No major impact from Trump on crime

Attorney General Jeff Sessions wrote that President Trump deserves credit for reducing crime nationwide — after barely one year in office. His claim doesn’t pass the laugh test.

The new FBI data Sessions referenced show violent crime declined slightly in the first half of 2017. But crime is complicated. It’s affected by local factors (like policing) and social trends (like economic well-being) — neither of which is under exclusive federal control. Federal policy does matter, but decades of research show that Sessions’ reflexively punitive approach to law enforcement does more harm than good. And, it’s virtually impossible for policies enacted just months prior to have the impact Sessions claims. Indeed, one of the policies Sessions credits for “success,” record-high federal gun prosecutions, merely continues a trend begun in 2014.

So why did crime fall in 2017, after two years of increases? Something similar happened between 2004 and 2006; it may be that the crime rises in 2015 and 2016 were equally brief upticks from the general, post-1990 downward trend.

In other words, President Trump and Sessions didn’t head off a nationwide crime wave. It was likely never coming in the first place. Ames Grawert, counsel James Cullen, researcher Brennan Center for Justice New York

The Trump strategy is clear: Take credit for long-standing trends, just like he did with the unemployment rate and the stock market. President Obama wasn’t perfect, but Trump inherited a pretty healthy country. Stephen Cooper