Rising crime, declining enforcement — the picture one report paints of the nation’s capital

Crime in the nation’s capitol is rising. Enforcement activity is down. Prosecution has declined. How can the city move forward? A recent report has answers.
The report Manhattan Institute authored by Charles Fain Lehman found a rise in rates of homicide, car theft and robbery since before 2020, though the homicide rate in 2024 seems to be on the decline. Reported rates of burglary, assault with a dangerous weapon, sex abuse and theft have declined.
“There are fewer police officers, and those officers are doing less. The U.S. attorney is prosecuting far fewer people,” said the report. “There are fewer judges, and they are churning through a larger case backlog. Students are more likely to be truant, and as unsheltered homelessness has surged, the District has not kept up with camp clearance.”
Certain parts of Washington D.C. are more impacted than others. “Among each offense, the top 10% of blocks account for 22% of homicides, 30% of robberies, and 35% of motor vehicle thefts,” said the report, noting the city’s southeastern corner sees a disproportionately high crime rate.
Homicide increased in the city from before 2020 to 2023. Young Black men are the most at risk population for this particular crime. The rate of homicide among this population has increased by 186% from 2014 to 2023.
“In D.C., homicide is overwhelmingly driven by conflict within and between gangs and related social groups,” said the report, explaining the level of violence has increased significantly through the years and while it may be showing signs of decline, it is still above historical norms.
There has also been a surge in car theft. The report said among other factors, this may be because there is information on social media platforms like TikTok about how to steal certain models of Hyundais and Kias.
Around 65% of the arrests for carjacking between January 2020 and March 2024 involved juveniles, said the report. 14% were adults aged 18 or 19.
The surge in carjacking from 2023 seems to have slowed, but the rate is still higher than before 2020. “Thus, one is left with the impression that D.C. has a second crime problem: a problem with juvenile offenders, acting out most visibly by stealing cars, joyriding, and broadcasting their activities on social media. These offenders are comparatively less serious than those who drive the gun violence in the District, but they still pose a distinct threat to public order,” said the report.
The Metropolitan Police Department, also known as MPD, is the agency tasked with law enforcement in the non-federal property parts of the city. The department has lost nearly 500 officers since 2019. The report noted several areas where arrests have declined.
“Levels of arrests for prostitution, traffic violations, narcotics, disorderly conduct, liquor law violations, release violations, and driving while intoxicated, for example, have all collapsed,” said the report. Arrests for arson, weapon violations, homicide, sex abuse and offenses against family and children have increased from 2019 to 2023.
“The impression that MPD is doing less across a variety of domains is confirmed by, for example, the observation that officers have become less willing or less able to fulfill bench warrants,” said the report, explaining the department has both reduced certain activity and focused it on gun crimes.
The report the city has also seen a decline in its ability to investigate crimes. Between 2021 and late 2023, the D.C. crime lab had lost its accreditation. It is unclear what specifically led to the loss of accreditation. When the lab’s accreditation was suspended, The Washington Post reported the move came after an independent panel of forensics experts found the lab had made errors in testing in two 2015 murder cases and “misrepresented” the mistakes.
The “decline in police activity” cannot be attributed only to decline in staffing, said the report. Law enforcement officers have said they are overworked and stress, and they have increased demands on them due to rising mass protest activity in the city.
“Some have also cited policy changes and the message that they send to cops,” said the report. “Most notably, D.C. was one of the few major cities that yielded to activists’ demands to ‘defund the police,’ slashing MPD’s budget by $15 million in 2020.”
The report said the majority of crimes in the city are prosecuted by the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, who is appointed by the sitting U.S. president.
“That office has systematically reduced its levels of prosecution in recent years,” said the report noting rates of prosecution between 2021 and 2022 declined sharply. In 2022, the office prosecuted less than 50% of the felonies and only 28% of the misdemeanors presented to it. “Rates have rebounded somewhat, amid heavy public criticism, but are still well below even recent historical norms.”
“The decline in prosecution makes it an outlier among similarly situated offices,” said the report. “The Philadelphia District Attorney’s office reports charges equivalent to more than 82% of arrests in every year since at least 2010. The Manhattan’s DA office charges gun crimes 95% of the time, compared with 67% in the DC office. The San Diego DA’s office charged 77% of cases between 2000 and 2019.”
As for the factors leading to the decline in prosecution, the report cites U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves saying some cases were flawed, the crime lab’s loss of accreditation, lack of witness cooperation or a justification like self-defense.
In addition to a decline of arrests and prosecutions, the D.C. Superior Court has vacancies in 13 of the 62 judgeships, said the report, which slows down the criminal justice process.
The report said the data suggests two conclusions: crime has increased in D.C. and enforcement and prosecution have decreased. In order to bring crime down, the report said the city does not need tougher laws, it needs its system to operate effectively.
“The past several years of efforts to solve D.C.’s crime problems show that officials believe that criminal offenders are reacting to a lack of stiff penalties,” said the report. “But the problem is not leniency; the problem is that, across the criminal-justice system, existing laws are unenforced.”
The report recommend several solutions, including but not limited to increased funding for MPD hiring, expanding professional development for MPD, free up sworn officers to patrol the streets, focus police officers on where the crime is, concentrate on deterring gang violence and filling judicial vacancies.
The solution, the report said, is to improve the capacity of the system. “That means encouraging the people and institutions that operate that system to do more. But it also means giving them more power to do more.”
D.C. had its highest homicide rate in 25 years back in 2023, when the city saw 275 homicides. Harry Jaffe writing for The Atlantic floated a possible reason was the declining rates of prosecution and increased crime: electing a district attorney rather than an appointment.
“As a journalist who has covered crime in the District for four decades, I believe that one aspect of the D.C. justice system sets it apart, exacerbating crime and demanding remedy: Voters here cannot elect their own district attorney to prosecute local adult crimes,” wrote Jaffe.
A 1973 law allowed the federal government to retain the ability to appoint the city’s chief prosecutor, which is what has been happening. Jaffe said he thinks making the top prosecutor an elected office would have a positive effect.
The editors at the National Review said Congress “should be considering eroding the district’s autonomy if the crisis continues.” But, “in the meantime, law-enforcement authorities should return to actually enforcing the law and punishing criminals in a manner that protects public safety.”