Washington, D.C.’s “violence interrupter” grant program was a magnet for graft and corruption. A former “high-ranking D.C. official” has been “charged with bribery. The bribery case is the second in recent months linked to a D.C. government agency that awards grants to community-based organizations that employ violence interrupters,” reports the Washington Post:
A former high-ranking official at a D.C. agency tasked with reducing gun violence has been charged with bribery…It’s the second bribery case in recent months linked to that agency and follows the August arrest of a [city] council member accused of accepting cash to steer violence prevention contracts.
Prosecutors say that Dana McDaniel, who was deputy director of the city’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (ONSE), accepted at least $10,000 in cash from an associate in exchange for agreeing to use her position to steer contracts toward the associate’s businesses. Former D.C. Council member Trayon White Sr. (D-Ward 8) was previously arrested on federal allegations that he took payoffs in exchange for promising to influence contracts at ONSE.
The bribery scheme in the McDaniel case started before September 2022 and continued “at least through August 2024,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing.
In Minneapolis, a “violence interrupter” threatened to commit violence against city officials if they cut off his funding.
“Violence interrupters” are often ex-inmates, some of whom go on to commit more crimes, or “ex-gang members who still” have “ties to current gang members.” They promote largely useless things like “restorative justice.” Chicago hired “violence interrupters,” and its crime rate went up even as the crime rate fell nationally. Chicago pioneered the idea.
Violence interrupters do not seem to done any good in Minneapolis, either. Its crime rate has spiked even as crime has fallen in some parts of the U.S. Newsweek reported in August that “carjackings in Minneapolis are up 548 percent” in the last several years. Murders have risen much more in Minneapolis than in the country as a whole. Minneapolis had 76 homicides in 2024, compared to 48 homicides in 2019.
Violence interrupters often advocate “restorative justice” rather than incarceration, claiming long prison sentences don’t keep cities safe.
They are wrong about that. Keeping criminals in prison keeps them from committing crimes. Also, holding inmates in jail longer results in some of them aging of out crime and some others no longer committing the most serious crimes. Most inmates commit more crimes after being released, but older inmates commit fewer crimes after being released, and they tend to commit less serious crimes than inmates released at a younger age. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 81.9% of all state prisoners released in 2008 were subsequently arrested by 2018, compared to 74.5% of those 40 or older at the time of their release, 56.1% of those age 55 at the time of their release, and 40.1% of those over age 65 at the time of their release. (See Bureau of Justice Statistics, Recidivism of Prisoners in 24 States Released in 2008: A 10-Year Follow-Up Period (2008-2018) (Sept. 2021), pg. 4, Table 4). So longer prison sentences do reduce crime, such as murder, robbery, and rape.
