision-making for prosecutors and court officials alike, said Shellenberger, a Democrat.

“We make our current decisions based upon what your background is,” Shellenberger said in an interview. “If we don’t know the truth about your background, then it’s hard to make a reasoned decision.”

In response to these concerns, the law’s lead author and sponsor, state Sen. Jeff Waldstreicher, a Democrat, said that if someone were to reoffend after having their record expunged, they still face criminal penalties.

“They will still be held accountable for their criminal offense and it’s important that we continue to hold them accountable,” Waldstreicher said in an interview.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

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A sign advertises a bail bond company on Aug. 29, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill yesterday which will make California the first state to abolish bail for suspects who are awaiting trial. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

States can’t figure out what to do about cash bail.

The system — in which an arrested suspect pays cash to avoid sitting in jail until their court date and gets the money back when they appear — is deeply entrenched in the nation’s history as a way to ensure defendants return to face justice.

But cash bail is undergoing a reckoning as policymakers debate its disproportionate effects on underserved communities and people with low incomes who sometimes can’t afford bail — as well as just how much the system truly keeps the public safe.

This year some states such as Illinois and jurisdictions such as Los Angeles County in California and Cuyahoga County in Ohio scaled back their bail systems, even eliminating cash bail entirely for low-level offenses in some cases.

Policymakers in other places, meanwhile, are moving in the opposite direction.

Republican lawmakers in at least 14 states — including Georgia, Indiana, Missouri and Wisconsin — introduced about 20 bills this year aimed at increasing the number of non-bailable offenses and either encouraging or requiring judges to consider defendants’ criminal records when setting bail, according to analysis by The Associated Press.

And in New York state, where changes to curtail the use of bail took effect in 2020, lawmakers have made several rounds of rollbacks amid concerns about rising crime rates.

Some bail policy advocates argue that these changes may contribute to racial and socioeconomic discrimination by relying on one’s ability to post bail and undermine the idea that those accused of a crime are presumed innocent until proven guilty.

“There’s no single answer to effective bail reform,” Meghan Guevara, executive partner with the Pretrial Justice Institute, a criminal justice advocacy group, told Stateline.

Measures to increase the use of cash bail or to include certain factors in assessing bail eligibility saw varying levels of success. In Wisconsin, voters approved a state constitutional amendment in April allowing judges to consider factors such as a defendant’s past convictions and the need to protect the public from bodily harm in “violent crime” cases.

Missouri Republican Gov. Mike Parson signed legislation in July that requires judges who are setting bail to first consider factors such as a suspect’s flight risk, potential danger to others, past convictions for violent crimes and previous failures to appear in court.

In Indiana, lawmakers in April passed their first swipe at Senate Joint Resolution 1, which would amend language in the state’s constitution and enable judges to deny bail to those they consider a “substantial risk.” The bill must pass again in 2025 before appearing on the ballot in 2026.

In Georgia, lawmakers considered legislation that sought to impose cash or property bail for dozens of additional crimes, including misdemeanors. It failed due to disagreements between the House and Senate, but Republican state Rep. Houston Gaines, who sponsored the measure in the House, expects the bill to pass in the next legislative session.

Gaines, in an emailed statement, said: “Eliminating cash bail has been a disaster in places it’s been tried — even New York has reversed course on some of its radical policies. We can’t afford to create a revolving door of criminals who don’t show up for court and victimize other individuals.”

Political backlash and rollbacks

Between 2017 and 2019, a bipartisan movement for changes to bail systems gained momentum at both the local and state levels. Some states, such as New Mexico, New Jersey and Kentucky, sharply curtailed their cash bail systems by almost entirely eliminating cash bail, expanding release programs and moving toward risk-based assessments to determine pretrial release.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic strained crowded jails and detention centers, and agencies eased bail systems to reduce exposure.

Between 2019 and 2020, homicide rates increased 30% — one of the largest year-over-year increases on record, according to data released by the FBI and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Homicide gun deaths also surged 35% in 2020, the largest year-over-year increase recorded in more than 25 years. Despite these increases, the overall violent crime rate in the country did not increase during the pandemic, according to federal crime surveys.

In California and New York, policymakers rolled back their pre-pandemic changes to cash bail.

“Fears about public safety are in many ways greatly overblown and misplaced,” said Sharlyn Grace, a senior policy adviser at the law office of the Cook County Public Defender in Illinois. “It is exceedingly rare for someone who’s released pretrial to be arrested and accused of a new offense that involves violence against another person.”

