New numbers expose conservative ‘tough on crime’ hypocrisy

Crime. For decades, it’s long been a tried-and-true election tactic of the American political right to campaign under the “get tough on crime” banner.

The model was cynically perfected during the 1988 presidential campaign in the infamous and racially charged “Willie Horton” ads crafted by supporters of then-Vice President George H.W. Bush to attack Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis.

That said, the practice goes back at least as far as the 1968 presidential campaigns of Richard Nixon and George Wallace and has continued right through to the present day.

You’ve seen and know these ads. An ominous sounding narrator describes a horrific crime allegedly attributable to the “soft” policies of the attacked candidate. Frequently, the ads play the race card by highlighting situations in which the crime victim is white, and the perpetrator is a person of color. In the ‘88 campaign, it was Bush’s top campaign aide Lee Atwater who even went so far as to rename the offender in question — William Horton — as “Willie” in a blatant effort to play up racist stereotypes.

Of course, it must be said that there has sometimes been more to the political right’s crime-oriented politicking than mere campaign ads. Conservative politicians have also often followed up on the ads by enacting new laws and policies that lengthen criminal sentences, limit the rights of people accused of crimes, and even militarize law enforcement.

Some of these “get tough” policies have probably made a modest difference in some places and some situations, while many – think of the ill-fated and disastrous “war on drugs” and President Trump’s cruel ongoing war on immigrants — have done little more than erode the Constitution cause our prisons to overflow and become breeding grounds for hopelessness and more crime.

If, however, there’s a most maddening aspect to the right’s longstanding obsession with “crime” – one that fuels the suspicion that the whole thing is more about stoking the fears of white voters, abetting misogyny and winning elections than effectively addressing the issue – it’s the way conservative politicians have so often ignored and undermined the kinds of unsexy policies that can make a real difference.

A recent report authored by NC Newsline journalist Greg Childress – “Worrisome domestic violence statistics aren’t declining in NC” — serves to highlight this sobering reality.

As Childress reported, “In 2025, more than 63,000 people in North Carolina reported being victims of a crime committed by current or former spouses, partners or family members, according to a report released this week by the state’s Criminal Justice Analysis Center.”

The story goes on to report this truly remarkable fact: “Domestic and family violence in 2025 accounted for the majority of murders of women and girls in the state, and more than half of reported kidnappings and simple assaults, according to the report.”

In view of such large and disturbing numbers, you’d think that supporting programs and policies that target domestic violence and aid its victims would be a top, if not the top, law enforcement priority for elected officials.

Unfortunately, that’s not been the case. As Childress also reported, funding for programs that combat domestic violence has declined significantly under the budgets crafted by Republicans in Washington and Raleigh in recent years.

This is from the story:

“Elizabeth Sager, director of evaluation at the N.C. Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said the reduced funding has caused several domestic violence organizations to close over the last three years. ‘Other agencies have had to take on neighboring counties to cover that population, and there’s one right now that just launched a GoFundMe campaign so that they can try to keep their doors open,’ Sager said.”

Think about that for a moment. A domestic violence program – the one to which Sager referred is a Greenville-based program that serves Pitt, Martin and Washington counties – is having to beg for online donations to stay open at the same time that conservative politicians who’ve been crafting our state and national budgets are waving the “tough on crime” flag.

It’s hard to imagine a more obvious and disturbing bit of political hypocrisy.

Of course, the hard and sad reality is that it’s not possible to mobilize the right’s political base – which tends to tilt white, male and macho – with ads or policies that promote funding for programs largely run by women for women and children seeking to escape abusive partners.

Especially during weekend football games, it’s better to run ads that play to racial and gender fantasies and stereotypes. Never mind that given the widely accepted connection between big games and violence toward women, a more accurate anti-crime ad might feature promises to “get tough” on beer-swilling knuckleheads who take out their frustrations over their favorite teams’ performances and their gambling losses on their wives and kids.

The bottom line: criminal behavior is and always has been a vexingly complex problem that cries out for dispassionate and bipartisan policies grounded in data and backed by adequate funding. Right now, this is an area in which North Carolina is falling well short.