Transcript: How Democrats Can Win the Crime Debate

Insha Rahman, the president of the Vera Institute, says a “serious about safety” approach is better for Democrats than “tough on crime” in terms of both politics and policy.

This is a lightly edited transcript of the June 1 edition of Right Now With Perry Bacon. You can watch the video here or by following this show on YouTube or Substack.

Perry Bacon: Good morning. I’m Perry Bacon. I’m the host of Right Now on The New Republic. Great guest today. I’m joined by the Vera Institute’s president, Insha Rahman, who is talking about criminal justice policy, immigration, policing—those are the kind of issues that Vera works on. Insha, welcome.

Insha Rahman: Thanks for having me, Perry. Glad to be here.

Bacon: So I want to start with the thing you all are talking about a lot. The phrase from the ’80s and ’90s was “tough on crime,” which is something the Republicans leaned into, but the Democrats leaned into as well. And the three words you all seem to be using a lot are “serious about safety.” I want to break that down. Talk about those three words themselves and why they’re more useful than “tough on crime,” because I assume that’s intentional.

Rahman: Yeah, it is intentional. “Tough on crime”—everybody knows what that means. We can all fill in what tough on crime is: more arrests, more punishment, more incarceration. And it has been the only option on offer in this country when it comes to people’s very valid desire to prevent crime, break its cycle, and be safe.

We have now been in several decades of tough-on-crime status quo in this country. As you said, both Republicans and Democrats have peddled in it. And the truth is, we are seeing two things.

One is that we now have really good evidence, over the past several decades, of what actually works to prevent crime and break its cycle—and it’s not those punitive measures. And we are a country where voters are in 2026. They are not in the 1980s, during the famous Willie Horton ad of 1988, or the 1994 crime bill.

What both parties—but especially Democrats—have an opportunity to do is to have a new brand and a new approach to safety. That’s where the “serious about safety” brand—and it is a brand—[and] that tagline comes from. Because Democrats aren’t seen as having a brand. Republicans, when we ask voters in the public opinion research we’ve done, “What do you think of their brand on crime?”—they say, “Oh, they’re tough on crime, they’re law and order.” Democrats? “We don’t know what they stand for.”

You can’t reclaim the tagline of the opposition. It simply doesn’t work. You’re not going to out-tough the GOP on this issue. So Democrats have a real opportunity to, first of all, have their own brand—being serious about safety—and to fill it with the meaning and the policies that voters actually favor: strong, accountable policing; addressing the overdose crisis and the mental health crisis; having safe streets and good quality of life, as well as tackling gun violence.

Bacon: It’s worth thinking about the words themselves—safety versus crime. Everyone wants to live in a neighborhood without crime. They also want to live in a neighborhood that’s safe. Do those words have different valences or different meanings?

Rahman: They do. You’re raising such an important point. One of the things we found in focus groups we did is: When you talk about crime, you tap into that primal fear, that instinct, which is a really potent one if left unchecked.

If you flip the frame of the debate to safety and you actually talk about what works to make our communities safe, you actually win over more voters. Voters want politicians to talk about safety, not just crime. Crime’s the thing they don’t want. Safety is the thing they do—which is why that flip is such an important one, and why we’ve been pushing it with politicians across the political spectrum, but especially Democrats, to say: You have an opportunity to create your own brand.

Bacon: You said a few minutes ago Republicans have the “tough on crime” and “law and order” brand, and Democrats don’t have one. Some people would say Democrats do have one. It’s “soft on crime” and “defund the police.” Do you think that’s true?

Rahman: Absent any other branding from Democrats, that’s where voters are going to go—Democrats’ brand on this issue has been painted by their opposition. And we have seen, especially since 2020, when “defund” became part of the common lexicon after the very valid protests in the summer of 2020 against police brutality—the murder of George Floyd and so many others—Democrats didn’t come out and say, We need a new approach to public safety. What happened to George Floyd and others should never happen again. Safety and justice are compatible—it’s not a false choice between one or another.

And in the absence of making that case, they let Republicans tar them as soft on crime, the “defund” folks. We have literally been tracking the amount of money being spent in election cycles on this. In 2022, it was about $250 million that Republicans spent against Democrats, calling them “defund,” “soft on crime.” In 2024, that went up to $1 billion. They pulled in a bunch of things—open borders, migrant crime. There were new Willie Horton characters in that Republican narrative.

Absent any counter and absent any clear narrative of what Democrats stand for, voters will think of them as soft, will think of them as needing to moderate—if they let “defund” and “soft” be the caricature of who they are.

It is not actually where most Democrats are. But they need to affirmatively say what it is they stand for. Owning safety, being serious about safety, talking about safety, talking about accountability, talking about justice—that is actually where the vast majority of voters are. It will help them find a new brand.

Bacon: I want to go back a little bit, because it’s helpful. The period of 2010 to 2020 was actually not a lot of—the police funding was zeroed out in zero places, as far as I know. What actually happened was a lot of policies to make the system less punitive—bail reform, you worked on, making the police wear body cameras. Some of those policies were better than others, but I viewed the 2010-to-2020 wave of policies as things that made the police more scrutinized, and I viewed those as a good thing.

Can you talk about that a little bit? It was not all defunding. In fact, no defunding happened. That’s why I find this whole discourse kind of frustrating. Sorry.

Rahman: Yeah, absolutely. Here’s the thing—voters deserve an honest debate about public safety, and what they get instead are political rhetoric and scare tactics. What a crying shame. All of us as voters should demand better from both parties.

So in this era, from about 2013 to 2020, we actually saw really significant reforms across the country. Bail reform—and that is not just let them all go free. It is actually taking wealth out of the equation, having public safety determine who stays in jail and who’s released pretrial.

More measures of police accountability, especially as we watched Eric Garner, Philando Castile, and so many others be murdered at the hands of police. And you’re right—there was no defunding happening.

What there was, though, was a real public conversation about: We are arresting and incarcerating too much, and that’s actually not the way to get safer.

The other trend that happened in that time is, if you look at GOP spending on crime scare tactics, it was very low. It just wasn’t what the political debate was about. It was about healthcare, the economy, racial justice and the politics of race. But it was not about policing or crime and public safety. That emerged as the political cudgel that we now know it to be in election cycles really around 2020.

And so that’s the other important point for Democrats, who I’ve often heard say, This is as old as time, this Willie Horton playbook. We’ve been losing on it since 1988. Maybe we had a brief blip in 1994, and that’s what we should return to.

That’s actually the wrong way to look at this. Voters aren’t in 1994. They’re in 2026. And they have seen that police left to their own devices—without accountability, with just a blank check of funding—that’s actually not where most American voters are.

What they want is police to play a role—to solve serious crime, respond to 911 calls, clear cases—but they don’t want police to be the default or........

© New Republic