Carjackings involving young people have been off the charts in D.C., and the problem shows no signs of slowing down.
There have been more than 800 carjackings so far this year, which is more than double the number of carjackings the city had at this point last year, according to figures from D.C. police.
More than 60% of carjacking arrests have been suspects who are younger than 18 years old.
Gary LaFree, a criminology professor at the University of Maryland, called it a “perfect storm.”
“You’re very nervous about sending a teenager to prison for the very sensible reason that you’re afraid that you’re going to make them into a hardened criminal and sort of lose them,” LaFree said. “You’re getting some of these kids who’ve had seven or eight episodes of this kind of behavior and have been released back into the community.”
According to LaFree, several factors may be leading to the increase, including police-related scandals, such as the death of George Floyd in 2020 at the hands of Minneapolis police and the death of Freddie Gray in 2015 in Baltimore after he was injured in a police transport van.
“When you have a situation where people lose confidence in the police and where the legitimacy of the police declines, it kind of opens a free-for-all to engage in behavior that you perhaps wouldn’t have engaged in otherwise,” LaFree said.
Seeking attention on social media and the lingering impact from the COVID-19 pandemic may be playing a role too, according to LaFree.
“Once you get some kind of phenomena, oftentimes, it reaches a peak at some point, or we figure out how to deal with it and then it declines,” LaFree said. “A lot of crime has this wavelike feature to it, and there’s no reason to think that carjackings are different.”
D.C. police released safety tips for drivers, encouraging them to protect themselves.
“Even though carjacking can take place at any time, a large share of those cases appears to occur during the late-night hours,” D.C. police said.
Some of the tips include keeping doors locked and windows rolled up while you drive and traveling in the center lane to make it harder for potential carjackers to approach the vehicle.
“When you are coming to a stop, leave enough room to maneuver around other cars, especially if you sense trouble and need to get away,” D.C. police said.
If you fall victim to a carjacker, police strongly urge you to give up your vehicle, get away from the area and call 911 immediately so you can describe what the suspect looked like.
