Republican Rep. Byron Donalds scored a major legislative victory this week against “soft-on-crime policies of far-left” politicians and for stricter punishments targeting Washington, D.C.’s young adult offenders.
The House passed Donalds’ “D.C. CRIMES Act” by a 240-179 vote on Tuesday. But the Florida congressman emphatically told NOTUS that his punitive approach toward teenagers committing crimes in D.C. is completely unrelated to his own youthful indiscretions, which include an arrest at 18 for marijuana distribution and a felony theft conviction at age 20.
“When I made my mistakes, there was no leniency for youthful offenders,” Donalds said in an interview.
Donalds’ criminal record suggests he received more leniency than he’s letting on.
After his marijuana arrest in 1997, a Florida court granted Donalds a “pre-trial diversion,” which offered some offenders alternatives to jail. Law enforcement arrested Donalds on a charge of distributing weed, not just possessing it, although Donalds maintains he wasn’t distributing.
For his drug charge, the court ultimately fined Donalds $150 and did not incarcerate him.
“Pre-trial diversion? Let’s be very clear — the issues in Washington, D.C., is not a 20-year-old with a dime bag of marijuana,” Donalds told NOTUS on Wednesday. “It’s clear from some of the data we already have that young adult crime in the city of Washington is what is causing a lot of the issues. So why would you be lenient on that when your citizens aren’t safe?”
In 2000, Donalds pleaded no contest to a felony larceny charge. He was sentenced to two years of probation, and a court later expunged his record.
Donalds, who is now running for governor of Florida on a tough-on-crime agenda that mirrors President Donald Trump’s policies, insisted there’s “no differentiation between that and stuff I had to overcome and work through.”
Donalds told NOTUS that he’s made it a long way — thanks to his own “pathway of redemption” and effort to reform himself.
“At 22 years old, I never thought I’d be here, but the one thing I did always purpose in my life was I was never going to be that person again,” Donalds said. “Every day was just working hard to be better than I was the previous day.”
Donalds’ crime bill, which passed with 31 Democrats joining and all but one Republican affirming it, now awaits consideration in the Senate and will require several Democrats’ support to circumvent a filibuster attempt.
Democratic Rep. Suhas Subramanyam of Virginia said he wouldn’t comment on Donalds’ past arrests — but he argued tougher sentencing for young adults could lead to more problems later on.
“I will say, there’s lots of examples out there in the country and in my district, of people who made a mistake, especially when they were younger,” Subramanyam said. “Instead of treating them like a criminal for the rest of their life and not allowing them to get jobs, we put them through programs that could potentially help them expunge their record.”
“What we want is long-term solutions that are evidence-based, and not the stuff that we did in the ’80s that didn’t fix the problem,” he said.
Donalds’ bill is indeed tough.
It would remove judges’ discretion to issue sentences below the established mandatory minimum for young adults, and prohibit D.C. city officials from enacting changes to those mandatory minimums or sentencing guidelines. It targets D.C.’s Youth Rehabilitation Act, which can offer more lenient sentencing for individuals up to the age of 24, though participating offenders over 18 are still tried as adults, not as children.
Donalds’ bill would also eliminate the possibility for young adult offenders to have their convictions “set aside” once they complete their sentence — something similar to expungement, which was offered to Donalds after his felony charge.
On Monday, Donalds offered harsh words for city officials for having implemented such policies.
“Instead of addressing the clear epidemic of youth crime in the city, the D.C. Council increased the age of youth offenders to individuals 24 years old and younger,” Donalds said. “That means fully grown legal adults in the District of Columbia can receive sentences meant for children. This is patently insane, and Americans across the board are sick of this kind of absurdity.”
D.C. is unique among American cities in that it’s both a municipality with a city council and a federal district that the federal government ultimately oversees, in large part. President Donald Trump has made fighting crime in D.C. a top priority, sending federal law enforcement and National Guard troops into the city alongside local police.
Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office declined to comment.
If Donalds returns to state office as governor, Floridians might come to know a different Donalds.
As a Florida state legislator, he sponsored a crime bill that, in part, expanded the age range of offenders who could qualify for the state’s more lenient youthful offender sentencing.
He also frustrated local law enforcement when he, along with other state lawmakers, pushed to overhaul mandatory minimum sentencing in the state in 2019.
“The reality of the situation is, we cannot continue to overlook the fact that we don’t have the resources to fund the system that everyone wants to fund,” Donalds told the Tallahassee Democrat at the time. “We are just warehousing people. So, if you are actually going to help people to correct their lives … we have to reshape the system in a way that they can be full citizens when they come back.”
Donalds’ arrests also came up in Thursday’s House Oversight Committee hearing with local elected leaders about crime in the city, when Rep. Yassamin Ansari of Arizona entered a news article about them into the record.
Donalds again denied that his past arrests and light punishments are at all relevant to his D.C. crime bill.
“Every day since the age of 21, I’ve had to purpose myself to be a better man than I was the day before. That is something that was afforded to me by the laws of the state of Florida, and I’m grateful for that opportunity, and now I’m here, in the nation’s capital, doing my job,” Donalds said. “I believe that adults over the age of 18 should be held accountable as adults.”