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The Sounds Of Silence: American Criminal Justice Policy In Election Year 2008, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Faculty Publications

One of the striking features of the 2008 election cycle has been the absence of crime as a national political issue. Nobody has declared metaphorical war on any type of crime, run an ad about the depredations of a parolee, or even promised 100,000 cops. It may simply be that for a country embroiled in two nonmetaphorical foreign wars and deeply nervous about the state of the economy, crime is a second-order concern. It could be that the big drop in crime of all types throughout the 1990s has made the issue seem less pressing. Whatever the explanation, things are …