As the D.C. crackdown continues, one advocacy group warns that when it comes to youth crime, simply locking people up does not pay off in the long run.
Felicity Rose, vice president of criminal justice research and policy with the advocacy group FWD.us, said that the number of arrested youths in D.C. is about 20% lower than it was in 2024, according to statistics from the Metropolitan Police Department. And, that tracks with a national trend.
“Fewer young people were arrested last summer across the country than any of the last 40 non-pandemic years,” Rose said. “That decline happened because of investments in programs that work, which include summer jobs for youth, improvements to infrastructure, health programs, Medicaid expansion, and community violence interruption. All of these social supports, those programs work.”
She said police-led crackdowns are not the only way to restore order. In fact, she said it’s harmful.
“Taking a kid out of their home and locking them up, a troubled kid, that makes them much more likely to commit crimes in the future,” she said.
D.C. has made investments recently, including into creating late night activities for young people to stay out of trouble. Rose said those efforts should continue.
“We would really encourage to keep up the investments that have been working in violence intervention and community support, community safety; rather than trying to go back to an old ‘tough on crime’ era that really didn’t work,” Rose said.
The District recently implemented a youth curfew for those under 18, which runs from 11 p.m. through 6 a.m. all summer. Rose said curfews don’t actually work as they give the public “a false sense of security.”
Rose said a perception of out-of-control youth violence can be tracked to local media, which have given extensive coverage to a rash of gatherings of young people in various locations, including in the Wharf, Georgetown, Navy Yard and National Harbor areas. In some of those cases, fights were reported, and a police officer was assaulted at the Wharf.
Rose said the overblown coverage of those events has created a perception that youth crime is worse than it actually is.
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