Democrat politicians sometimes bend over backwards to make themselves seem ineffective at fighting crime or sympathetic to criminals, while Republicans rarely if ever do. Prosecutors are sometimes an elected position, so it is plausibly relevant.

They are harder on punishment, that much is proven. It is also proven that harsher punishments are a deterrent to crime.

If you rob a store and get caught and get a 100$ fine that's a bit different then if you rob a store and they cut your hand off for example.

typically they're asking to actually lock people up with high cash bails and non lenient sentences. keeping the criminals off the streets does work even if the bycatch injustice can be intolerable.

It’s not really about crime, it’s about race.

Ironically, the Democrat with the best résumé on crime of all time is sitting in the Oval Office right now.

If the crime is something like wage-theft (were businesses don't pay workers for hours worked) or attempting to overthrow the government, then no, but if the crime is feeding the homeless or seeking an abortion after being raped, then yes.

IMHO not only that, there is even historical precedent of what is unfolding before our eyes.

The mechanics:

1) while states (or countries) may differ in what they call a crime and in how they decide upon codifying it, how to police crime is almost always decided on the local level.

2) An overwhelming number of cities is run by democrats (or left-of-center parties in western countries)

3) often on such a long timescale that the GOP (or right-of-center parties) has significantly scaled down operations or even stopped nominating candidates altogether. NYC and CA come to mind.

4) While the right certainly has its weak-spots with its clerics (say, smearing some government responsibilities as „socialist“ while a sane mind could call them conservative as well or … just sane) the left certainly has issues with their clerics. Specifically in this case: smearing enforcing the law as racist (while a sane mind would call public safety a social welfare which disproportionately benefits the poorest).

The historical precedent:

It was the American city which, ruled by democrats for decades, became synonymous with crime in culture, evidenced by countless songs, TV-series and movies (or anti-american propaganda by the soviets) of the 1970s and 1980s).

Crime became so unbearable, American city dwellers started voting another party for the first time in decades (NYC and LA come to mind), spawning a political shift into other western countries as well (London, Milan, Marseille, Hamburg, Frankfurt etc).

The “racist” smearing happened back then (in the US it was search and frisk ridiculed as racist despite most performing officers being of the same ethnicity; in Europe its people like Scholz with “racist” skeletons in their closet from their days in local government).

But unlike racism what actually did happen was that people felt safe enough that they moved back into cities effectively ending decades of urban sprawl and starting the great renaissance of urban centers.

And I want to point out that voting GOP (or conservative in other countries) nationally wont fix crime locally. Rather treating our civic duties to actually engage in local elections.

Urban voters, while often overarching on (inter-) national democracy issues are making a mockery of their own governance standards locally when the mayorship effectively gets decided by whom the democrats (SF, PS, SPD, SPÖ, Labour, …) nominate.

Listen, I'm pro-choice too for early pregnancies, but the framing of all abortion as strictly a medical choice like it's taking an aspirin seems very reductive.

Funny enough there's a correlation between income inequality, rising rents, homelessness, and Rising crime.

it's almost as if people could easily afford a home, food, some leisure activities, and their monthly bills they find they have enough and don't need to turn to crime.

Numerous terrible tragedies have beset Black communinities since the Civil Rights era, and some of the worst have consisted of Thug Lyfe men, absent or abusive fathers, abandoned single mothers and their babies, and gangs being the best source of community for young boys and girls alike. The proposed final solution to this was just to kill them off before they had the temerity to be born, which has been the leading cause of death among Black Americans. It does not seem to have had the desired effect so far.

Harsh punishments, such as "the beatings shall continue until morale improves", are really not the pathway to a low-crime society. A low-crime society is one where people enjoy their lives and don't have wants or needs which can be best filled by turning to crime, especially the violent kinds.

The ruling parties have codified some really idiotic stuff into their platforms. It's a miserable situation for independents, moderates, and centrists.