By Hudson Crozier, Daily Caller News Foundation | August 16, 2025
Years of left-wing governance in Washington, D.C., have allowed rampant crime and public safety problems to fester, prompting federal intervention.
President Donald Trump has deployed more law enforcement and the National Guard to D.C.’s streets and moved to federalize D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) in recent days, citing alarming data such as the fact that the nation’s capital has the fourth highest murder rate in the country.
In the long term, the Trump administration’s legislative goals threaten to upend numerous liberal bail and sentencing policies that the overwhelmingly Democratic-voting town has long embraced while administrative challenges hampered its ability to enforce the law.
Local Democratic leaders’ comments and misleading police data fuel the narrative that D.C. crime is exaggerated, but recent cases have renewed national attention.
They include a 21-year-old House intern being slain by a stray bullet, two Israeli Embassy aides being gunned down before they were set to be engaged and Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas being carjacked at gunpoint by three men.
D.C.’s story echoes the failure of criminal justice reforms imposed in cities across the country, especially since the death of George Floyd in 2020, according to Manhattan Institute fellow Charles Lehman, who researches public safety for the conservative think tank.
“At best, they’ve done nothing,” Lehman told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Of course, in many places … they have made the problem much worse.”
Normalizing Leniency
D.C. eliminated cash bail in most local cases in 1992, and over 90% of arrestees are typically released before trial in local court, according to D.C.’s Pretrial Service Agency. Trump said on Monday that he wants Republicans in Congress to end the policy.
“Some of it is almost certainly the judges who have a history of, shall we say, defendant-friendly rulings,” Lehman said about pretrial releases.
Local officials have also worked to reduce incarceration of criminals after conviction. Legislation passed over the past decade allows some rapists and murderers to petition for a review of their sentences and potentially walk free after 15 years behind bars if they committed the crimes while under 25 years of age.
In one case, a federal jury convicted a man of gun and drug offenses that he committed in 2021 after serving 26 years in prison for three murders in D.C., according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).
The ‘Youths’
D.C.’s juvenile arrest rate is well above the national average, official data show. This results in alarming trends, including how 51% D.C. robbery suspects in 2024 were juveniles, according to police.
Juveniles are also linked to about 60% of carjackings in D.C., including one in which a former Trump administration staffer was beaten and bloodied by a mob in Dupont Circle on Aug. 3.
Authorities said the man was assaulted after trying to shield a woman from suspects demanding her car, and police arrested two 15-year-olds at the scene, an incident that led Trump to threaten more federal control over D.C.
“Local ‘youths’ and gang members, some only 14, 15, and 16-years-old, are randomly attacking, mugging, maiming, and shooting innocent Citizens, at the same time knowing that they will be almost immediately released,” Trump said on social media after the assault. “They are not afraid of Law Enforcement because they know nothing ever happens to them, but it’s going to happen now!”
Washington officials have repeatedly highlighted chronic absenteeism in schools as a leading driver of juvenile crime in recent years, though the district fails to uphold truancy laws. The number of students who qualified as truant in the D.C. Public Schools system increased 110% over the past 10 years, in part due to a lack of enforcement, The Washington Post reported.
Officials reportedly did not investigate more than 18,000 truancy reports in the last three school years alone.
After juvenile offenders are caught and convicted, D.C.’s sentencing laws can result in even violent offenders receiving no jail time or having their crimes shielded from potential employers if they are under 24 years old.
U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., Jeanine Pirro, a Trump appointee, expressed her frustration with the laws on Monday by highlighting a case in which a 19-year-old who shot someone in the chest got probation under D.C.’s Youth Rehabilitation Act (YRA).
“I can’t touch you if you’re 14, 15, 16 [or] 17 years old and you have a gun,” Pirro told reporters. “I convict someone of shooting another person with an illegal gun on a public bus in the chest [with] intent to kill. What does the judge give him? Probation, says that you should go to college. We need to go after the D.C. Council and their absurd laws.”
Hudson Crozier is a contributor at the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Original article link
