Local View: Republican states 'tough on crime,' soft on results

By Randall G. Shelden

As the election heats up, several predictable battle lines have been drawn, clearly distinguishing between "Republican" and "Democratic" strongholds, with several "swing states" that could go either way. While the subject of crime is not the hot issue it once was, a look at crime-control policies and their effectiveness provides some interesting findings. A new report by the Justice Policy Institute is revealing.

Called "Swing States: Crime, Prisons and the Future of the Nation," the study compares states considered "Republican" (e.g., Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, Idaho, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Louisiana), "Democrat" (e.g., California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts), and "swing states" (e.g., Arizona, Florida, Missouri, Nevada). It should be noted that the states included within each category were based on an analysis by the New York Times on July 31, so some "swing states" have changed by this time (e.g., Arizona is now Republican).

What they discovered shows that the more "liberal" Democratic states have experienced a larger drop in crime from 1993 to 2002 than the "get tough" Republican states.

Between 1993 and 2002, incarceration rates went up 30 percent in Republican states, compared with an increase of about half that much (15.7 percent) in Democratic states. Decreases in crime occurred all over the country over the past 10 years, but especially in traditional Democratic states. Thus, the crime rate went down 37 percent in Democratic states, while it went down 17 percent in Republican states. Violent crime dropped 43 percent in Democratic states, compared with a 27 percent decrease in Republican states. In the "swing states," the incarceration rate went up by an average of 39 percent, while the crime rate went down by 19 percent.

Looking at expenditures on criminal and civil justice systems, the authors found that in Republican states they went up by a greater amount than in Democratic states (57 percent vs. 32 percent). In swing states, expenditures went up by an average of 58 percent. In other words, Democratic states appeared to have received more bang for their bucks.

Perhaps the most telling statistic the study revealed concerned disenfranchisement of convicted felons (most states prohibit felons from casting a vote). Using data from the year 2000, researchers found that in more than half of the "swing states" (specifically Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin), the number of those disenfranchised exceeded the margin of victory. Overall, in Democratic states a total of 846,486 felons were disenfranchised, which represented 1.2 percent of all voters. In Republican states, just more than 2 million were disenfranchised, representing 3 percent of all voters. (A recent scholarly study showed that had ex-felons been allowed to vote, Gore would have won the 2000 election.

Disenfranchisement falls most heavily on blacks, and in 2000 almost 9 percent of blacks were disenfranchised in Republican states compared with 5.4 percent in Democratic states. Among the swing states, 8.4 percent of black voters were disenfranchised. In the key state of Florida, 16 percent of black voters were disenfranchised (827,207), and this is where Bush won by a mere 537 votes.

It should be noted that according to the latest polls, three of the "swing states" in this study are now leaning Republican: Arizona, Missouri and Ohio. Looking at how these current "swing states" voted in 2000, we find a mixed bag as far as increases in imprisonment rates are concerned and decreases in crime rates, and a correlation would be hard to find.

For instance, Florida (Bush) experienced a one-fourth increase in incarceration rates and a decrease in the crime rate of just over one-third, while in Missouri (Bush) the incarceration rate went up by two-thirds accompanied by a modest drop in crime of about 10 percent. In contrast, in Iowa (Gore) the incarceration rate increased by 72 percent along with a modest drop in crime of 10 percent, while Minnesota (Gore) had a 40 percent increase in their incarceration rate, but a crime drop of 19 percent.

Perhaps the most interesting contrast was between West Virginia (Bush) and Wisconsin (Gore): The former saw its incarceration rate jump 108 percent but a mere 1 percent drop in crime, while the latter had a 96 percent increase in incarceration rate with a 20 percent drop in crime.

It is difficult to draw hard and fast conclusions from the data revealed in this study. However, one thing seems clear: Strongly Democratic states tend to have somewhat better success at reducing crime than strongly Republican states. It should also be noted that the South, with an extremely strong Republican voting record over the past four decades, has consistently had the highest rates of incarceration, the highest rates of violent crime, the most executions and the highest rates of disenfranchisement of black citizens.

There's an old saying that applies here: In science, especially the social sciences, there is no such thing as a perfect correlation. What the authors of this study have done, however, is emphasize that there is at least some correlation between voting patterns and crime policies, and their successes. It is something to think about before you go to the polls.

Randall G. Shelden is a criminal justice professor at UNLV. A longer version of this commentary can be seen on his website: www.sheldensays.com.