A report released by the New York City Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice in 2021 found that about 95% of individuals arrested and released between January and September 2020 were not rearrested while awaiting trial, and there was a very little difference in rearrest rates before and after bail reform in the state.

New York had passed a sweeping overhaul in 2019, largely ending the use of money bail for misdemeanors and lower-level felonies, with a focus on imposing the “least restrictive” release conditions. The state’s bail law has undergone multiple rounds of revisions since then, primarily driven by calls from Republicans to amend or completely reverse the law.

In early 2020, New York expanded bail options, particularly in cases involving harm to a person or property. In 2022, the state further broadened the definition of “harm” and clarified factors judges must consider, such as criminal history, when setting release conditions.

This year, negotiations over additional changes led to the removal of the requirement for the “least restrictive” release, a proposal announced by Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul last spring.

Some state Democrats and criminal justice advocacy groups have strongly criticized these changes, arguing that the most recent revisions represent a rollback in progress.

“These rollbacks have had a serious effect on our pretrial population, and we’re still seeing the same kinds of wealth-based and racial inequities that were the drivers of bail reform in the first instance,” said Jullian Harris-Calvin, the director of the Greater Justice New York program under the Vera Institute of Justice, a national nonprofit criminal justice advocacy group.

Money bail remains prohibited for most misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies in New York, with some exceptions related to rearrested individuals.

In 2018, then-California Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, signed Senate Bill 10 into law, which would have made the Golden State the first to end the use of cash bail for all detained suspects awaiting trials. The American Bail Coalition, a nonprofit trade association representing the bail industry, pushed back hard, organizing Californians Against the Reckless Bail Scheme to lead a repeal effort through a veto referendum.

Voters repealed the measure in 2020. Some who opposed the law said the proposed risk assessment tool — which generally measures factors such as flight risk, public safety risk and criminal history — could potentially cause more harm than good, said Allie Preston, a senior policy analyst for criminal justice reform with the left-leaning policy institute Center for American Progress. Some bail policy advocates say using risk assessment tools in the pretrial process may contribute to more racial and socioeconomic inequities.

Jeff Clayton, the executive director of the American Bail Coalition, said in an interview that risk-based assessments are problematic because “there’s no scientific way to predict pretrial risk in terms of a particular defendant.” Clayton added that setting a bail amount offers more flexibility, which may be beneficial in some cases.

“The question is, can we engineer the alternate system better than the existing system of monetary bonds, posting bonds and staying in jail that’s existed throughout history?” Clayton said. “There’s reasons to suggest that we can’t do a better job.”

Although statewide change to California’s bail system failed, a few jurisdictions in the state have introduced other changes to their bail systems. Santa Clara County and the city of San Francisco both use risk assessment tools and offer other services to help those released pretrial return for their court dates and address needs, such as transportation.

The Los Angeles County Superior Court implemented a zero cash bail system in October. Under the new bail protocols, those charged with nonviolent or less serious crimes will be detained before arraignment only if a judge determines they present a threat to the community or a potential flight risk instead of whether they are capable of posting bail. In cases of violent and serious felonies, however, the bail system remains intact.

“[Los Angeles County’s new] bail policy is a really important step towards promoting safety and justice and away from a system where the rich are able to buy their freedom and the poor languish in jail,” said Claire Simonich, the associate director of Vera California, an initiative under the Vera Institute of Justice.

Some residents, county officials and members of law enforcement say the new policy will compromise law enforcement’s ability to address crime. And at least a dozen municipalities in Los Angeles County filed a lawsuit in September to block the new system from taking effect.

More legislative efforts

Lawmakers in some states have pushed for further changes in their legislative sessions.

Connecticut state Rep. Steven Stafstrom, a Democrat, said the problem in his state stems from an outdated constitutional provision that limits the state’s ability to deny bail, primarily reserving bail for capital offenses. But the state abolished the death penalty more than a decade ago. Since capital offenses no longer exist in Connecticut, there are limited legal grounds for holding people pretrial, especially if they have the financial means to post bail.

“We really need to first repeal that provision out of the state constitution and then move much more towards a risk-based system that takes into account someone’s risk and likelihood to flee as opposed to simply their ability to pay,” Stafstrom said in an interview with Stateline.

