Keeping Our Kids Safe from Gun Violence

For the past eight years, I have had the honor of serving as the District of Columbia’s first elected and independent Attorney General. That means I have been the chief prosecutor of young people who commit crimes in the District. In this role, I have met with countless young people — young people who have hurt others, young people who have been hurt by crime, and young people who are begging for an end to this cycle of violence. My conversations with these young people have made one thing abundantly clear: we are failing our children.

We often ask kids in our juvenile justice system what they want to be when they grow up and far too often, we hear the heartbreaking answer that they just want to live past the age of 18. When our children are picking up guns, carrying guns and shooting, when they think the streets hold greater potential than the classrooms, and when they are scared to walk outside for fear of flying bullets, it is clear we — the adults — are doing something wrong.

Getting guns off our streets is one of the most urgent steps we can take to respond to this crisis of gun violence. At the Office of the Attorney General, we’ve been working hard to enforce and defend the District’s gun laws. We’re also cracking down on ghost guns by going after the manufacturers that profit from these illegal, deadly weapons. Just a few months ago, we won a $4 million court judgement against Polymer80, a leading manufacturer of ghost guns in DC. But while getting guns off the street is necessary, we cannot achieve a safer city without addressing the underlying circumstances that lead people to pick up guns in the first place.

As I prepare to leave office at the end of the year, I have been reflecting on the lessons of the past eight years and what is most clear to me is that the best thing we can do as a city is invest in our kids. We need to forge connections with them that last longer than their interaction with the justice system, and we need to recognize their achievements. Kids need to feel safe and engaged in school or vocational pathways to adulthood. They need to be able to access positive peer groups through engaging after-school activities. We need to make sure kids have mental health resources, and real social alternatives to going down the wrong path.

In my office, we’re using every tool at our disposal to reach kids before crimes occur. Here are some of our holistic efforts to improve public safety in addition to prosecution:

1. Violence Interruption

My office launched and has continued to expand a pilot violence interruption program called Cure the Streets. Cure the Streets takes a data-driven, public-health approach that treats gun violence as a disease that can be interrupted, treated, and stopped from spreading.

We launched Cure the Streets in sites with the highest rates of gun violence in the District — where the need was most urgent, and we have had tangible success. For example, in our Marshall Heights Cure the Streets program site — where gun violence once seemed intractable — there was not a single gun homicide in the last fiscal year. Learn more about the life-changing work that these violence interrupters and outreach workers are doing every day to keep all of us safer.

2. Reducing Truancy

Research shows that when kids are engaged in the classroom, they are much less likely to commit crimes. That’s why we launched programs to help kids stay in school. Our ATTEND program identifies barriers to school attendance for families with elementary school-aged kids and offers mediation and treatment plans and resources (like school supplies and winter clothing) for families. We recently expanded the program this summer to two additional schools.

3. Investing in More Programming for Kids

After school programming can also be the difference between a kid staying safe and going down a path of violence. Unfortunately, attendance at recreation centers and after-school programs have still not recovered since the beginning of the pandemic. The loss of this lifeline leaves children especially vulnerable to crime and victimization. To help address the loss, my office has provided funding and other support to programs like the Boys and Girls Club, College Bound, Mikva Challenge DC, DC Action, and Black Swan Academy.

4. Supporting Mental Health

When we ask kids what they need, they overwhelmingly say they need more counselors in schools — especially as the pandemic intensified kids’ mental health challenges. We testified before the Council and offered several concrete proposals to support kids’ mental health, including expanding community-based violence interruption programs into the schools, increasing non-police school staff dedicated to addressing behavior challenges and investing in restorative justice programs in schools.

5. Pioneering the Nation’s First In-House Restorative Justice Program

Kids’ brains are not yet fully developed, and they deserve a chance to learn from their mistakes and take responsibility. In 2017, my office launched a restorative justice program to help victims of crime find closure and help young people involved in crime take responsibility for their actions and be held accountable. In our program, youth charged with violent crime are required to participate in cognitive behavioral therapy, which is proven to help change behavior and develop consequential thinking for youth. Restorative justice works because it allows everyone to have an active role in addressing the harm, which, studies show, also reduces the likelihood of future problems and promotes public safety.

Where We Need to Go from Here

We’re using every tool at our disposal but keeping our kids safe from gun violence is not a task for one agency alone. We need a coherent, coordinated plan to address this crisis and we need leaders to step up across District government. We must direct real resources to proven programs that advance public safety in the short term and the long term. We need help from our neighbors and community groups to change the norms around violence. We need judges to be nominated and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to the DC Superior Court to keep cases moving forward. We need to demand improvements in education, housing affordability, food access, and mental health supports to build healthier, safer neighborhoods where kids have opportunities to thrive and are not pulled into violence on the streets.

These are not easy or quick tasks, but our kids are depending on us to keep them safe and to get this right. We can’t keep blaming kids for gun violence without giving them the support to make better choices.