Better Policing, Not National Guard, Responsible for D.C.'s Recent Crime Decline

A recent analysis led by UMD economist Erich Battistin found that last summer's National Guard deployment in Washington, D.C., had mixed results. While opportunistic crimes such as theft and vehicle break-ins fell by 24 percent, the deployment had no measurable impact on violent crime.

According to the report, these outcomes largely reflected a misalignment between the purposes and distribution of deployment and the realities of violent crime in D.C. National Guard personnel were stationed in tourist corridors, transit hubs, federal buildings, monuments, parks and other public spaces rather than in neighborhoods with the highest levels of violent crime. Those deployment locations are where opportunistic property crimes are most common and where a visible security presence is most likely to deter potential offenders.

The study also found that violent crime was already declining before the Guard arrived and continued on a similar trajectory afterward. Battistin and his co-authors argue that broader declines in crime were more closely tied to strategic policing efforts by the Metropolitan Police Department between 2022 and 2025 than to the Guard deployment itself. Despite reductions in force to roughly 3100 officers over that time, MPD's proactive enforcement strategies, such as increased attention to drug and traffic offenses and violations of parole and pretrial release conditions, contributed to declines in violent crimes.

Researchers concluded that strategic deployment of law enforcement resources may be more important for public safety than increasing overall staffing levels.

The report described the National Guard deployment as “an expensive tool deployed in the wrong places for the wrong types of crime.” The average daily cost of a Guard member was estimated at $607, compared with $384 for a D.C. police officer. The $185 million spent on the deployment over five months could have funded more than 1,300 additional officer-years.

-------  

The report, Washington, D.C.'s Crime Decline and Its Lessons for American Policing was published by the Niskanen Center, a D.C. think tank.

This study was a collaboration between researchers in UMD’s College of Agriculture & Natural Resources and the College of Behavioral & Social Sciences.

Co-authors of the study are Professor Erich Battistin and graduate student Borui Sun in the Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics at UMD. Richard Hahn, a PhD candidate in the Criminology and Criminal Justice Department at UMD, and Samantha Pérez-Dávila, a PhD candidate in Policy Analysis at the RAND School of Public Policy in Santa Monica, CA.