Trump Says He's Fighting for Crime Victims, but They Say He's Making Them Less Safe
A survey of over 800 victims of crime reveals that their priorities don’t align with those of Donald Trump, even though he claims to be ramping up immigration enforcement and tearing up criminal justice reforms on their behalf, the New York Times first reported Friday.
The study was conducted by the Alliance for Safety and Justice, an advocacy organization that works for criminal justice reform. It reflects the answers of over 800 self-identified victims of violent and non-violent crimes, and has a margin of error of 3.4%.
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Big picture, the study reports that 50% of all victims of crime surveyed said they feel less safe with Donald Trump as the president of the United States.
The study also broke down the results by race, gender, and approval or disapproval of the president.
Women and black victims of crime felt even more unsafe than the respondents as a whole, with 59% of female victims of crime and 65% of black victims of crime surveyed saying they felt less safe with Trump in charge. This is especially concerning, given the already “long, disturbing history of black people calling the police and ending up dead.”
Some other interesting findings:
An overwhelming majority–84%–said they support “increasing drug and mental health treatment programs for people in the justice system.” Around half of victims of crimes surveyed also said they oppose withholding funds from so-called sanctuary cities and ramping up deportations of undocumented immigrants.
Notably, these ideas have been put forth by the administration under the guise of protecting victims of crimes who, as you can see by these results, don’t seem to want them.
As a reminder: increased ICE enforcement has had a real, demonstrable, and chilling effect on reports of crimes by victims of crimes, effectively silencing victims who fear they may be detained or deported after calling the police for help.
Also, when asked about a hypothetical situation where there were more funds available to combat crime, only 9% of victims of crimes surveyed said that money should go to deportations. And only 6% said prisons and jails should benefit from the extra funds. Instead, a majority of victims of crimes said that money should go to “rehabilitation and drug and mental health treatment.”
Perhaps most telling of all: Despite the fact that the president has used victims of crimes to push his agenda, 52% of victims of crimes surveyed said that Trump’s claims that crime is at an all-time high deliberately use “misinformation and fear for political gain.”