The D.C. Council voted to extend its stricter pretrial-detention standards until the end of next year, a key tool that has allowed judges to keep violent-crime suspects behind bars while their cases play out in court.
The council approved an amendment Tuesday to preserve the tighter jailing standards through December 2026. The Criminal Justice Coordinating Council will also study the pretrial provision to see how effective it is at cutting down on crime.
Councilmember Brooke Pinto’s original provision, which was included inside a beefy “Peace D.C.” legislative package that addressed several public safety issues, would have made the tougher jailing standards permanent for people charged with carjacking, rape, kidnapping and other major crimes.
The standards first came about on an emergency basis in 2023 when the city was in the midst of a generational spike in killings, muggings and violent car thefts.
Ms. Pinto, the chair of the council’s Public Safety Committee, laid out how the legal language around pretrial detention procedures is not the reference point judges use in the courtroom. Instead, the Ward 2 Democrat said magistrates will look at case law to see how the standards have been applied in the past.
Ms. Pinto cited a D.C. Court of Appeals opinion from 1999, which found that the evidence in charging documents was not enough to jail someone throughout their court case. She said the precedent hindered judges’ ability to keep someone locked up.
“In other words, no matter how heinous the offense is, if there’s no rebuttable presumption, then the judge cannot hold someone based only on the facts alone of the offense committed,” Ms. Pinto said.
Councilmember Robert White, at-large Democrat, argued the harsher pretrial jailing standards are unnecessary because the city already has laws on the books that allow judges to detain defendants who are dangerous or pose a flight risk.
He also mentioned a Criminal Justice Coordinating Council study, released last month, that said there was little change in the number of defendants being locked up before stricter standards kicked in two years ago and today.
Mr. White said the pretrial provisions disproportionately affect the District’s Black residents, particularly men. Ms. Pinto countered that Black men are, by and large, also the victims of deadly violence in the city.
Councilmember Matt Frumin, Ward 3 Democrat, encouraged further study of the detention standards, but also acknowledged how the 2023 crime wave began to retreat shortly after the pretrial changes were made.
“We’ll see over time how this is being implemented, and if it is having a positive or negative effect,” Mr. Frumin said. “But for now, the District is safer today than it was before this, and so I think we should keep it in place.”
