I read the article. The comments here are so empathic, insightful, and knowledgeable. This is not an easy issue to fix, it will take time. I hope the Mayor, Council, Police, and the DC AG come up with a coordinated response to address a couple hundred of kids terrorizing the city. Expungeable prohibition should only be offered to first time offenders.

As mentioned by another, the Wolfgang cohort study seems to point to some of the underlying issues: poverty, low academic achievement, and family disruption. All of those are personal problems, which the government can assist with, but the larger community has little impact on. The Mayor has created a basic income (to address poverty), she also has increased tutoring services (to address low academic achievement), and she seems to have a lot of shelters to help those who need transitional housing (to address family disruption, case in point abusive relationships). If troubled children commit crime, at this point, they need to be held accountable. The city has a myriad of resources, families must seek them out or their children will be stuck in this vicious cycle of criminality.

People are empathic but are becoming tired.