In 1997, Richmond, VA. had the highest murder rate among all American cities. According to James Comey, then the Assistant U.S. Attorney in charge of the Eastern District of Virginia: “We had an environment in criminal communities where the gun was an article of clothing.” In response, Mayor Tim Kaine and Comey began Project Exile. Exile shifted the prosecution of illegal gun possession from the state system to the federal courts. In the federal system, offenders faced longer sentences in faraway federal prisons - the convicted were “exiled” from their community. Following the launch of Exile, Richmond experienced a 33% drop of homicides in 1998. In 1999, homicides declined by another 21%. This success propelled the growth of Exile-like programs across the country. Dozens of cities and towns were quick to adopt the program. It gained bipartisan support among politicians. Endorsements came from both the NRA and the Brady campaign. 

As part of Professor Cebul’s research into Project Exile, I started my work with a few questions in mind. Why did this program expand across the US when it did? How did Exile become a vehicle for the federal government to involve itself in local law enforcement and crime?

To understand the magnitude of Exile’s spread across the nation, I began by reading and cataloguing the program’s adaptation through databases of local newspapers. This work established a timeline of when and where the program spread to. It also provided insight into some initial reasons why the program was expanding. For starters, city politicians were arguing that the overburdened, local judicial system deals out meager or little sentences to gun-related crimes as opposed to federal court. In the 1990s, city politicians, who continue to take “tough on crime” stance, see the feds as means to ease burden and impose tougher sentences on offenders.

From this point, I explored a variety of connected pieces in explaining the emergence of Project Exile. I investigated the history of gun-control legislation and crime bills. I examined previous crime reduction programs established and overseen by the federal government. An important conclusion that this work revealed was how unremarkable Project Exile was. For years, many others had employed the same tactics Exile touts as key in reducing violent crime. While Exile is in many ways nothing new, it is a piece of the story of the federal government’s involvement in local crime in the United States. To better understand Exile is to better understand why federal officers are being deployed into cities today. As I continue to research Exile this semester, I hope to illuminate how this program explains the role of federal government in policing today.

            Working alongside Professor Cebul as a mentor has been an amazing opportunity on how to think as a historian. It has given me skills - analyzing large swaths of primary sources, organizing information into digestible spreadsheets, collaborating alongside others - that will aid me in the rest of my academic career.