D.C.’s mayor wants to change how the city detains people suspected of violent crime. During a crime summit, the mayor took questions about her plans to introduce legislation to make it easier to hold people in jail before trial.
Mayor Muriel Bowser is ready to shift the city’s previous stance on whether repeat offenders charged with a violent crime should remain in jail until their trial.
“What I will recommend is that we change the presumption, especially in cases of violent crime, where someone has already been convicted of a violent crime,” Bowser said during a crime summit on Wednesday. “We think that the court should have in their decision-making the ability to detain that person until the trial happens. So that will be one part and a big part of the legislation that I advance to the council to help deal with what I think are some gaps in our law.”
She plans to propose the legislation to the D.C. Council before heading to Capitol Hill, where she and Chief of Police Robert Contee will testify to House Oversight Committee members, who are concerned about the city’s rise in crime.
House Republicans are demanding U.S. Attorney for D.C. Matthew Graves also testify, given his position as both a federal and local prosecutor.
In a room full of police officers and prosecutors, Ward 8 Council member Trayon White asked why community members have noticed that people with a record of violent behavior are arrested and then released back onto the streets.
“The elephant in the room is that (D.C. police) is investigating, trying to get people off the streets. And when they go to court, they’re not getting convicted and coming back to the community. I don’t know, what’s going on with that,” White said.
Graves, who was at the crime summit, responded that it comes down to the law in D.C., and the discussion around pretrial release that is changing amid a rise in violent crime.
“Candidly, that has not been where the dialogue has been over the last decade or so. The dialogue has been over how can we have more people released because they have not yet been convicted,” Graves said.
He went on to explain that laws in the District say the presumption is that suspects are going to be released back into the community, except for “extremely limited circumstances.”
“And it’s often a high burden for us under current law to get someone held at pretrial. Full stop. So that is why you’re seeing that phenomenon,” Graves said.
Graves said that he trusts the mayor and police chief to represent the city and indicated he didn’t plan to testify in front of Congress on May 16.
