Kris Kobach takes credit for drop in Kansas crime rate. Let’s look at the numbers | Opinion

Kansas Republicans probably need to get their story straight.

Is crime in the Sunflower State dropping thanks to “law and order” GOP policies? Or is the crime rate “unacceptably” high?

It can’t possibly be both, can it? We can’t be both a paradise and a hellhole at the same time, can we?

I ask, because Attorney General Kris Kobach on Wednesday morning put out a press release claiming his tough-on-crime policies had led to a “dramatic drop” in crime across Kansas.

Property crimes are down 21.3%. Murders dropped 24%. Rape, robbery and burglary? All down.

“My office’s law and order approach is succeeding,” Kobach claimed.

That seems unlikely, for reasons we’ll get to shortly.

It is also kind of hilarious, because Kobach’s victory lap comes just a couple of weeks after Senate President Ty Masterson — a likely candidate for governor next year — decried the state’s awful crime rate.

“U.S. News ranks Kansas 39th for states with low violent crime, behind liberal crime havens like New York and Illinois,” Masterson wrote on X in mid-June. “Unacceptable.”

Well. Which is it, guys?

‘Large across-the-board declines’

I’m actually inclined to buy part of Kobach’s story — that crime is dropping in Kansas — because, it turns out, crime is dropping everywhere.

It’s dropping in Detroit: Murders are at their lowest rate in that city since 1965. It’s dropping in Philadelphia, which last year saw its fourth-lowest homicide rate in 55 years. In fact, NPR reported this week that murders across the entire United States declined by 14% in 2024.

“We’re seeing really not just declines, but large declines and large across-the-board declines. I mean, it’s everywhere,” Jeff Asher of AH Datalytics told the radio network.

That’s great news. We should all be happy.

And maybe I shouldn’t be so churlish that Kobach wants to take a little bit of credit for the good news. That’s what politicians do, after all.

Here’s what sticks in my craw, though: Across the border in Missouri, Kansas City police also reported a big drop in murders in 2024, to the lowest level since 2018 — even though Jackson County prosecutor Jean Peters Baker (who has since left office) was regularly criticized for being soft on crime.

If Kobach and Peters — with their differing approaches to crime — can both claim results, that sure seems to suggest something else is at play.

That “something else” probably is COVID-19. Murders surged during the hard pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, but the homicide rate has been coming down ever since then.

Kobach probably can’t take credit for ending the plague. He is, after all, suing vaccine makers.

GOP governor candidates’ conflicting ideas

Masterson is right about one thing: Kansas really did rank 39th on U.S. News’ “low violent crime” ratings, which tracks the estimated number of violent crimes per 100,000 population.

One possible reason for the disparity? U.S. News was relying on 2023 data. Kobach was using 2024 data. If crime really is coming down, then the older data would necessarily look a little bit worse.

Another likely reason for the difference: narrative.

Kobach, as the chief law enforcement officer in the state, has every reason to want to make it look like he’s doing a good job. And Masterson — a Republican who has his eye on the governor’s mansion — has every reason to make it look like Kansas is in need of rescuing from the Democratic governor who has been in charge for most of the last eight years.

The two men have different incentives.

Kobach and Masterson don’t have to get their stories straight to both run for office next year. It would be funny, though, to watch them run as Republicans with wildly different ideas — we’re great! we’re awful! — about how Kansas is doing.

And it might be a good lesson for the rest of us: Take all politician claims, good and bad, with a grain of salt.

This story was originally published July 3, 2025 at 5:08 AM.