Picture the 1990s tough-on-crime era: a relentless War on Drugs and a subsequent 59% increase in the prison population in just seven years. Hold fast, as history is bound to repeat itself. 

A few hours after arriving at the White House, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that helps states get lethal injections to carry out the death penalty, which Former President Joseph Biden opposed. Trump also reversed Biden’s ban on the Department of Justice obtaining contracts with private prisons. 

More locally, California’s Proposition 36 passed with an overwhelming 68.4% approval, increasing penalties for theft and repeat drug possession offenses and reversing some changes made by Proposition 47.  

These shifts reflect a broader trend that will only lead to mass incarceration, which will harm communities much more than it benefits. Following the rightward shift in the nation, recent criminal justice policies revive the 1990s tough-on-crime approach that harshly criminalized as deterrence. 

On the other side, activists on the left advocate for police accountability and reform due to the systemic racism within the criminal justice system and policing. Decarceration is another priority as activists argue that the system is not designed to truly help anyone. 

“I think any push to address criminalization by making punishments more severe will continue to divide into groups who’s getting placed in jails,” Brianna Stodghill (‘26) said. “I definitely think especially when it comes to empathy, framing our justice system more around reformation and actually addressing the issues of why people become criminals [are] what we need over continuing to make the punishment more severe.” 

In March 2020, Breonna Taylor, an unarmed Black woman, was killed by police officers during a raid of her home, and in May 2020, George Floyd was killed by a police officer. These two events propelled the Black Lives Matter Movement, drawing attention to the systemic racism within policing. Support for defunding the police surged, particularly amongst white Americans. 

Cities across the nation joined in. The Los Angeles City Council slashed $150 million from the Los Angeles Police Department’s budget. Minneapolis promised to dismantle its police department. And New York City cut $1 billion from the New York Police Department’s $6 billion budget. 

Black Lives Matter appeared to be a turning point — until it was not. 

“It felt like the swing went really big one way because everyone was in support of this one moment, but in reality, when it came to policy creation, it was very limited in what it did,” said Stephanie Graefe, humanities department faculty. “There were investigations, and [they were] very state and locally specific.” 

Then, the perception of rising crime took over the nation in a storm. In a 2020 Pew Research survey, 40% of Americans perceive crime as a very big problem. But in 2024, 54% view it as a very big problem and a staggering 94% as a moderately big problem. The increasing preoccupation with and fear of crime lead people to vote for tough-on-crime policies, which have been touted as the solution to crime. 

“Crime started occurring a lot more in my life,” Lucas Cardenas (‘25) said. “I went shopping for Christmas, and three cars got broken into in that parking lot that we were in.” 

Whether crime did rise is a difficult question to determine. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program and the Department of Justice National Crime Victimization Survey are the two primary ways statistics are collected. 

The FBI shows that murder and manslaughter dropped by 11.6% from 2022 to 2023, rape by 9.4%, aggravated assault by 2.8%, and robbery by 0.3%. However, the FBI only counts cases reported to police forces that participate in the survey. 

Following a change of methodology in 2021, some big cities remain uninvolved; the survey covers 94.3% of inhabitants. Comparing the FBI’s data with the victimization survey — which automatically excludes murder and manslaughter victims — reveals that only 44.7% of violent crimes and 29.9% of property crimes are included in the FBI survey, an indication that the FBI statistics may not be accurate. 

In this victimization survey, violent crime is also shown to have declined from 2022 to 2023 by 9.7%. However, it increased by 37% from 2020, the last year of Trump’s presidency, though also a time of lockdown. 

Yet, the key lies not with the data but with public sentiment. Besides a general perception of more crime, there also exists an idea that those who commit crimes do so without shame or need — simply because they can.  

Viral videos have led to this perception. Whether it is two well-dressed women shoplifting a San Francisco boutique or a man indifferently whipping a woman with a pistol while robbing her, these videos create a sense of fear and outrage, fostering support for tough-on-crime policies. 

While tough-on-crime policies can effectively reduce crime in the short term, they are unsustainable and at great cost of justice. 

Incarceration causes harm by investing in a system that churns Americans in cycles of incarceration — using brute force to address urban inequality — which will ultimately manifest in occurrences like the killing of George Floyd. The shift from conservative to progressive criminal justice polices and vice versa are inextricably linked. 

