Washington, DC, Crime Soars 23% in 2023 After City Tries to Reduce Punishments

Crime in Washington, DC, has soared 23 percent at the beginning of 2023 compared to 2022 after District officials launched an initiative to reduce criminal punishments in recent months.

According to the Metropolitan Police Department, homicides have dramatically increased (25 percent) in 2023, along with vehicle theft (111 percent), theft from auto (21 percent), theft (16 percent), and arson (300 percent). Over the past five years, crimes involving guns have increased by 40 percent, despite many gun control initiatives.

The most recent city analysis of crime shows black males are the largest victims of homicide (78 percent). Black women account for 15 percent). White males only account for four percent, and white females account for nearly zero percent.

The violence has risen to such a degree in the city that criminals appear to be increasingly brazen.

One early morning in February, democrat Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN) was attacked inside her Washington, DC, apartment building. The attack left Craig bruised. She later said the coffee she threw at the attacker “really saved the day.”

Despite the rampant crime, the D.C. Council passed the Revised Criminal Code Act of 2022, a measure to reduce punishments for crimes and allow misdemeanor cases to be tried by a jury. It appears the bill will be implemented after the District’s council overrode the mayor’s veto. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D), fresh off her recent reelection, has proposed an amendment to the bill.

“Under the current code, for example, possession of a firearm by an unauthorized person who has been convicted of a violent crime is punishable with a three-year mandatory minimum and a maximum of 15 years,” the Washington Post reported:

The proposed crime bill eliminates the mandatory minimum and sets the maximum sentence at four years. Fifteen-year sentences are rarely, if ever, handed down and mandatory minimums take needed discretion away from judges, but a four-year maximum represents a step back from current maximum sentencing practices, which average about six years.

Many in Congress are opposed to the District reducing punishments for criminals. Congress has the authority to block the District’s law from going into effect.

“These misguided efforts would allow crime to run rampant and disenfranchise American citizens in our nation’s capital,” Rep. James Comer (R-KY) stated about the law D.C. hopes to enact.

“These misguided efforts would allow crime to run rampant and disenfranchise American citizens in our nation’s capital.”
Reaction JUST IN from @GOPoversight Chairman @RepJamesComer after the passage of two ‘Resolutions of Disapproval’ concerning two new D.C. laws. @wusa9 pic.twitter.com/jIU3NDNKYx

— Adam Longo (@adamlongoTV) February 9, 2023

Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.