Renewing The Department’s Focus On Violent Crime

Despite the DOJ’s pronouncements that violent crime continues to be a top pri- ority, it has increased across the United States. The department’s leadership must make actually reducing violent crime a priority across the United States—and it must do so in partnership with state and local officials in a manner that is tailored to the needs and conditions in those states and localities.

Targeting Violent and Career Criminals, Not Parents. The next conserva- tive Administration must ensure that the Department of Justice devotes significant effort to reducing violent crime nationwide. The Attorney General should require all U.S. Attorneys to develop a jurisdictional-specific plan—whenever possible in coordination with state and local law enforcement—to reduce violent crime within each of their districts. Then the Attorney General should hold each U.S. Attorney accountable for achieving actual results.

In recent years, federal and state officials have succumbed to calls from anti–law enforcement advocates for so-called criminal justice reform. The pleas- ant-sounding terminology of reform masks the darker reality of this movement, which is one that has supported dismantling effective federal, state, and local law enforcement and stripped away some of the most fundamental tools that law enforcement has long had at its disposal. This campaign is not just ill-advised; it has clearly had real-world consequences in the form of catastrophic increases in crime—particularly violent crime—nationwide. As discussed in the next section, the Department of Justice has a special obligation to restore law and order in such districts.37

Juxtaposed against this increase in violent crime are things like Attorney Gen- eral Merrick Garland’s October 4, 2021, memorandum directing the commitment of significant resources and energies to combating imaginary, politically conve- nient threats of violence toward members of school boards and their staffs during the heat of the Virginia gubernatorial race.38 There was no similar effort to inves- tigate elected officials and other public officers who conspired with outside allies to target and harass parents who were merely exercising their constitutional and statutory rights.39 If we are to continue to have informed and civil dialogue in the United States on issues of public concern, the DOJ must enforce applicable civil rights laws in an even-handed way when citizens’ livelihoods are threatened merely because they have exercised their rights.

Enhancing the Federal Focus on and Resources in Jurisdictions with Rule-of-Law Deficiencies. A disturbing number of state and local jurisdictions have enacted policies that directly undermine public safety, leave doubt about whether criminals will be punished, and weaken the rule of law. While the prose- cution of criminal offenses in most jurisdictions across the country must remain the responsibility of state and local governments, the federal government owes a special responsibility to Americans in jurisdictions where state and local prose- cutors have abdicated this duty.40

Jurisdictions suffering from deficiencies in the rule of law warrant, as appropri- ate within our federal system, greater attention and additional federal resources that are sufficient to protect the rights of American citizens and federal interests. In the next conservative Administration, the DOJ, acting primarily through its U.S. Attorneys, should therefore:

Use applicable federal laws to bring federal charges against criminals when local jurisdictions wrongfully allow them to evade responsibility for their conduct.41 The department should also increase the federal law enforcement presence in such jurisdictions and explore innovative solutions to bring meaningful charges against criminals and criminal organizations in such jurisdictions.

Where warranted and proper under federal law, initiate legal action against local officials—including District Attorneys—who deny American citizens the “equal protection of the laws” by refusing to prosecute criminal offenses in their jurisdictions. This holds true particularly for jurisdictions that refuse to enforce the law against criminals based on the Left’s favored defining characteristics of the would-be offender (race, so-called gender identity, sexual orientation, etc.) or other political considerations (e.g., immigration status). Pursue policies and legislation that encourage prosecution of violent crimes as well as appropriate sentences for such offenses. The Biden Administration has adopted policies that do not prevent armed career criminals, who actually commit violent crimes, from committing those crimes. A recent U.S. Sentencing Commission report shows that armed career criminals are consistently sentenced below their minimum sentencing guidelines range.42

There are valid reasons for sentence reductions in particular cases (for example, if the defendant has provided substantial assistance in prosecuting other offenders). At the same time, the DOJ must ensure that its line attorneys are consistently using the tools at their disposal in cases with violent offenders, including pursuing mandatory minimum sentences under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA).43 The department should also support legislative efforts to provide further tools, such as the Restoring the Armed Career Criminal Act, which Senators Tom Cotton (R–AR), Marsha Blackburn (R–TN), and Cindy Hyde-Smith (R–MS) introduced in 2021 in response to U.S. Supreme Court decisions neutering the ACCA.44

Enforce the death penalty where appropriate and applicable. Capital punishment is a sensitive matter, as it should be, but the current crime wave makes deterrence vital at the federal, state, and local levels. However, providing this punishment without ever enforcing it provides justice neither for the victims’ families nor for the defendant. The next conservative Administration should therefore do everything possible to obtain finality for the 44 prisoners currently on federal death row. It should also pursue the death penalty for applicable crimes—particularly heinous crimes involving violence and sexual abuse of children—until Congress says otherwise through legislation.45

DISMANTLING DOMESTIC AND INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL ENTERPRISES

Criminal organizations are as old as crime itself, but are more extensive, sophisticated, and dangerous today than at any other point in history. The Department of Justice has a key role in tackling transnational criminal orga- nizations like Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Mexican drug cartels as well as purely domestic criminal organizations like those built on the more traditional mafia crime model as part of its obligation to ensure the safety and security of the American people.

