Jones (Via Homicide Watch D.C.)

Mayor Vince Gray’s office and the office of U.S. Attorney Ron Machen announced on Saturday the creation of a partnership designed to better enforce crimes targeting gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender victims.

In the new program, D.C.’s Office of GLBT Affairs will gather community impact statements following crimes motivated by a victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Community impact statements are documents used by the U.S. Attorney’s office in sketching out a crime’s effect on the wider population.

The statements are often used during the sentencing phases of criminal cases in D.C. Superior Court, and can lead to stiffer penalties for violent crimes.

Gray announced the partnership at a memorial for Deoni Jones, a transgender woman who was killed February 2, 2012 near a Metrobus stop at East Capitol and Sycamore Streets NE. “While this partnership will not bring Deoni back, it will give the LGBT community more power to affect the sentences handed down to violent criminals, helping to keep them off our streets,” Gray said in a press release.

In a statement today, Machen’s office said the partnership with the city’s GLBT Affairs office should strengthen its prosecution of crimes motivated by bias against sexual orientation or identity. “Community impact statements are an important tool for informing judges at sentencing about the effects of a crime that go beyond the direct victim,” the statement read. “These statements are particularly important in hate crime cases, where violence fueled by discrimination can strike fear into an entire community.”