By: Councilmember Scott Benson
We’ve had great news in Detroit recently. This year, Mayor Duggan announced significant drops in crime across various categories, including homicides, carjackings, and nonfatal shootings. In fact, in 2023, Detroit recorded the fewest number of homicides since 1966. These impressive reductions in violent crime are the result of a focused effort by the Detroit Police Department to reduce gun-related crimes, coupled with a multi-pronged partnership between the city, county, and state, as well as community violence intervention groups and federal law enforcement agencies. Thanks to this collaborative work, we’ve seen double-digit drops in many violent crime categories, making Detroit safer and improving the quality of life for our residents.
Yet, even as we celebrate these advances, I remain concerned about misdemeanor crimes, which, according to the Cato Institute, make up over 80% of all crimes but often receive less attention from prosecutors who, rightly, focus on more violent offenses. These misdemeanors, including certain types of domestic violence, assault and battery, retail fraud, and the sale of alcohol or tobacco to minors, may be lower-level offenses, but they still have serious consequences. When they go unaddressed or face long delays in prosecution, they erode the quality of life for victims and delay justice—sometimes indefinitely.
This is why I have asked the Detroit Law Department to help draft a new misdemeanor ordinance that will allow the City of Detroit to take over the prosecution of select misdemeanor offenses. Currently, the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office will continue to prosecute domestic violence crimes, while prioritizing major crimes like murder, sexual assault, and gun-related felonies. While this focus is absolutely necessary, it leaves a gap in the timely prosecution of lower-level crimes, which disproportionately affects our most vulnerable residents.
To address this, we are taking several misdemeanor crimes already codified in state law and adopting them into city ordinances, allowing Detroit to prosecute them at the municipal level. I am specifically focusing on quality-of-life crimes that have a direct impact on our residents when they go unpunished. These include assault and battery, retail fraud, malicious destruction of property, writing bad checks, lower-level embezzlement, and larceny from vehicles.
We’ve seen the consequences of failing to address misdemeanors in cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles, where a lack of enforcement has led to an exodus of small businesses from the urban core. In some cities, shoplifting below $1,000 has become de facto legal due to the absence of prosecution, leading to rampant retail theft and deteriorating conditions for businesses. That is not the future we want for Detroit.
In fact, an estimated 13 million misdemeanor cases are filed each year in the U.S., representing about 80% of the cases processed by our courts. In some areas, counties have even declined to prosecute misdemeanors altogether, effectively ignoring the need for restorative justice for those victimized by low-level crimes like property damage or larceny. The victims of these crimes—often the most vulnerable members of our community—deserve timely access to justice, just like anyone else.
This new ordinance will allow Detroit to focus on prosecuting the misdemeanors that most significantly impact the quality of life for our residents. By giving the City of Detroit the ability to handle these lower-level offenses, we can reduce the backlog at the county level, bring faster resolutions to these cases, and ensure that victims receive the justice they deserve.
Our focus is on creating a system where every Detroiter, regardless of the severity of the crime against them, has timely access to justice. Whether it’s a serious felony or a lower-level misdemeanor, we need to maintain trust in our justice system and provide closure for victims. This ordinance is a crucial step toward achieving that goal and making Detroit an even safer, more just place for all its residents.