The department’s primary directive under the next Administration should be to return to an unapologetic focus on dismantling these criminal organizations and incarcerating their membership. Once this reprioritization occurs, the depart- ment’s political leadership should take concrete steps to use agency reach and resources to prevent these criminal organizations from operating and surviving. Assaulting the business model of these criminal organizations—which are massive, diversified enterprises with nationwide or international operations—is essential for success. The next Administration will therefore need to:

Revitalize the DOJ’s use of the array of statutory tools that exist for dealing with the threat of criminal organizations. The most potent ones are the simplest. For example, the department should:

1. Rigorously prosecute as much interstate drug activity as possible, including simple possession of distributable quantities.46 Recent efforts to create the impression that drug possession crimes are not serious offenses has contributed to the explosion of criminal organization activities in the United States.

2. Aggressively deploy the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO),47 which Congress expressly created to empower the Department of Justice to treat patterns of intrastate- level crimes, such as robbery, extortion, and murder, as federal criminal conduct for criminal organizations and networks. The next Administration can use existing tools while it works with Congress to develop new tools.

In addition to finalizing the southwestern land border wall, the next Administration should take a creative and aggressive approach to tackling these dangerous criminal organizations at the border. This could include use of active-duty military personnel and National Guardsmen to assist in arrest operations along the border—something that has not yet been done. A new and forceful approach to interdiction will have a ripple effect on the operations of these criminal organizations, which currently operate freely without concern for criminal prosecution, and will lay the necessary groundwork for initial prosecutions of these organizations and their leaders. It is critical that the federal government staunch the flow of drugs by preventing the far-too-easy access to the United States that now exists.

Secure the border,48 which is the key entry point for many criminal organizations and their supplies, products, and employees. Mexico— which is arguably functioning as a failed state run by drug cartels—is the main point of transit for illegal drugs produced in Central and South America, fentanyl precursors from the Chinese Communist Party–led People’s Republic of China,49 weapons, human smuggling and trafficking, and other contraband. Mexican drug cartels, including the dominant Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), are the main drivers of fentanyl production and distribution in the United States. The southwestern land border is sufficiently porous that Mexican drug cartels have operational control of large sections of the border, which facilitates easy movement of product and personnel. These cartels are also violent and not afraid to demonstrate force on both sides of the border. Their conduct represents a clear and present danger to the United States and its citizens. There can be no serious dispute that the Biden Administration has opened the southwest border to whomever wants to enter and that some of those entrants are smuggling fentanyl into the country. More than 100,000 Americans died in a one-year period from opioid overdoses, and many of them died specifically from having used fentanyl.50 The federal government should treat this problem as aggressively as necessary. Enforcing the customs and immigration laws is a matter of life and death.

PURSUING A NATIONAL SECURITY AGENDA AIMED AT EXTERNAL STATE AND NON-STATE ACTORS, NOT U.S. CITIZENS EXERCISING THEIR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS

The Department of Justice plays a vital role in protecting our national security, and it must not refrain from engaging in public initiatives that identify our adver- saries and educate the American people about their activities. The DOJ’s China Initiative under President Trump reflected the department’s priority of combating Chinese threats to our national security.51 Because China was accountable for approximately 80 percent of all prosecutions for economic espionage and approximately 60 percent of all thefts of trade secrets, then-At- torney General Jeff Sessions set key goals for the China Initiative that included development of an enforcement strategy concerning researchers in labs and universities who were being coopted into stealing critical U.S. technologies, iden- tification of opportunities to address supply-chain threats more effectively, and education of colleges and universities about potential threats from Chinese influ- ence efforts on campus. In February 2022, the Biden Administration terminated the department’s China Initiative largely out of a concern for poor “optics.”52 While the Biden Administra- tion correctly identified China as America’s “only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it,”53 it folded in the face of political cor- rectness and sent the message that liberal sensitivities outweighed bringing justice to threats from China. The next conservative Administration should therefore:

Restart the China Initiative.

Pursue other programs to educate the American people about the real and dangerous threats to our national security and economic security that are posed by actors across the globe, most notably China and Iran.

Ensure that it is agile enough to devote sufficient resources and attention to other emerging threats that involve federal interests such as increases in “sextortion,” ransomware, and the continued proliferation of child pornography.