How Criminal-Justice Reform Fell Apart

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

53% : Earlier this month, he called on states to spend stimulus money, passed as pandemic relief, on law enforcement.
48% : Biden finally signed an executive order yesterday that establishes a database of fired officers, bans chokeholds, and includes some other provisions, but it's only binding on federal law-enforcement agencies -- not the overwhelming majority of the roughly 18,000 police departments in the country.
46% : One of the many victims of this crime wave was the fledgling bipartisan consensus on criminal justice.
43% : Although Los Angeles and Portland embarked on high-profile reductions in police budgets in 2020, both cities restored and increased funding in the face of rising murder rates.
41% : Funding police is not necessarily antithetical to new approaches -- Democrats have noted that extra cash can help fund mental-health response programs as an alternative to sworn officers, for example -- but Biden's comments underscore how policy makers have switched their focus from reform to crime-fighting.
39% : Support for Black Lives Matter, disapproval of police, and belief that Black Americans suffer regular discrimination surged, especially among white Americans.
38% : For a brief period, culminating two summers ago, the United States seemed to be on the verge of a serious rethinking of its approach to criminal justice.
31% : Although his role in passing the 1994 crime bill was a liability in the 2020 Democratic primary, his skepticism of calls to defund the police and long ties with law enforcement helped neutralize Trump's attacks.

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