Carjackings, homicide, assaults with dangerous weapons: These are the crimes cited by the Washington, D.C., mayor as she declares a public emergency in the nation’s capital due to surging juvenile violence. 

There have been 458 juvenile arrests in the first nine months of 2023, Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office said in Monday’s emergency announcement, a 10 percent increase from last year. 

“We have too many young people involved in violent activity in our city, both causing violence and becoming victims of violence,” Ms. Boswer said.

Youth violence follows a pattern of out-of-control crime in the city, which sparked further national media attention this week after a Secret Service agent opened fire during an attempted car break-in over the weekend outside the house in Georgetown of President Biden’s eldest granddaughter, Naomi Biden.

Between January and October of this year, 97 juveniles were wounded by gunshots, a 9 percent increase from last year, the mayor’s office said. 

“A total of 151 juveniles have been arrested for carjackings, which represents one-third of all carjacking arrests,” the mayor’s office said. Police data show that number is higher, with 65 percent of carjacking arrests involving juveniles. A representative from the mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a request by the Sun for comment on the data discrepancy.

Over the weekend, three boys ages 12-15 were arrested for carjacking at Capitol Hill. Recent youth crime also includes a 12-year-old and 13-year-old’s attempted carjacking at the end of October, which left the 13-year-old dead after being shot by an off-duty police officer.

D.C.’s attorney general, Brian Schwalb, who is responsible for prosecuting juvenile offenses within the district, has faced criticism in the past for saying “kids are kids” in response to surging youth violence. 

“I do not believe we make our city safer by arresting and locking away youthful criminal offenders, nor do I believe we can arrest and prosecute our way out of crime problems,” Mr. Schwalb has said. 

Protecting D.C. residents from crime is the Office of the Attorney General’s “top priority,” a representative tells the Sun.

“We prosecute every case for which we have sufficient evidence and hold kids accountable when they cause harm while also working to change their behavior by making sure they have the resources they need so they don’t re-offend, because that’s what makes us safer now and in the long run,” the representative says. “Prosecutors by definition respond to crime after it happens and to truly make D.C. safer we need to invest in strategies to stop crime from happening in the first place.”

Despite some positive data showing downward trends in crime, Democratic-led cities across the country, especially D.C., are grappling with much worse crime than before the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests, a legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, Zack Smith, tells the Sun. Much of it stems from policies to defund the police and not prosecuting and punishing criminals, he says.

“Because of D.C.’s unique status as our nation’s capital, what happens in the District of Columbia has national and international ramifications, too,” Mr. Smith says, noting that several sitting members of Congress and their staffers have been violently attacked, carjacked, or stabbed this year.

That unique status also means Congress can and should step in to crack down on crime in the absence of local law enforcement, he adds. Congress’s plenary authority over the capital district can be traced back to a mutiny during the Continental Congress, when Philadelphia’s leader wouldn’t send troops to protect members of Congress from disgruntled soldiers. 

“The Framers recognized that they didn’t want to be at the whims of local officials to depend on them for the safety and security of federal officials,” he says.

Congress has taken some action in the past to oppose proposals from D.C. city officials, including overriding a criminal code revision that would have eliminated mandatory minimum sentences except for first degree murder, Mr. Smith adds. 

“Congress is free to step in and implement its own common sense criminal code for the District of Columbia and frankly, I think they should do that because the local City Council has shown themselves incapable or unwilling to do that,” Mr. Smith says in light of the city’s crime crisis. 

By not prosecuting criminals, children are taught that committing violent crime won’t cause consequences, he says. 

“It also incentivizes organized criminal organizations like gangs to recruit very young individuals to do their most heinous work, commit their most heinous crimes for them because they know those juveniles will likely only receive a slap on the wrist, and will probably be back out on the street almost immediately,” Mr. Smith says. 

A big part of the youth crime problem could stem from children being out of school during the pandemic, the Council on Criminal Justice’s chief policy counsel, Marc Levin, tells the Sun.

“One of the things about the pandemic we know is that about two million kids didn’t come back to school after schools were closed and many moved to virtual for longer than they arguably should have,” he says. “Some of them never coming back contributed to delinquency.”

Getting youth back in school and in after-school programs could keep them occupied and doing “something constructive,” instead of committing violent crimes, he says, adding that idleness is still not an excuse for the violence.

“Obviously this conduct is intolerable, but the question is how do we put more young people on a positive pathway and prevent this type of heinous crime,” he says.