In Minnesota, a bill introduced by Democrats this year would limit the use of cash bail by the courts for misdemeanor offenses.

In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, where Cleveland is located, informal changes to the court’s culture and practices have reduced the number of people required to pay cash bail, according to The Marshall Project, a news outlet focused on criminal justice. The state supreme court also made changes in 2020 and 2021 aimed at reducing the number of people jailed before trial. Last year, voters passed a measure that requires judges to consider certain factors when setting bail, including public safety.

The adoption of alternative approaches, such as pretrial risk assessments, is gaining ground across the country. Some two dozen different risk assessment tools are in use in at least 26 states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

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Republican presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, center, speaks at a campaign event Thursday, Oct. 5, 2023, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

When Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis announced his presidential campaign in May, he proudly told the nation that Florida’s crime rate in 2021 had reached a 50-year low.

But really, DeSantis couldn’t say for sure.

That’s because fewer than 1 in 10 law enforcement agencies in his state had reported their crime statistics to the FBI. In fact, more than 40% of the Sunshine State’s population was unaccounted for in the data used by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement in its 2021 statewide crime report.

In Wichita, Kansas, Democratic Mayor Brandon Whipple claimed in May that violent crime had decreased by half during his term. But Whipple’s source, the FBI’s Crime Data Explorer, missed half the violent crimes recorded by the Wichita Police Department, possibly because the agency couldn’t mesh its system with the FBI’s recently revamped system.

Across the country, law enforcement agencies’ inability — or refusal — to send their annual crime data to the FBI has resulted in a distorted picture of the United States’ crime trends, according to a new Stateline analysis of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program participation data.

“We have policymakers making policy based on completely incomplete data. We have political elections being determined based on vibes rather than actual data. It’s a mess,” said Jeff Asher, a data analyst and co-founder of AH Datalytics, a data consulting firm.

Experts warn that some policymakers, knowingly or unknowingly, use those flawed statistics to tout promising crime trends — misleading voters. The inaccurate data also can affect efforts to improve public safety and criminal justice, potentially leading policymakers to miss the mark in addressing real community issues.

“They’re a little bit vulnerable to politicians who are kind of throwing around allegations and claims about crime that may or may not be accurate,” she told Stateline.

DeSantis faced criticism for repeating the incomplete numbers, and NBC News this summer reported that law enforcement rank-and-file had warned that the statistics weren’t correct.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement defended the numbers to NBC News, saying, in part, that “criticism about FDLE’s robust data collection methods is unfounded.”

FBI’s switch to a new system

A year ago, when the FBI initially released its 2021 national crime data, there wasn’t enough information to tell whether crime went up, went down or stayed the same. The FBI had estimated results for areas that declined to submit data or were unable to do so.

That’s partly because the FBI had rolled out a new reporting system. The data collection system, called the National Incident-Based Reporting System, or NIBRS, gathered more detail on individual incidents but also required training and tech upgrades by state and local policing agencies.

For the first time in two decades, the national law enforcement reporting rate fell below 70% in 2021, primarily due to the FBI’s transition. In 2022, many law enforcement agencies across the country were not NIBRS-certified in time to submit their 2021 crime data, which contributed to lower reporting rates.

Even before the new system launched, there was a gap in reporting nationwide. Prior to 2021, 23% of U.S. law enforcement agencies on average did not report any crime data to the FBI. In 2020, 24% of agencies did not report, and in 2021, it surged to 40%.

Inconsistent reporting not only hampers the ability to draw comparisons over time and across state lines, but also injects uncertainty into discussions about crime, said Ames Grawert, senior counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice’s justice program. The Brennan Center is a left-leaning law and policy group.

“Issues like that are invariably going to lead to some people having a misunderstanding of crime data — makes it harder to talk about crime in some states, especially given the low participation rate in Florida, for example,” Grawert said in an interview with Stateline.

The FBI’s latest crime report, released earlier this month, offers a glimmer of progress toward transparency: Seventy-one percent of law enforcement agencies nationwide submitted data through NIBRS or the FBI’s previous reporting system, up 11 percentage points from last year. About 60% of participating law enforcement agencies submitted their data exclusively through NIBRS this year. The FBI accepted data through both NIBRS and the older system this year, a change from last year’s NIBRS-only approach.

According to the incomplete numbers, violent crime in the U.S. dropped last year, returning to pre-pandemic levels, while property crimes saw a significant increase.

