It’s Time for the Senate To Lower the Age of Criminal Responsibility in DC

Washington, D.C. is out of step with the rest of the nation on criminal justice—especially when it comes to holding violent juveniles accountable. But that’s a problem lawmakers are trying to fix.

On Tuesday, the House of Representatives approved a measure to allow juveniles 14 and older to be tried as adults for select crimes. Now, that measure comes before the Senate, offering it a chance to align the nation’s capital with the majority of the country.

Under current city law, juveniles 16 and up can be prosecuted in adult court for select crimes—but that’s a rarity. 

Need proof? Between 2013 and 2023, when armed juveniles committed thousands of violent crimes, only 176 were prosecuted in adult court. 

From 2018 to the present, a supermajority of carjackings in the district were committed by 14-16-year-olds. Roughly 73% of those carjackings involved guns.

That makes the status quo totally unacceptable. 

Most juveniles who commit crimes, especially first-time nonviolent offenders, belong in juvenile court, where the focus is on rehabilitation. In Washington, D.C., though, juvenile offenders with long criminal records are coddled in juvenile court, even when they have a history of violent crime. And even when they’re held “responsible” for their conduct, they often serve their “sentences” at home. 

The House’s proposal to try juveniles as adults in certain cases attempts to change that. Proponents argue that it will curb violent crime, noting that nearly 200 juveniles arrested for violent offenses in Washington, D.C. last year had alreadyfaced prior violent crime charges.

“I am advocating and have advocated for jurisdiction over juveniles 14, 15, 16, 17,” said Jeanine Pirro, U.S. Attorney for the district. “They need to be brought into the criminal court so we can prosecute them.”

Not everyone shares her opinion, though. Last week, Washington, D.C. Councilmember Brooke Pinto called the congressional bills “dangerous and rushed,” arguing they would “harm the District’s public safety ecosystem.”

It’s the radical D.C. city council, which has defended the current juvenile policy and opposed federal intervention, that is responsible for the status quo.   

Over the past few years, the ideologically leftist council has consistently opposed any attempt to strengthen law enforcement or prosecute and imprison criminals, opting instead to reflexively support soft-on-crime policies. In 2023, for instance, while crime was rising in the capital, the council lowered almost every mandatory minimum sentence, rejecting wholesale any notion of deterrence.

In reality, nearly everystate allows minors younger than 16 to be tried as adults in at least some circumstances, according to The Interstate Commission for Juveniles. Alaska, California, and South Dakota are the only exceptions.

Half of the states—including Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Minnesota—allow 14-year-olds to be tried as adults for select crimes. Ten other states, including New York, allow juveniles under 14 to be tried as adults for the most heinous crimes. And Washington State and Montana allow 12-year-olds to be tried as adults. 

In other words, almost 75% of states allow juveniles 14 or younger to be tried in adult court for the most violent crimes.

This national trend proves how out of step the district is on this issue.

“We don’t have to live under this Left-wing anarcho tyranny where criminals terrorize innocent people,” observed Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Tex., last week. “And that includes juveniles.” 

He’s correct. 

This isn’t the first time Congress has had to rebuke the D.C. city council and local leaders for their imbecilic criminal laws. In 2023, for instance, a total of 62 Democrats in the Senate and House of Representatives joined Republicans in striking down a D.C. provision that, among other changes, would have significantly reduced the maximum penalty for crimes such as armed hijacking. 

As one of us (Stimson) wrote here, the same witless council voted to “reform” the local criminal code by eliminating mandatory minimum sentences for all crimes except first-degree murder. 

For some Democrats in the Senate, the upcoming vote might raise uncomfortable questions about why they accept (or even support) trying 14- and 15-year-olds as adults in their own states but resist that same policy in the nation’s capital.

After all, many of the Democratic lawmakers who intervened vis-à-vis the 2023 D.C. reforms come from states that allow juveniles to be prosecuted as adults. 

For example, in 2004, while chief prosecutor for Hennepin County (Minneapolis), Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., supported the state’s decision to transfer a 15-year-old charged with murder and assault from juvenile court to adult court for prosecution.

Two years later, Klobuchar again backed trying a 15-year-old in adult court for sexually assaulting a three-year-old, and likewise supported transferring another 15-year-old accused of fatally assaulting and robbing a 61-year-old man.

From 1991 to 2011, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., served as the attorney general of Connecticut—another state that allows 14- and 15-year-olds to be transferred to adult court. In 1995, under his tenure, the state passed legislation requiring “automatic transfer” of juveniles aged 14 and older for felonies like murder and manslaughter and allowed “discretionary transfer” for felonies like burglary and arson.

According to one study, Connecticut prosecutors secured 209 discretionary transfers to adult court between 1997 and 2002, with the number of annual transfers steadily increasing from 1997 to 2000.

In 2001, a Connecticut attorney argued a case before the state’s Supreme Court to uphold the transfer of Michael Skakel to adult court for the murder of 15-year-old Martha Moxley. That case drew national attention because Skakel was the nephew of Robert F. Kennedy’s widow Ethel Kennedy, and he wasn’t tried for the 1975 murder until 2002. 

Klobuchar and Blumenthal aren’t the only Democrat senators previously involved in prosecuting juveniles as adults.

In May 2014, while Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., was Nevada’s Attorney General, state prosecutors charged 15-year-old Turner Bronson as an adult for shooting and killing his older brother.

“The age didn’t matter, under the law [in Nevada] right now, if you’re eight or older and you commit the crime of murder, you are charged as an adult,” explained District Attorney Steve Wolfson.

These examples are revealing for multiple reasons.

First, they show that treating violent juveniles as adults is nothing more than a standard—and often necessary—practice across much of the country, used by Democrats and Republicans alike when their positions demand they address violent juvenile crime rather than simply moralize about it.

Second, they demonstrate that Washington, D.C.’s refusal to adopt similar measures is yet another indication of how out of step local leaders are—one that comes at a time when residents face rising threats from repeat offenders and one of the highest homicide rates in the country.

Perhaps most telling of all, of the 31 Democratic senators who voted to reject the city council’s dangerous reforms in 2023, eight come from states that allow 15-year-olds to be tried as adults, including Sens. Bennet, Blumenthal, Hassan, Hickenlooper, Shaheen, and Wyden.

At least 10 come from states that authorize 14-year-olds to be tried as adults, including Sens. Baldwin, Coons, Kaine, Klobuchar, Peters, Smith, Schumer, Stabenow and Warner. Five come from states that allow 13-year-olds to be tried as adults, including Sens. Cortez Masto, Gillibrand, Ossoff, Rosen, and Schumer. And at least three come from states that allow 12-year-olds to be tried as adults, including Sens. Cantwell and Murray.

The Senate now faces a clear choice: either allow the city council’s ideological resistance to override common sense or bring D.C. law in line with national norms.

A vote to lower the transfer age would signal that protecting public safety comes first. It would end the double standard that treats D.C. as an exception to rules that lawmakers support at home. And it would be a long-overdue step toward reforming the criminal justice system in the nation’s capital. 

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