Bill Details

RCCA

The District’s criminal code has never been comprehensively revised since it was adopted by Congress in 1901.

It still references steamboats, outhouses, and mules, and leaves out some of our most common modern technologies.

Some offenses can be traced back to the District’s Black Codes and Slave Codes and others were introduced by segregationists from states outside D.C.

Possession of self-defense spray and possession of a fully automatic machine gun have the same maximum penalty: one year.

Committing simple assault is punishable by less than six months in jail, but threatening to commit simple assault is punishable by 20 years.

The Revised Code ensures the District of Columbia has criminal statutes that are clear, consistent, and constitutionally sound.
- Most states engaged in a similar process in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, when they adopted the American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code.
- The Criminal Code Reform Commission wrote down the elements of each criminal offense, spelling out in detail what conduct, result, circumstances, and intent are required. This means the law can be better understood and enforced.
The Revised Code finally organizes offenses into classes (e.g., Class A – E misdemeanor, Class 1 – 9 felony). It includes more degrees of offenses than current law (e.g., Third Degree Robbery), which makes it difficult to compare it to current law.
- Offenses are rank ordered so that more severe crimes carry more severe punishments. For example, did you know that under current law a person can receive as much jail time for taking a car as they can for taking a human life? Or, that they can receive more time for threatening someone’s property that for actually destroying it?
- Some maximum penalties were increased while others were decreased. For example, the RCCA’s penalties for shooting a firearm and for attempting to shoot a person are much higher than they are under current law. So are the penalties for possessing an assault weapon or ghost gun, or for sexual abuse of a child.

The RCCA is the product of 16 years of research, writing, deep listening, and compromise.
The Criminal Code Reform Commission held 51 public meetings and published 4,734 pages of commentary.
The Criminal Code Reform Commission Advisory Group included:
- The Office of the Attorney General
- The US Attorney’s Office
- The Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia
- The Office of the Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice
- The DC Council Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety
- Law Professors
The Advisory Group unanimously voted to send the RCCA recommendations to the DC Council.
The DC Council held three public hearings on the RCCA in 2021, over a year before the Council voted on the final revised bill.
- During those hearings, the Council heard from members of the public, people with lived experience in the criminal legal system, Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners, experts who helped research and write the bill, national experts on criminal justice, representatives from the Mayor’s office, the Metropolitan Police Department, the Office of the Attorney General, the US Attorney’s Office, and local community advocates.

For years, the Commission:
- Completed a thorough review of current law in the District, researched law and practices across the 50 states, and reviewed relevant legal scholarship;
- Analyzed current charging and sentencing practices in the District; and
- Conducted public opinion surveys on the relative severity of various crimes.
They issued detailed reports and documented all 51 public meetings.
To create a uniform and proportionate penalty classification system, the Commission 1) ranked each offense by severity, 2) determined how many classes of offenses there should be, 3) classified each offense, and 4) selected penalties for each class.