This week, ironically, the latest set of crime numbers highlighted the fuzzy lines of responsibility in a unique way: So far this year, according to Metropolitan Police Department data, violent crime is down by 27 percent. Now try and tell me who should get the credit.
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Last week, the House of Representatives OK’d legislation permanently forbidding the District of Columbia’s elected local government from making any change to its own jurisdiction’s criminal code. It was the latest slap at the capital by a Congress that blames the 2023 crime spike on the lenience of the deep-blue city’s elected officials.
But with less media attention, folks a little closer to D.C.’s actual criminal justice system have spent the month pointing the finger right back at the lords of Capitol Hill — whose dysfunctions, they say, are making it tougher to bring cases against real-life perps.
The issue, for the locals, isn’t abstract crime-fighting theory. It’s raw numbers: A staggering 20 percent of the judgeships in D.C. Superior Court have been vacant for months thanks to a Senate confirmation process that has remained stuck even as a bipartisan cadre of legislators have taken turns scolding the capital for its crime stats.
The judicial positions in question are not fancy federal judgeships where confirmations are apt to get bogged down in constitutional philosophy. Rather, they’re the jurists who try carjackings or rapes or DUIs, essential parts of the criminal-justice system that in an actual state would be selected by the locals with no need for an OK from Congress. . .
it’s precisely the status quo that has persisted even in a year when Congress has injected itself into local-yokel issues in ways it hasn’t for decades.
“Fewer judges mean fewer courtrooms where we can try cases,” says U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves. “With respect to criminal cases, we are seeing the greatest harm in the courtrooms that hear homicide cases where trial dates are being set in late 2025 and early 2026, in part because of judicial vacancies. The prosecution is almost always prejudiced by such years-long delays.”
“What is really happening is delaying justice for victims,” says Lindsey Appiah, the city’s deputy mayor for public safety. Without enough judges, she says, trial delays either mean more stress for someone who should be exonerated — or a sense of impunity for someone who might go on to bigger crimes.
“It really becomes an all-around problem for our ability to advance justice for everyone.”
That’s not for lack of alarm-ringing. . ."
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