The Council of the District of Columbia has proposed legislation that will allow for sentence reductions for our city’s most violent offenders. In the process, the council seems willing to force victims of the most horrendous crimes and their family members to relive the trauma that was inflicted on them years ago. They’re determined to make the district a less hospitable place for crime victims past and a more dangerous place for today’s residents and visitors.

In 2017, the city enacted the Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act. This law allows 16- and 17-year-old defendants who were prosecuted as adults due to the nature of their offenses (generally murder and sexual assault crimes) and who were sentenced to and served more than 20 years in prison to petition the court for a sentence reduction. This law is premised on the fact that the brain of a youthful offender is not as developed as the brain of an adult and that youthful offenders are more prone to impulsiveness and peer influence.