Not All Crime Policies Are Created Equal

Abstract

Previous research suggests that American presidents resort to the use of symbolic rhetoric because of public opinion, party affiliation, election year politics, and divided government. This research, however, treated crime policy as a general topic, disregarding the nuances that emerge from different types of crime policies. The research at hand posits not all crime policies are the same or handled the same politically, and thus divides them into seven crime policy categories: law enforcement, courts, corrections, juveniles, guns, death penalty, and drugs. Drawing upon the theory of symbolic rhetoric and categorizing presidential speeches from 1948 through 2010 into these seven categories, this study employs logistic regression to explain the influencing variables upon the likelihood presidents will employ symbolic rhetoric for each of these crime policy types. Findings suggest that although the use of symbolic rhetoric is different for each crime policy issue, there are two key factors that matter overall: divided government and party affiliation.