Rep. Crockett says committing a crime doesn’t make you a criminal

Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, argued that people who commit crimes out of desperation should not always be considered as criminals.

Crockett appeared on Jonathan Van Ness’ “Getting Better” podcast, where the host asked her to share one key fact she wishes more people knew about crime in America.

“I would imagine that you worked with a lot of people that were like wrong place, wrong time, like didn’t have a voice, like were falsely accused,” he said. “What do you wish that people knew?”

Crockett said her work with indigent clients in Texas led her to “understanding what ends up having people become criminally impacted really informs so much of what I do legislatively.”

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“So, when people are like, oh, you know, ‘crime is terrible!’ and yes, it is, right? Like, because when somebody goes out and commits a crime, they don’t typically, you know, say, ‘Well, I’m a D,’ or ‘I’m a R,’ or ‘I’m a I,’” she said.

“It’s about, well, ‘How do you fix it? How do you make the community safer?’” she proposed. “And I do think that I’m in a unique situation because I was having the conversations with people that were going out and committing crimes. And so, I understood what was kind of pushing them there. And so, I do want people to know that, just because someone has committed a crime, it doesn’t make them a criminal. That is completely different. Being a criminal is more so about your mindset. Committing a crime can come for a lot of different reasons.”

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Van Ness agreed with the concept of a “crime of survival” being different from a person committing crimes for the sake of opportunistic gain.

“It could have been like a crime of survival. If you’re trying like you stole, like, diapers because you have, like, no money and, like, you got kicked off stamps and, like, your kids got, like, f—— raging diaper rash, what are you going to do? Like, just sit there and watch your kids’ like a– fall off?” he asked, juxtaposing this “versus a criminal mindset which is like ‘I’m going to evade taxes. I’m going to be super duper corrupt. I’m going to like inflate this thing and do like repeated actions over and over and over again without attempting to like heal or get better.” 

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Crockett served as a public defender and civil rights attorney before becoming one of Texas’ most prominent representatives. She has argued that, rather than illegal immigrants, “it’s the MAGA gang” who are responsible for crime being “out of control” in America’s cities and suggested the purpose of the police is not to prevent crime.