Politicians in Washington D.C. pushing for good behaviour stipend

WASHINGTON DC’s soaring crime has residents totally fed up. So they’re resorting to extreme measures.

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CRIME in Washington DC is so bad that politicians have introduced a bill that literally pays residents to behave themselves.

The Distict of Columbia is offering as much as $US9000 ($12,821) to 200 people each year who the city considers at risk of committing a violent crime.

Recipients would first be identified and later be required to participate in behavioural therapy programs and stay out of trouble.

It’s all part of a bill approved by the D.C Council on Tuesday and based on a program in Richmond, California, that advocates say has contributed to deep reductions in crime.

The unorthodox plan, locals say, has produced positive results five years in a row.

Kenyan McDuffie, a Democrat who wrote the legislation, said it was part of a comprehensive approach to reducing violent crime in the city, which experienced a 54 per cent increase in homicides in 2015.

Homicides and violent crime are still down significantly since the 2000s, and even more so since the early 1990s when the District was dubbed the nation’s “murder capital”.

Advocates say spending the money to pay criminals to behave “pales in comparison” to the cost of someone being victimised and the costs of incarceration.

The program is expected to cost $US4.9 million ($6.9 million) over four years but Mayor Muriel Bowser is yet to officially commit to funding it.

WHERE THE PROGRAM HAS WORKED

Richmond, a short drive from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, was once one of the country’s most dangerous towns as gun violence reached uncontrollable levels in 2009.

With authorities on the brink of despair, they sought outside counsel on ways to curb the violence.

It was this that led Devone Boggan to establish the program and it was one key piece of information that caused him to implement his controversial strategy.

Upon learning that 70 per cent of the homicides and firearm assaults in 2009 were directly linked to just 17 people, Boggan had an epiphany.

“I thought, ‘wow, if we can wrap our arms around that and just engage the 17 people in a different way, that could have a significant impact on the narrative of what’s really going on in the city of Richmond’,” he told Al Jazeera last year.

He thought if he could inoculate the most violent, the flow on effects would make the community safer and change the general attitude towards the authorities. It appears to be working.

In 2013, Richmond saw its lowest number of homicides in 33 years with a total of 16. In 2014, that number dropped to a new recorded low of 11 which is a far cry from the recorded high of 62 in 1990.

The D.C program would be run independently of the police department, and participants would remain anonymous. Its goal would be to recruit people who are at risk of violence but don’t have criminal cases pending.