Opinion: Fear shouldn't make our policy decisions

On Friday night, Dec. 5, the sound of gunfire shattered the sense of safety inside my luxury apartment building in Union Market. Like dozens of other residents of The Gantry, I froze, dropped to the floor, then crept to the window and pulled the blinds shut as police cars flooded the street below. Hunkered down in my apartment, heart racing, I wondered whether there was still an active shooter in the building—whether the locked door between me and the hallway would be enough.

It was the first time crime had affected me so personally. I was afraid—for myself, and for the people I now call my neighbors.

Not long after, the news filtered in via social media: 20-year-old Roy Lee Bennett Jr. was dead.

A few days later came another jolt. The person accused of killing him is 16 years old. And the U.S. attorney announced the decision to charge him as an adult.

In The Gantry residents’ WhatsApp group, fear quickly turned into fury. Conversations about security spiraled into broader judgments about crime, punishment, and what “these kids” deserve. One message captured the prevailing sentiment: “At 16 you know not to shoot somebody inside their apartment, better yet have a gun. Some of these kids gonna have to learn the hard way. Can’t let everyone slide.”

I understood the anger. I felt it too. A young man is dead. A family is devastated. Accountability matters. Punishment is deserved.

But as the co-founder of More Than Our Crimes, I also bring a perspective shaped by years of close contact with people most Washingtonians never meet: men now in their 40s and 50s who were sent into the adult criminal justice system when they were still children.

My co-founder, Robert Barton—Rob—is one of them.

Rob went into prison at 16. At an age when most kids are worried about grades, friendships, and first freedoms, Rob was sent into an adult federal penitentiary — a high-security prison where survival depends on learning and mastering the rules of a violent adult world — fast. Put bluntly, it’s eat or be eaten.

There was no intervention waiting for him there. No mentor. No program designed to help him grow out of the worst decision of his life. Rob had to school himself.

What he did have, before prison, was a single mother who had given him a strong moral foundation, even though the siren call of the streets ultimately won out. That grounding mattered. It gave him something to reach back for in an environment that actively taught opposite values.

Most kids who enter adult prison at 16 don’t have that. They don’t have a parent’s voice echoing in their head. They don’t have an internal compass strong enough to counter what adult prison rewards: aggression, dominance, emotional numbness, and violence as currency.

So, Rob’s story is not proof that the system works. It is proof of how much a young person must overcome to survive it. Against the odds, Rob resisted becoming what the environment demanded. He educated himself, reflected, changed—and eventually emerged with a fierce sense of responsibility to others. Today, he is a community leader and mentor, someone who actively works to interrupt cycles of violence and is part of the reason crime is going down, not up.

For every Rob Barton, there are many more young people who do exactly what the system conditions them to do.

In Washington, D.C., teenagers convicted of violent crimes as “adults” are sent into the federal prison system — high-security facilities far from home, isolated from family and community. These prisons are not neutral holding spaces. They are formative environments. And when you place a developing adolescent brain into an ecosystem governed by fear and force, you should not be surprised by what comes out the other side.

This is why our reactions in moments like this matter so much. The teenager we rush to label as “bad” or “useless” will one day return to the community, perhaps to your neighborhood, even the building next door. The real question is not whether he should be held accountable, but what kind of person we want him to come back as.

That question feels especially urgent now. Last year, Republicans in the House (and eight Democrats) passed legislation that would allow D.C. to try children as young as 14 as adults. The bill has not yet cleared the Senate, but its logic is familiar: fear, outrage, and the belief that harsher punishment at ever-younger ages equals safety.

It doesn’t.

Modern neuroscience tells us that adolescents’ brains are still developing well into their 20s. Teenagers are more impulsive, more vulnerable to peer pressure, and less capable of weighing long-term consequences. That does not excuse violence. But it does mean that who a child is at their worst moment is not who they are destined to be — unless we lock that identity in place.

What if we demanded accountability without abandoning the possibility of change? What if justice meant protecting the public and reducing future harm, rather than satisfying our anger in the moment?

If we send children into adult prisons, we are not making ourselves safer. We are manufacturing the next generation of hardened adults.

Fear is understandable. But policy made in fear has consequences we all live with.

The choices we make after tragedy don’t just determine how we punish a child. They determine who comes home — and what kind of community we become.