However, liberal policies have also missed the mark. By making policies more lenient without sufficient preventive measures that address the root causes of crime, like poverty, Democrats are setting themselves up for failure. 

Democrats implement these policies at the expense of victims, who themselves face racial and socioeconomic discrimination — counterintuitive to the left’s goal to address systemic discrimination in criminal justice. 

Moreover, without adequate support, victims — who often experience trauma — can become perpetrators of crime as well, leading to more crime. For instance, 53% of women incarcerated in urban and rural jails have PTSD, compared to 10% in the general population. While prison itself could cause trauma, these women could have experienced trauma prior as well, possibly contributing to their involvement in crime. Instead of healing victims, the criminal justice system simply warehouses them. 

In fact, Ceasar McDowell, the CEO of a nonprofit criminal justice law firm called Unite the People, was himself a victim; McDowell’s father was murdered. As a 17-year-old with a 19-year-old brother, he was left with no income, no support, and PTSD. It was not long before he turned to robbery himself, which became the reason why he was sentenced to 25 years to life for threatening his girlfriend under California’s Three Strikes Law. 

In creating more crime with their current policies, Democrats breed the grounds for the fear that leads to tough-on-crime polices, personally handing over a victory to the Republicans. 

For example, initially receiving the promise that fairer policing could be achieved without sacrificing safety during the 2010s reform movement, New Yorkers were on board. And crime did continue to drop even when New York ended the stop-and-frisk practice. 

However, as soon as crime rose back up, New Yorkers elected a mayor who was a police officer and promised a return to tough-on-crime. 

New York’s experiment was over, and the pendulum of partisanship continued to swing. 

“We’re seeing this almost back and forth action between more commonly seen as liberal policies and conservative policies,” Marc Zambrano (‘26) said. “I think it doesn’t leave room for good discussion that can help the situation in general.” 

Rather than send the pendulum to the other side again and again, policymakers should aim for bipartisan cooperation.  

“I’m a religious person; I believe in forgiveness [and] trying to cooperate with people as much as you can,” Lucas said. “I’ve never felt anger or anything towards another party, but people do.” 

Bipartisan cooperation has already been occurring. Democrats and Republicans worked together to pass the First Step Act in 2018, an extensive reform package that reduces federal prison sentences. As of 2023, the recidivism rate stands at 12.4% for the 30,000 people released under the act, as opposed to the general federal recidivism rate of 43%. 

And bipartisan cooperation is still occurring; for example, Arizona unanimously passed a probation reform bill in 2024, and deep-red Oklahoma passed a second look law for resentencing cases with domestic violence as a mitigating factor. But bipartisan cooperation is subdued. 

Bipartisian efforts like the one to create the National Criminal Justice Commission, a panel of experts who would spend 18 months investigating and offering solutions to criminal justice, could serve as instrumental next steps. As many polarizing decisions are based on public sentiment, having extensive data and information can be invaluable to get us on the same page, the foundation for creating bipartisan solutions. 

With this commission, it is important to ensure diversity in personnel, ideologically, racially, academically, and professionally. At the same time that we value evidence, we must not let its pursuit hinder us from action. 

However, it is unclear whether Trump would revive criminal justice as a bipartisan issue. On the one hand, he was the one to pass the First Step Act, but on the other, his administration seems to have long moved past it. When Trump signed it, he intended to capture the Black and moderate swing voters, but in this election, his strategy had changed to energizing his base and turning out low-propensity voters. 

“I am optimistic because there’s a lot of parts of traditional conservative ideology that suggest that we should check and control the powers of government, which is also what liberals are saying,” Ms. Graefe said. “Right now, it feels hard, not necessarily because we can’t find common ground, [but because] that’s not what politicians want. Politicians want galvanizing powers that bring up a lot of frustration and anger among the people who voted for them.” 

What is good for a campaign is not necessarily good for the country. Yet, as we remain stuck in this power struggle, the most probable path to bipartisanship in the near future is if Democrats get elected for the next cycle and move to the center for more votes. The future of the Democratic Party is, however, unclear.  

If we fail to achieve bipartisan cooperation, the pendulum will swing yet again, crashing through families and trapping individuals in cycles of incarceration. 

As I become more involved in politics, I am driven by Kant’s imperative to treat people as ends rather than means. But can we break free from the politics that too often becomes a meaningless battle and truly use it as a tool to serve the people it is supposed to serve — or will we remain stagnant in this political game?