After being sworn in last week, newly confirmed United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions told Americans he was concerned about rising violent crime rates – what he called a "dangerous trend."
The comments sounded a lot like those from Sessions' boss, President Donald Trump, who promised to end "American carnage" during his inauguration speech last month, and repeatedly warned about a surge in violence throughout his campaign.
News outlets have been quick to correct the record. Crime statistics don't back the claims that violent crime is on the rise. Rather, law enforcement data show these crimes have been on a steep decline since the 1990s and have hit their lowest points in decades.
But both of these cannot be true. Either violent crime is rising or falling.
And the answer matters. Both Sessions and Trump wield great power in driving the national conversation and influencing criminal justice policy.
These policies come at great cost to the taxpayers – the War on Drugs is estimated to have cost more than $1 trillion – and the only way to effectively combat threats to the nation come from fact-based policies, said Ames Grawert, who studies crime trends as counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice in New York.
"If you start with bad facts, you're going to get bad policies that might make the country less safe, that might strain relationships further between police and communities of color, that send more people to prison for little reason," Grawert said.
So let's explore: Despite everything written to the contrary, could Sessions and Trump be right?