Descano launches an online case overview dashboard
The Office of Fairfax Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano dealt with more than 18,000 cases over the last five quarters.
Nearly 60 percent of the cases involved misdemeanors, and only 8 percent of them involved violent felonies.
That data is reported in Descano’s new online Case Overview Dashboard, which aims to bring more transparency and accountability to Fairfax County’s justice system.
The four most common case types comprise 48 percent of all cases: felony narcotics (13 percent), misdemeanor assault (12 percent), misdemeanor larceny (12 percent), and misdemeanor driving while intoxicated (11 percent).
Among other data from the dashboard:
- Of the 18,145 cases handled by the commonwealth attorney’s office over the past 15 months, 41 percent were felonies, and 59 percent were misdemeanors.
- During that period, 4,358 cases (24 percent) involved violent crimes.
- A majority of the violent cases (65 percent) received between January 2023 and March 2024 were misdemeanors, and 35 percent were felonies.
- Of the 13,787 cases that involved non-violent crimes, 37 percent involved property-related crimes, 18 percent involved drugs, 15 percent were DWI cases, 2 percent involved firearms, and 28 percent were characterized as miscellaneous.
- Just 26 percent of defendants are female; 74 percent are male.
- A majority of defendants (65 percent) are White, 27 percent are black, and 3 percent are Asian/Pacific Islander.
- Defendants tend to be young: 25 percent are aged 18-24, and 34 percent are 25-34.
Related story: Online access to court cases available
Descano says his office “strives to improve community safety by treating serious crime seriously and pouring our resources into those cases while also taking a smart-on-crime approach that aims to keep people who have committed lower-level offenses from ‘graduating’ to more serious crime.”
The commonwealth attorney’s office also has a dashboard on emergency substantial risk orders (ESRO), also known as red flag orders.
Virginia’s red flag law enacted in 2020, enables law enforcement to temporarily remove weapons from someone who may pose a danger to themselves or others.
The commonwealth’s attorney handled 236 red flag cases since April 2022. The biggest month for ESROs was April 2024, with 22 cases. There were 11 cases in May and 12 in June.
This is the first good thing I have seen from the Commonwealth Attorney. What jumps out to me is the 32,489 charges received by the Commonwealth Attorney from law enforcement but only 18,145 total cases received. Why are only 55% of charges turning into cases; could it be that NOT prosecuting quality of life & property crimes meets Steve Descano’s campaign pledge of NOT prosecuting “people who have committed lower-level offenses” – with the stated intention of slowing folks, “from ‘graduating’ to more serious crime.” That intention and the poor outcome doesn’t seem to be working out well given the increasing overall crime in Mason District and Fairfax. Also, what is the conviction rate of cases? The measurement of effectiveness for Steve Descano or any Commonwealth Attorney (prosecutor), is cases filed and convictions. Keep in mind the dashboard only covers that which is committed by those individuals age 18 and up. Completely omitted are juvenile crimes, which ignores the modern gang business model of recruiting middle school age kids for entry level efforts (think “lookout”), and moving the kids to more dangerous/ violent activities when in high school ages. The the gangs are purposefully utilizing minors to game the criminal justice system and people’s empathy & compassion. The dashboard is one positive step forward but also demonstrates Steve Descano’s steps backwards by NOT prosecuting crimes, keeping the community unaware of both juvenile offenders and effectiveness.
There’s no ability to drill down on the data. Under demographics, he lists Hispanics as white. I looked at it for 60 seconds and realized what it was – a knee jerk to concerns about crime in order to say “look at how transparent I am” when in reality, the data is corrupted on the front end and hidden on the back end. He thinks we’re stupid. We are, we voted for him.
County Board of Supervisors put in place a policy where FCPD cannot release details on demographics for their weekly crime reports. They have to collect demographic data (federal requirement for grant funding), but the County doesn’t have to report it on their crime specific weekly disclosure. Thus the information released is less useful to individuals in impacted neighborhoods. Not sure how that impacts data in this transparency effort, but this is a core political “washing” of information problem under the guise of compassion and preventing stereotyping. Looking at national crime numbers from the 1990’s forward – most crime is committed by whites because they are a large proportion of the population. However significantly higher percentages (compared to percentage of population) are committed by Blacks and Hispanics. This is in part due to poverty, a concentration of gang activities, and a challenge with family involvement / responsibilities (as noted since the 1970’s for blacks in academic publications – one example is the pre-Senate academic paper by Sen Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democrat of NY). Personally, I would rather be helping kids in schools, their families having both parents involved, and countering gangs (juvenile crime); as that would be more effective and compassionate than not prosecuting lower level crimes as our Commonwealth Attorney has chosen to do. There has to be both – help and consequences. Common Sense really is uncommon when politics is dominated by extremes.