While crime data reporting to the FBI is optional, some states, such as Illinois and Minnesota, have laws requiring their local law enforcement agencies to report crime data to their state law enforcement agencies. State law enforcement agencies often serve as clearinghouses for local crime data, and in some states, they are responsible for sharing this data with the feds. Some local agencies also may send their data directly to the FBI.

But some states lag.

Florida, Illinois, Louisiana and West Virginia, for example, all remain below the 50% reporting mark, which means less than half of the police departments in their states submitted 2022 crime data to the FBI. Despite these reporting rates, the data shows that greater shares of these state’s populations were represented in last year’s data than in 2021.

Florida has had the lowest reporting rate two years in a row — 6% in 2021 and 44% in 2022 — partly because of the state’s ongoing transition to NIBRS. For 2021, the FBI did not accept Florida’s data through the previous data collection system, which would have represented about 58% of the state’s population, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Public Information Office.

“When people use this data to back up tough-on-crime approaches, and say, ‘Our approach in this state is working’ — when in reality, that’s not necessarily the truth because you don’t know the full scope of the problem,” said Murdock.

Roughly a quarter of the U.S. population was not represented in the 2022 federal crime data, according to a Stateline analysis. More than 6,000 of 22,116 law enforcement agencies did not submit data.

Major police departments, including those in big cities such as Los Angeles and New York, did not submit any data in 2021. NYPD said it couldn’t submit summary statistics in 2021 as it had previously because of the FBI’s change in requirements, but was NIBRS-certified this year. Both cities’ departments did submit summary data to the FBI in 2022 through the old reporting system.

The FBI’s 2021 agency participation data shows that the 10 states with the lowest reporting rates included a balanced mix of both blue and red states, while last year’s data shows more red states among the 10 states with the lowest reporting rates.

Political and social consequences

The gaps in the FBI’s crime data create significant challenges for researchers and policymakers attempting to make sense of crime trends. As elections draw near and crime has reclaimed the spotlight, these challenges become increasingly pressing.

During last year’s congressional elections, 61% of registered voters said violent crime would be very important when making their decision about whom to vote for, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center.

While the overall violent crime rate has steadily declined on average over the past 20 years, the Pew Research Center suggested that voters might be reacting to specific types of violent crime, such as homicide, which saw a 30% increase between 2019 and 2020 — one of the largest year-over-year increases on record.

“Voters tend to not have that kind of access. Politicians then try to play on voters’ concerns about crime, but without giving voters the information that will actually be useful for them,” Harvey said.

Experts expect that the challenge of incomplete national crime data — and the incomplete picture it presents — will persist for years because many law enforcement agencies still are working to adopt the new reporting system.

That could affect how policymakers allocate money for law enforcement, crime prevention programs and other public safety initiatives. With crime data, it’s important to know what types of crimes are included and to avoid narrow timeframes when describing trends, said Ernesto Lopez, a research specialist for the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan research think tank.

“Oftentimes relying on the FBI data, which tends to be outdated, really allows politicians to sensationalize a few news stories. Without having more up-to-date data, it may not be accurate,” Lopez told Stateline.

“Politician or otherwise, when we talk about crime, it’s really important to have a larger context.”

Federal assistance

Law enforcement agencies nationwide have received over $180 million in federal funding to help with the transition since the FBI’s switch to its new NIBRS reporting system was announced in 2015. Many law enforcement agencies are still working to fully transition to the new system.

For example, in Louisiana, the agencies serving some of the state’s most populous cities, including Lafayette, New Orleans and Shreveport, did not report any data to the FBI last year because they were implementing new records management systems, according to Jim Craft, the executive director of the Louisiana Commission on Law Enforcement.

Louisiana’s low reporting rate may be due to smaller law enforcement agencies reporting crime statistics through their local sheriff’s office, which makes it look like fewer agencies are reporting, Craft wrote in an email.

In Hawaii, the police departments serving Maui and Hawaii counties were not certified in time to submit data through NIBRS to the FBI last year, according to Paul Perrone, the director of the Hawaii Uniform Crime Reporting program. Last month, Hawaii became one of the few states where all law enforcement agencies are NIBRS-certified, Perrone wrote in an email.

Meanwhile, even as more law enforcement agencies submit data in coming years, experts warn that the FBI’s database accounts only for crimes reported to the police. And according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, over 50% of violent crimes and about 70% of property crimes are never reported.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

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