DC’s criminal justice reform brings in the most violent year in two decades
Zachary Faria
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Washington, D.C., is now in the midst of its most violent year in two decades. Suddenly, the criminal justice reforms pushed by the D.C. Council aren’t looking so grand.
Through Aug. 6, the city has seen 161 homicides this year. That is a 28% increase over the same time period last year. For context, those 161 homicides through just seven months are more than the city saw in all twelve months of 2018. The homicide surge has included a larger number of minors than in recent years, and assuming crime demographics are the same as the rest of the country (as well as D.C.’s recent history), somewhere around 90% of the victims have been black.
CRIMINALS NEED TO BE LOCKED UP
The problem has become so dire that Democratic Councilman Trayon White Sr. has called for the National Guard to be deployed to the city. “The crime is out of control and getting worse by the day,” White said. “Kids and innocent people are getting killed. It’s becoming status quo with no end in sight.”
To his credit, White is the only member of the council who at least wanted to tap the brakes on the city’s rapid descent into pro-criminal reforms. He was the only one who voted against overriding Mayor Muriel Bowser’s veto of the infamous criminal code overhaul. Every other member of the council voted in favor of weakening the penalties for home invasion, carjacking, and, of course, murder. Eventually, Congress stepped in to spike the bill itself.
But the radical pro-criminal ideology of the council persisted throughout. The city refuses to keep criminals behind bars for long, with violent criminals often being let out just as soon as they are arrested. Criminals in Washington, D.C., understand that they face little to no punishment for their crimes, causing them to become more brazen and more violent until they meet some form of punitive resistance, which the city is too squeamish to offer.
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The solutions are pretty simple. Thieves should be prosecuted and jailed. Violent criminals should be locked up for years. Violent criminals with rap sheets should be locked up for decades. Murderers should be locked up for life. You would think this is all very uncontroversial and that most people would agree with it. But that hasn’t been the case in Washington, D.C., and people are being killed at a record rate as a result.
The refusal to prosecute and jail criminals is the hallmark of liberal “criminal justice reform” that has hallowed out cities such as San Francisco and Portland and is doing the same to Chicago and others. Washington, D.C., the most Democratic of all Democrat-run cities, fully embraced the movement and received record homicides in return. The city does not need more reform; it needs a total attitude change toward crime, starting with a complete overhaul of city leadership.