Responding to James Carville’s false claims about Crime in the Wall Street Journal

Dr. John Lott submitted a letter to The Wall Street Journal about false claims that James Carville made in an op-ed. The Journal didn’t accept the letter for publication, but here is what was sent in.

Dear Letters Editor:

James Carville’s piece contains a big lie in its first sentence (“Democrats Are the Anticrime Party,” May 26, 2021). It is understandable why Carville wants to claim that crime started declining in 1993, the first year that Bill Clinton was president, but the FBI Uniform Crime Report shows that both violent and property crime rates peaked in 1991 and started falling in 1992. If you look at murder, it too peaked in 1991 at 9.8 per 100,000, falling to 9.3 in 1992 and then rising briefly under Clinton’s first year to 9.5 before continuing down again.

As to the absurd notion that Trump was responsible for last year’s increase in violent crime and murder, it is just as ridiculous as Biden’s assertion that it was due to weak gun control. Crime increased for a simple reason: jail and prisons released large percentages of inmates, cities ordered police to stand down and cut their budgets, and Democrat District Attorneys in cities from Philadelphia to Chicago to St. Louis to Los Angeles refused to prosecute criminals. These were Democrat policies.

Sincerely,

John R. Lott, Jr., Ph.D.

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