“The nation’s capital recorded more homicides in 2023 than in any year since 1997, giving the District the fifth-highest murder rate among the nation’s biggest cities. The 274 confirmed victims ranged from infants to octogenarians,” notes Mike Netter. Murders increased 35% in 2023.
Carjackings have risen even faster, more than doubling since 2022. There are now seven times as many carjackings in Washington, DC, as there were in 2019. The Free Beacon reported in November that there had been “863 carjacking incidents in Washington, D.C., this year. That’s a 106 percent increase compared with last year and a 600 percent increase compared with 2019.
Washington, DC now has a serious problem with carjacking, committed mainly by juveniles. WTOP reported in October that “there have been at least 113 arrests for carjackings so far this year — 65% of those arrested are juveniles.” Similarly, last year, Channel 9 reported that of the carjacking arrests in 2022, “two-thirds have been juveniles,” with the most common ages for carjacking being 15 or 16. Arrested carjackers were more likely to be age 13 or 14 than 18 or 19.
This happening because teenage carjackers know that even if they are caught, they will be treated very leniently. In 2021, two teenage girls aged 13 and 15 carjacked and killed an Uber Eats Driver in Washington, DC, a crime for which they received only juvenile detention, not prison. Juveniles often do only a short stint in juvenile detention for violence or serious crimes that would land an adult in prison for a substantial period of time. Juveniles are more likely to commit a crime if they know they won’t be imprisoned for it. “A 12-year-old responsible for emailing seven bomb threats to Maryland schools this month knew a state law would prevent authorities from bringing charges, police announced Wednesday,” reported NBC News last month. As a result, he went ahead and emailed the bomb threats. As criminology professor Peter Moskos notes, “Recidivism among 16-year-olds went up” a lot when the age for being prosecuted in adult court was raised in New York.
Cities could slash their crime rate and save lives by imprisoning more criminals. When El Salvador increased its incarceration rate, its murder rate fell by more than 90%. Jailing more criminals saved thousands of lives in El Salvador.
Soft-on-crime policies have increased violent crime and theft in many big cities. Judges and progressive prosecutors refuse to jail many offenders because of the myth of “mass incarceration.” But as criminology professor Justin Nix notes, “Given its level of serious crime, America has ordinary levels of incarceration but extraordinary levels of under-policing.”
Longer prison sentences would deter violent crimes and theft by people pondering whether to commit a crime. Crime in California fell significantly after California voters adopted Proposition 8, which mandated longer sentences for repeat offenders who kill, rape, and rob others. A National Bureau of Economic Research study found those longer sentences deterred many crimes from being committed. As it observed, three years after Proposition 8 was adopted, crimes punished with enhanced sentences had “fallen roughly 20-40 percent compared to” crimes not covered by enhanced sentences. Similarly, a 2008 Santa Clara University study found that longer sentences for three-time offenders led to “significantly faster rates of decline in robbery, burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft,” even after controlling for pre-existing crime trends and economic, demographic, and policy factors.
Studies of countries with short prison sentences have found that letting criminals out early increases the crime rate, making longer prison sentences a good investment.
