20 days until Election Day. What are evangelicals saying?

There are significant gaps in crime data. There always have been. Gaps in how data is reported, collected and categorized. It may never be fully resolved. With that said, the vast majority of analysts report that in general crime continues to fall across the country. I am not sure why Trump keeps hyping up that "crime is out of control"? There are a few narrow and inconclusive studies that show crime is up from a specific viewpoint. They are few. The vast majority show they are down. Trump likes to paint big cities or states that are controlled by Democrats and highlight crime is up under them. I am not sure if his angle is an attack on Democrats, or an attack on crime. My take is it is his approach to fearmongering to his base. Don't get me wrong, the Democrats do it a lot as well, and in general it is on part with politics overall.

Election cycles and general over-charged politics tend to result in a distorted view of how much impact federal—especially executive branch—influence has over things. Candidates usually willingly feed the distortion—until things go badly under their watch!

I’m convinced that local policy has far, far more impact on crime rates. The further you get from a city or county level policy, the more indirect the policy impact becomes. At the federal level, there is impact but it tends to be very slow—especially if you look at things like efforts to direct youth offenders in better directions.

The impact on serious crime rates happens several years after the kids first get in trouble. Add to that, it was years for the federal funding/programs to get set up locally. So pass a law, you see a crime impact maybe 5 or even 10 years later.

Not all crime policy is like that, but quite a bit is. (It has almost nothing to do with who is President.)

State level can have a quick impact, as Oregon showed when they decriminalized drugs… then pretty quickly decided that was a bad idea!

Aaron, I think you make a good point about local impacts on crime rates. I also believe it is enlightening to look at which political party is most often in charge in the areas where the crime rates are the highest. Many people are looking at those correlations and making voting decisions down ballot accordingly.

Fair enough.

A caution, though: Even locally, policy changes frequently don’t impact crime rates immediately. Sometimes they do, though. But the old dictum that “correlation is not causation” is important to factor in, short-term or long-term.

Still, you look at the situation, look at the policy, look at the elected leaders who made the policy or influenced it, make an informed judgment. Vote. It’s the best we can do. (And, in the history human civilization, it’s a lot! I don’t want to sound ungrateful. I’m really not.)