OPINION:
Washington is in the midst of a crime crisis. Through Nov. 21, violent crime in the nation’s capital is up 40% from 2022. Homicides alone are up 35%, while robbery is up 67% over this point last year. There have already been more murders in D.C. this year than any full year in the last 20.
But perhaps nowhere is the lawlessness of our nation’s capital more on display than with regard to carjackings, which are up 104% from last year. Recent reporting has found some important commonalities among the District’s carjackers — namely, two-thirds of D.C.’s carjacking arrestees are under 18, and many of them are repeat offenders.
Teen offending, like adult criminality, concentrates on a very small number of offenders. These young people are typically either associated with or being recruited by street gangs and are often pressured by adults to commit violent crimes.
Thankfully, there are well-documented ways to reduce that kind of offending. Look to Louisville, Kentucky, for a recent example of solutions.
In recent years, Louisville has experienced substantial increases in teen violence, with arrest rates of underage homicide suspects 50% higher than the national average and a majority of carjacking arrestees being under 18 in 2020 and 2021. This prompted Republican state Rep. Kevin Bratcher to begin working on what would become House Bill 3, a comprehensive violent juvenile offender accountability and treatment bill. While some of this bill dealt with issues specific to Louisville, many of its provisions offer policies and best practices worth adopting in Washington.
Most importantly, the bill required that any juvenile charged with a serious violent offense — such as murder, rape, robbery, first-degree burglary and so on — be immediately detained for a period not to exceed 48 hours.
This mandatory detention serves two purposes.
First, it protects the public and the juvenile by disrupting the cycle of violence. Second, it ensures meaningful time for mental health and drug abuse evaluations and comprehensive evaluations of the risks posed by the juvenile before a judge ultimately determines long-term release conditions or pretrial detention.
The bill also funded a new detention center in Louisville and treatment programs intended to get juveniles with one foot in the streets and one foot in civil society back on the right track. This includes funding cognitive behavioral therapy, which is being used to get serious juvenile offenders back on a positive life course. Why fund programs in facilities and not just in the community? Treatment programs for high-risk youthful offenders are most effective after 200 hours of treatment.
The new law creates early intervention points for truants who show no improvement in their diversion programs. It does so by allowing an interdisciplinary team to alter the treatment modalities earlier and a judge to hold noncompliant parents accountable if they willingly refuse to aid in their child’s diversion plan. Unresolved truancy is strongly predictive of future juvenile delinquency and even adult criminality. So, getting it right with those children today can prevent serious violence tomorrow.
Finally, policymakers should apply added pressure on the adults who so often are driving juvenile violence from the shadows. D.C. currently makes it illegal for an adult to induce a juvenile to commit a crime or join a gang. Violation of that law comes with a maximum sentence of six months’ imprisonment. Recruiting a juvenile into a gang in Kentucky comes with a much stiffer penalty of five to 10 years in prison.
While juvenile violence continues to rise in Washington, it has leveled off and shows signs of decline in Louisville, where total shootings are down nearly 10% from 2022. Rising crime isn’t a foregone conclusion. D.C. doesn’t need to be held captive by disorder and declining public safety, but reversing course requires bold action.
• Joshua Crawford is director of criminal justice initiatives at the Georgia Center for Opportunity.
