Opinion | In D.C., the problem of repeat offenders is a matter of life and death

D.C. police spokesman Dustin Sternbeck told me this week that Contee’s statement was based on data in the department’s records management system. Asked for clarification on the meaning of the number, Sternbeck said, “The 11 prior arrests include various crimes, and not just homicide offenses.” Contee, who is retiring in June, added another dimension to the arrest data. He said during the news conference that “the average homicide victim … also has been arrested 10 or 11 times prior to them being a homicide victim.”

The statement deserves further exploration.

A December 2021 analysis of shootings and homicides in the District, conducted by the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, sheds some light on both the scope of gun violence and Contee’s observations regarding D.C. arrest histories.

The NICJR report aggregates what is anecdotally known or suspected. It found that across homicides and shootings, victims and suspects are demographically similar — about 96 percent of those in both categories in homicides and nonfatal shootings were Black, while about 65 percent were between the ages of 18 and 34. Roughly 90 percent were male.

In addition, and to underscore Contee’s statements, approximately 86 percent of homicide victims and suspects were previously known to the criminal justice system. About 46 percent had been incarcerated, according to the report.

The NICJR report found that “most victims and suspects with prior criminal offenses had been arrested about 11 times for about 13 different offenses by the time of the homicide” — and that refers only to adult arrests. Juvenile arrests were excluded.

Equally, if not more, significant: The data showed that at least 64 percent of all victims and suspects were under prior or active community supervision. And “at least 76 percent of homicide suspects had active or prior supervision,” it found.

To be clear, the term, “community supervision” refers to the management and overseeing of a defendant or convicted offender in the community, rather than in physical custody in jail or prison. The individual under supervision could be on probation, parole or in a community corrections program.

But what does it mean to be under supervision? The Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency is a federal entity that handles supervision over the probation and parole of adults in the District. It claims to have stringent standards of contact and surveillance to help protect the public and provide services to the men and women under supervision.

DC Crime Facts, a private newsletter that reports on D.C. crime, said people in the District on parole, probation or community release had a 20 percent higher rearrest rate for new charges in fiscal 2022 than fiscal 2021.

Many advocates of criminal justice reform contend that incarceration is the least effective way to encourage long-term reduction in recidivism. That might be the case. But neither can high rearrest rates for people under community supervision be swept aside. The problem needs examination and explanation. Is the risk assessment used to set the level of supervision for each arrestee professionally sound and up to date? Are caseloads set at a manageable size to allow staff to do their jobs, or are they too high and unwieldy to make possible the kind of intervention with arrestees that produces favorable results? Those questions also apply to the juvenile justice system, where rearrests of youths under the supervision of the D.C. Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services should also be a concern.

As Contee and others observe, arrestees usually leave a long trail of victims in their wake. How to prevent this damaging aspect of our crime problem is yet another D.C. criminal-justice-system challenge that must be met. Innocent, law-abiding District residents deserve no less.