I don't get where not being tough on crime comes from. Having grown up in a third world country with rampant crime, and also in the US (and having seen California decriminalize petty theft, traspassing and various other things), what is there left to do? Is the US system in need of fundamental changes? Yes, absolutely. But being soft on crime isn't going to make it disappear either.
The words "tough on crime" have a particular connotation, one which involves criminalizing minor offences then coming down with excessive punitive measures that are intended to deter crime. The end result is seen as being ineffective (punitive measures do not address the root causes of crime and will not alter the behaviour of some people) and is even seen as contributing to the problem (e.g. prisons may worsen, rather than reform, criminal behaviour; having a criminal record reduces opportunities that may steer people away from a life of crime).
If those words meant something different, such as people will be caught and expected to redress their crimes or prisons will attempt to reform behaviour and provide the tools to steer away from a life of crime after release, then being tough on crime would have fewer detractors.
And in many respects those detractors are right. The resources being invested into the current tough on crime measures would be better invested into addressing the causes of crime. It won't solve all of the problems since there are some genuinely nasty people out there, but there is a good chance that it would do a much better job.
The difference is that the US has the money to attack the root causes of much of crime: poverty, and (mental) health care.
But instead, it spends even more money punishing those who commit crimes. This has zero effect on reducing crimes, but makes people feel good about punishing the bad guys, because again: it's morally superior in American culture to punish 'The Bad People', and it's difficult to be elected on a platform that can be seen as helping 'The Bad People'.
The cost of putting 100 at-risk kids into after-school programs to help steer them away from crime isn't small. But if it keeps 1 person out of prison, it pays for itself many times over. And Americans, generally, don't want to fund this sort of thing.
By debating "tough" vs "soft" on crime you're already buying into their framing of the issue. "Tough on crime" in America is code for "feed people into the prison industrial complex for life for low-level crimes" thanks to things like Biden's "three strikes" policy. It's also rooted in racism, as typically the people the system is "tough" on are people of color.
To give but one example of the difference in mindset: Portugal has had great success by decriminalizing drugs and treating addiction as a mental health issue, whereas America prefers to throw people in a cage and ruin their lives because "drugs are bad". That's part of what America means by being "tough" on crime: lack empathy, don't look at individual circumstances, and treat mental health issues as crimes to keep feeding a for-profit prison industry and ever-increasing police power.
Edit: I wonder if the downvotes are partisan over my mention of Biden’s role in our current state of affairs. Just trying to help explain America’s peculiar pathology that led us to the shameful statistic of having the highest incarceration rate in the world.
