Bad-faith stories around safety and justice underpin many of the current threats to democracy. Speaking clearly and honestly on these topics is essential–and persuasive to voters.

Dear friends,

I have been growing increasingly concerned about the lack of plain talk and swagger on justice, safety and punishment, issues that thread the now-bursting seams of this democracy. 

It’s a familiar playbook: lies about safety are the pretext for consolidating authority. And that consolidation requires the infrastructure of a failed criminal justice system to take effect. Mass deportations cannot happen at scale without local law enforcement cooperation or without a massive system of local prisons and jails to hold people. Intimidation of political opponents relies on building an apparatus of prosecutors, courts and incarceration that is ever-more permeable to politics, ready to bend to the powerful and elusive of accountability. Over the past two weeks, we’ve seen public safety used as the pretext to deploy the National Guard and Marines in Los Angeles–which we *know* only makes the situation more volatile.

So today, I want to cut through some of the noise and smoke on a couple of big topics related to safety and justice that have been swirling around in the discourse. 

Let’s break a few things down. 

First: Crime is down. Like, a lot. 

Facts: Since 2023, homicides have been falling at the fastest rate ever recorded. At the end of 2024, homicides fell below the 2020 levels. According to an analysis by the Council on Criminal Justice, crime fell from 2023 to 2024 in 12 of 13 major categories. Early indicators from 2025 suggest that we could be on track in 2025 for the lowest murder rate since we started keeping records. Why did this happen? One of my favorite succinct summaries of the prevailing wisdom comes from criminologist Jeff Asher who states: “we spent a lot of money everywhere on stuff.” By “stuff” here he is talking about all the good things the government can do: invest in jobs, in healthcare, in community programs, in gun violence intervention. The exact kind of “stuff” the Department of Justice just cut when they slashed an estimated $500 million in grants for community safety programs. 

Crime rates and homicides rates are a critical indicator for safety. Here’s another: overdose rates have plummeted. Drug fatalities fell nearly 27% in 2024, reaching the lowest number since 2019, and experts credit a good portion of that decline to drug treatment. Our rates of violence and overdose deaths are still unacceptably high. But the crystal clear lesson is that when we made historic investments in Medicaid, community, infrastructure, in turning the country back on and then some after the pandemic, what we did…worked. We’re not done. We’re not anywhere near as safe as we should be but we know what works and we know what works fast. We need an abundance—yes, I said it—of additional investments. 

More facts: Immigrants don’t cause crime. Protests don’t cause crime. Be loud about this, reject misleading premises, and don’t let any political theater trying to establish the contrary dissuade you. It is absolutely worth paying attention to the fact that the budget reconciliation bill includes tens of billions in funding–and adds nearly a trillion in additional costs–for incarceration, deportation and law enforcement (while slashing billions for public health investments known to increase safety). And, importantly, this budget bill coincides with President Trump’s signing executive orders and restructuring the federal government to reduce accountability and “unleash” law enforcement. 

We see the convergence of all these steps playing out in Los Angeles: lies about immigrants and crime are used to justify massive sweeps. The outcry to these harsh actions is used to justify yet more heavy-handed enforcement. And guard rails around due process and fair treatment have been torn down–again under the pretext of safety. (In case you’re wondering, crime went down 7% in Los Angeles from 2023 to 2024, including a 14% reduction in homicides, and statewide violent and property crime in California decreased by 5% and 9%, respectively.)  

So don’t fall into the trap: rising crime is not a reasonable justification for the increases in criminalization we see happening. The argument doesn’t hold water, and these actions may well have the opposite effect as well as eroding the rights and freedoms we hold dear. And it pulls our attention and dollars away from the work of actually increasing safety.

Second: Talking about justice is not a distraction.

Of all the takes, one that I have found among the most frustrating is this analysis that talking about justice is not a winning strategy. There have been those saying, for example, that it’s a mistake to talk about Kilmar Abrego Garcia and disappearances and deportations, that Democrats’ sole focus should be on affordability and economic issues.

This is wrong on so many levels. Most importantly, the ethical: when someone has been denied due process and incarcerated–let alone disappeared to another country’s prison–we talk about it because it’s the right thing to do. But it also turns out that hearing about these cases is persuasive to voters precisely because what is happening to real people and their families is so wrong. Consider the New York Times/Sienna College poll results below:

Source: New York Times, May 2025

Finally, talking about justice IS talking about affordability. We just released a new accounting of what incarceration costs the families of incarcerated people and the results are pretty staggering: each year a loved one is incarcerated, families pay more than $4,000 to stay in touch, care for minor children, and provide essential items behind bars. That’s more than a quarter of the income of someone living at the federal poverty line. For Black people, the cost is even higher—a jaw-dropping $8,000 each year. More criminalization and incarceration will only make the affordability crisis worse for everyday Americans.

Third: We need fewer prisons, not more.

We simply don’t need more prisons. No caveats, no exceptions. We’ve all heard about President Trump’s desire to reopen Alcatraz and Florida's plans for an "Alligator Alcatraz", plus the administration expediting private and no-bid contacts to increase detention beds and seeking to reopen previously shuttered prisons. We can’t afford them, we can’t staff them, and again, they aren’t justified on public safety grounds. Check out our recent note on why building more prisons is the wrong approach, and be loud on this point. 

To the lawmakers reading this: keep visiting prisons of all kinds–immigration detention centers, local jails, state prisons, prisons in other countries. Having eyes on them matters greatly. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t have seen the arrest of Newark’s Mayor Baraka and the indictment of Congresswoman McIver for their visit to a New Jersey immigration detention center that has since been in the news for its inhumane conditions.

The time is now: be clear on safety, be loud on justice

Those of us in the work of reforming our country’s most broken and ineffective systems–like our criminal justice and immigration systems–spend a lot of time facing the government at its worst: punitive, discriminatory, opaque, even cruel. 

Government can also be...better than that. It can, in all its blunt and moderated imperfections, be a force for more accountability, the infrastructure for learning and spreading the reforms that work, a channel to invest in communities and reapportion funds towards those harmed by violence of all kinds. 

If you find yourself tongue-tied on safety or justice–please reach out. We are here and ready to offer resources and support.

Zoë Towns

Executive Director, FWD.us