Washington, D.C. has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation, and for many years it also had one of the highest crime rates in the country.
Things have gotten a little better in both regards over the past fifteen years or so, with the District’s ban on handguns and prohibition on concealed carry falling by the wayside thanks to the tireless work of Second Amendment advocates and attorneys. D.C.’s crime rate actually declined after the city’s handgun ban was repealed by the Heller decision, but over the past couple of years the number of juvenile offenses has dramatically increased.
In 2023 there were more than 500 juveniles arrested on robbery charges, many of them involving carjackings. The Washington Post is running a series on juvenile crime in the District, and in one piece reporters tie that spike to the rising truancy rates in D.C public schools.
D.C. City Council adopted anti-truancy ordinances about fifteen years ago, which were supposed to identify high-risk students and direct attention to them in order to keep them in the classroom. The District was also supposed to have mental health specialists in public schools, but according to the paper, “the D.C. Council and Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) have failed to follow through on key initiatives that promised to keep students in class and out of trouble.”
The Post found that these initiatives fell apart in the years before the 2023 youth crime spike — the very scenario they were designed to prevent. That year, D.C. police made more than 500 arrests of people under age 18 on robbery charges, which include carjackings. This marked the highest one-year total for such arrests since the 1990s, according to police reports.
… The reasons for truancy are varied and complex, and the vast majority of students who miss school do not commit crimes. They help to raise young siblings at home or take care of sick parents. Some don’t have clean clothes.
Still, most young people who wind up in D.C.’s court system have a history of poor school attendance. A study by the District’s Criminal Justice Coordinating Council reported that children who were arrested between June 2019 and July 2020 had missed an average of 46 days, including 39 unexcused absences.
Judge Darlene Soltys, who presides over the District’s family court division, told The Post that “almost all” young people who are brought before her on charges have a history of being truant.
The chief juvenile judge said some of the children fear for their safety, or are embarrassed by how far behind they have fallen in class. Some children give her another reason, Soltys said: “They are aware that there’s a lack of enforcement of truancy issues with the school or in the city.”
How bad is it? The WaPo claims that “more than 18,000 reports of truancy went uninvestigated in the last three full school years,” and the number of students who’ve missed more than two weeks of class has more than doubled over the past decade. Last year, almost one-third of middle school students in the District were considered truant, and the overall truancy rate for the DC public school system is about 33%.
D.C.’s Child and Family Services Agency is supposed to investigate when students under the age of 14 miss more than ten days of school, but the paper found that in 2023, when juvenile crime was spiking, the agency rejected more than 90% of the cases that were referred to them.
The Washington Post story is full of local politicians pointing fingers at each other and various agencies for the systemic failure to keep kids in the classroom, though apparently some progress is being made. In 2022 about 45% of middle school students were considered truant, compared to 31% in 2024. I don’t know that I’d consider that a success, especially when juvenile offenses are still far too common.
While truancy is one issue, the lack of consequences in the juvenile justice system is another huge problem. On Monday, a 16-year-old was sentenced to just five years in custody for the beating death of Bryan Smith last fall, and according to prosecutors the teen was no stranger to police.
Prosecutors said the teen was only 15 when he and a 17-year-old companion, both from Northeast Washington, robbed and struck the 39-year-old Smith from behind so severely that he was left with severe brain damage and broken eye sockets. The attack occurred around 5 a.m. on Oct. 28 in the 500 block of T Street NW as Smith was returning home from a disc jockeying job. Smith lingered in a coma for two weeks before his mother removed him from life support in a Virginia hospital.
… At the time of his arrest, the teen had five outstanding charges for robbery and assault — to which he also pleaded guilty. Crowell also noted that three years before the attack, the teen had a destruction of property charge when he was 12. Prosecutors in that case allowed the teen to enter into a diversion program in exchange for dismissing the case.
D.C.’s gun control laws make it impossible for residents and visitors to fully exercise their Second Amendment rights, but they’ve done nothing to stop tweens and teens from committing armed robberies and carjackings, not to mention savage crimes that don’t involve a gun like the beating death of Bryan Smith. If the District did a better job of keeping kids in the classroom the city would undoubtably be better off, but the Democrat leadership is also failing to keep violent youthful offenders in custody, and that too is making our nation’s capital a more dangerous place.
Read the full article here
