Peoria Pundit

Freakonomics has an interesting post in reaction to state of New York passing a law making it illegal to recruit anyone into a gang. Success is 100 percent guaranteed because, as you know, the last thing people who are engaging in an ongoing, multi-generational criminal enterprise want to is break the law. End sarcasm.

From the post:

In the never-ending fight by city officials and legislators to combat gangs, this is one of the latest efforts to outmaneuver gang members. Other similar initiatives have included: city ordinances that limit two or more gang members from hanging out in public space; school codes that ban the use of hats, clothing, and colors that signify gang membership; and public housing authorities that evict leaseholders who allow gang members (or any other so-called “criminal”) to live inside the housing unit.

These laws rarely lead to reductions in gang membership, gang violence, or gang crime. In fact, police officers I know find these ordinances and statutes a waste of time. Cops would much rather “control and contain” gang activity. Most officers who work in inner cities understand that you cannot eliminate gang activity entirely — arrest two gang members and you will find a dozen others waiting in line to take their places. Police know that gang members have great knowledge about local crimes, so they rely on a trade off: keep gangs isolated to particular areas, don’t let their criminal activities spill over into other spaces, and use high-ranking gang members for information.

My two cents: I’m not sure I completely approve. First, the tactics mentioned in the first paragraph were not, I believe, ever designed or promoted as a single magic-bullet cure for gang activity. To borrow an overused anology, they might be considered a tool in the tool belt.

Secondly, the police mentioned in the second paragraph seem to be advocating writing off entire neighborhoods as acknowledged gang territory in exchange for keeping uninfected neighborhoods free.

Feh.

Peorians who live in older neighborhoods have told me of encounters with police officers who tell them if they want to live in a neighborhood free of crime to move. To be fair, this was years ago, and everything I’ve seen or heard about current Police Chief Steve Settingsgaard suggests he discourages this attitude.

I like some of the suggestions offered by gang members, which includes tossing overly violent knuckleheads in jail (they cause problems for the gangs’ core business: drug sales) and public shaming. An outreach worker advocated taxing the gang-bangers and simply confiscating half of their cash. Sounds good, but as often as not, the person whose cash is gonna get “taxed” will be some dishwasher who just cashed his paycheck and happens to be walking home from work in one of the neighborhoods in which the gang has been contained.

If America really wanted to take away one of the incentives to joining a gang, take away the source of their profits by repealing anti drug laws.

But aside from that, my feeling is that there is no magic-bullet cure for gangs and gang-related crime. I don’t begrudge cities for trying some of the ideas mentioned above. Likewise, the efforts underway in Peoria such as covering entire neighborhoods with cameras might work, or they might not. Anything is worth a try, as long as it doesn’t take away too many resources from basic police protection.

There’s no substitute for having enough well-trained, fully-equipped police officers. The next step is making sure that these officers are being tasked with the job of really fighting crime and not just concentrating on conviction rates and bringing in revenue with tickets.