The source of much political controversy this past legislative session, the D.C. Council’s Revised Criminal Code was the result of years of revisions done by the Council-established Criminal Code Reform Commission to update existing criminal sentencing laws, making them more relevant and just. The currently enforced D.C. criminal code has not been revised since 1901, when it was originally created by Congress. Most states in the U.S. redrafted their criminal statutes after the American Law Institute introduced the Model Penal Code in 1962. D.C. did not, meaning not only are the current statutes outdated, they are also some of the harshest and longest sentencing laws in the country.

According to the CCRC, “the District is the only jurisdiction whose criminal laws were mostly written by members of Congress instead of locally elected legislators.” (The laws were, after all, written seven decades before Home Rule was implemented.) This set the stage for the ongoing conflict that D.C. Council and Congress have engaged in regarding the updates the RCCA suggested. Republicans and conservative media outlets have repeatedly characterized the local bill as soft on crime and radical.

Remember, however, that the RCCA was not actually controversial when it came before the Council, which passed it unanimously in 2022. It was heavily researched in a years-long process that included stakeholder involvement and feedback. “House Republicans made the RCCA out to be something that it’s not,” says Conor Shaw, deputy chief of staff for first-term Ward 5 Councilmember Zachary Parker. Parker was elected in 2022, after the RCCA had been rewritten and hashed out. Upon assuming office, he voted to pass the bill and spoke at the direct action the advocacy collective Hands Off DC held outside the Capitol on March 8. The direct action followed President Biden’s announcement that he would not veto House Republicans’ bid to block the RCCA’s implementation.

After Parker and his peers on the Council passed the RCCA, Mayor Muriel Bowser subsequently vetoed it, putting the legislation on Congress’ radar. “The mayor’s veto of the legislation [the unanimously passed RCCA] was unfortunate and the rhetorics she employed really opened the door to a national conversation about this legislation that is pretty far removed from its substance,” Shaw says.

Shaw echoes what many policy analysts believe about the RCCA. 

“D.C. criminal code is a mess. It’s a disaster,” says Jonathan Smith, senior special counsel for criminal legal system reform at the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs. Smith has worked on criminal justice policy and policing practices reform in Washington, D.C., for decades.

Smith believes that Republican members of Congress latched onto specific language in the RCCA not because they actually opposed the legislation, but because those words could politicize the RCCA as an example of the Democratic Party being “soft on crime” ahead of upcoming elections. Bowser’s veto and vocal critique of the bill fueled this politicized rhetoric that steers the conversation away from the bill’s substance.

“We knew this [political backlash] was coming,” Smith says about the discourse around the RCCA. “After every wave of reform, there is a race-based response that emerges again and we’re seeing that now. And it happens to be in a hyper-partisan moment with a lot of elections coming up.” 

Smith speaks to the dynamics of Republican-led interference on D.C. legislation, affecting a jurisdiction that is not only the country’s capital city, but also the country’s first major majority-Black city. For decades, these elected officials have exercised authority and control over D.C.’s diverse populus who aren’t even their constituents. 

Naïké Savain, director of policy at the DC Justice Lab, agrees with Smith’s assessment of D.C. legislation often becoming a tool in a broader national political conversation. Savain says a lot of her organization’s advocacy efforts have focused on educating residents about what the legislation seeks to do, correct misinformation, and remind people that the core issues of the RCCA are not controversial. 

“Accountability and oversight is not actually as divisive an issue, national or locally, as it’s been portrayed,” Savain says. A HIT Strategies poll the DC Justice Lab commissioned found that 83 percent of District voters supported the original bill and 79 percent are more likely to support a candidate who would vote for the RCCA. The same poll found that support for the RCCA remained high among D.C. residents after exposure to both pro- and anti-RCCA messages.

“The national conversation about abolition is focused on what we want to end, but abolitionist organizing is also about the culture and communities we want to build,” Savain says.

As part of their work on the issue, DC Justice Lab created public education programming to answer questions residents have on the local bill including panels and materials for people to learn more about the nuances of the code and policing in the District. As news of the nation’s clash with Congress spread, the group updated its programming to educate those who don’t live in the District. Savain summarizes the DC Justice Lab’s current public education work as trying to answer the question of “how do we communicate to folks around the country that this is important even if it’s not happening to them?”

The RCCA has become a vehicle for a larger national dialogue about race, policing, and punishment, and serves as a reminder of the precarious political position D.C. occupies without statehood. Before Biden flipped his position, he initially supported the District’s autonomy. 

“For far too long, the more than 700,000 people of Washington, D.C. have been deprived of full representation in the U.S. Congress,” Biden’s April 2021 letter in support of H.R. 51, the Washington, D.C. Admission Act, read. “This taxation without representation and denial of self-governance is an affront to the democratic values on which our Nation was founded.” 

H.R. 51 was D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton’s legislation to grant D.C. statehood in the 117th Congress. The bill had 216 co-sponsors, all of them Democrats, signaling that D.C. statehood continues to be popular among Congressional Dems. Biden’s letter was a key sign of support from his administration, after years of adversarial action from the Trump administration. It ends with a clear directive: “The Administration calls for the Congress to provide for a swift and orderly transition to statehood for the people of Washington, D.C.”

In March, Biden seemed to walk back this supportive stance in a Tweet. “I support D.C. Statehood and home-rule—but I don’t support some of the changes D.C. Council put forward over the Mayor’s objections—such as lowering penalties for carjackings. If the Senate votes to overturn what D.C. Council did—I’ll sign it,” a statement posted to his account reads.

Makia Green and Alex Dodds, two organizers from the Hands Off DC’s coalition, say that their network of D.C.-based organizers was shocked by Biden’s reversal. 

“[It was] the last straw of disrespect towards D.C. autonomy, Black organizers, and those across the District fighting for community safety,” Green says of Biden’s announcement.

Hands Off DC’s organizers quickly came together and “turned anger and disappointment in that moment into action,” Green says. The coalition’s first action was a mass rally outside the Capitol on March 8, less than a week after Biden’s announcement, which launched the “Hands off D.C.” rallying cry. 

“Hands off D.C., we’re not a political playground,” Green tells City Paper.

Hands Off DC aims to represent the geographical and political breadth of D.C. residents. It is a Black-led coalition that particularly wanted to uplift voices representing neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River. “We have folks east of the river all the way to Rock Creek Park to beyond,” Green says of the coalition’s members. Hands Off DC continues to grow its membership across the District as Congress continues to involve itself in D.C. politics. 

The misplaced Congressional oversight and national political circus around the RCCA highlights the democratic limitations and political precarity that lack of statehood places on D.C. residents. But for many residents, the organizing of Hands Off DC signals what a safe and just future for the District could look like.