A new bill would direct D.C.’s Mayor to implement a violence reduction model that’s shown promise in other cities, address blight and vacant properties, and use Medicaid dollars to fund violence prevention.

The bill would also ask the city’s Sentencing Commission – which makes recommendations about prison sentences and publishes data about the criminal justice system – to publicly release more data on people who repeatedly commit violent crimes, and it would make clear that the police department has the power to hire civilian investigators to boost its resources at a time when keeping up with officer attrition has been difficult.

D.C. Council chairman Phil Mendelson, along with seven other councilmembers, introduced the bill Thursday.

The goal of the bill, Mendelson told WAMU/DCist, is “to take more focused approaches toward reducing gun violence, and approaches that have a basis in the research around criminology.”

To that end, the bill’s introductory letter is dotted with footnotes, linking out to research backing its various provisions.

Homicides, robberies, and motor vehicle thefts are all significantly up in the District. There have been 265 killings in the city this year as of Thursday — more than any year since 2002, according to D.C. police data. As crime has surged, many D.C. officials – including D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser – have repeatedly emphasized that public safety is their top priority.

Bowser has been pushing two pieces of her own crime legislation in the D.C. Council this year, repeatedly urging the council to pass them into law. But Mendelson said he introduced his bill Thursday because he felt there were evidence-based solutions to crime and violence that Bowser’s administration has been ignoring.

“Not all, but most of the provisions in my bill, the Mayor could implement without legislation. She just has chosen instead to say that the council needs to legislate,” Mendelson said. “So I introduced the bill.”

A Bowser spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mendelson’s bill calls for the implementation of five different violence reduction strategies.

The first provision directs the city government to implement what’s called a “group violence intervention initiative.” This violence reduction strategy, often also called “focused deterrence,” typically involves directly communicating with people most likely to be involved in gun violence, offering them social services and other support if they actually stop participating in criminal activity, and focusing arrests and enforcement on people who refuse the services and commit serious violent crimes. Developed in the 90s by a researcher in conjunction with community advocates in Boston, it has shown success in other cities: It contributed to what’s commonly referred to as the “Boston miracle,” a time period in the ‘90s where youth homicides fell by 63%. “Group violence intervention” has also shown some recent success in Baltimore, the Baltimore Banner reported.

Officials with Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration have expressed support for the strategy. A plan commissioned by the city’s criminal justice coordinating council recommended a similar approach in the District, though the expert who developed the recommendations says the D.C. government has been slow to actually implement the plan.

“If you judge it by discussion, there’s been a lot of buy-in and support,” said David Muhammad, Executive Director of the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform. “I think that there is a challenge in the depth of implementation, the quality of implementation.”

The second provision in Mendelson’s bill authorizes the Metropolitan Police Department to employ civilians who can investigate crimes in cases where they’re not expected to make actual contact with the suspect. It’s a strategy cities like Phoenix have used to boost their investigative resources amid police staffing shortages. MPD has seen a net loss of about 500 officers since 2020.

A third provision would require D.C.’s Sentencing Commission to create a report, twice a year, with information about how many people previously convicted of violent crimes are re-committing violent crimes in the District. The list would be de-identified and would not include names.

“This puts a spotlight on the SYSTEM, such as whether ‘John Doe with a Mile-Long Rap Sheet’ is back out on the street,” Mendelson’s office wrote in a summary of the bill.

A fourth piece of Mendelson’s bill would give the mayor’s office more power to force property owners to address so-called “criminal blight,” like property damage and other issues with the physical environment. Studies have shown that vacant lots, abandoned properties, and other issues with neighborhood upkeep can contribute to crime — and they’ve also shown that efforts to fix up vacant lots and abandoned buildings are associated with a reduction in gun violence.

The bill’s final provision would direct the city to use Medicaid dollars to fund violence prevention work — a tool President Joe Biden’s administration has worked to make available to states. Several states – like California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, New York and Oregon — have passed legislation to try and free up dollars in this way.

The next step for the bill will be a hearing in the council’s judiciary committee, which is currently considering a flurry of public safety-related legislation in response to surging violence.

In some cases, the crisis has brought officials together: all but one councilmember got behind a scaled-back, temporary version of Bowser’s legislation over the summer. In other cases, existing political divisions have deepened – a reality made clear by the D.C. police union’s response, on Twitter, to Mendelson’s bill on Thursday. The union has repeatedly criticized members of the council for passing police reform measures it says led to an exodus of officers from the department.

“You are a highly unserious person,” the union wrote about Mendelson. “Until you accept blame for how we got here and repeal the [police reform legislation] from 2020, no amount of additional bureaucracy or window dressing will get us out of this.”

Mendelson, like many city officials and lawmakers, has faced criticism this year from many directions over the city’s surge in violent crime. He said he’s hoping next year will bring more effective collaboration.

“There are two things I hope for in 2024,” Mendelson told DCist/WAMU. “One of them is that the government will significantly reduce criminal activity and violent criminal activity in this city and people will feel better. And the second that I hope for is that there will be less finger pointing and more solving of the problem.”