CRIME
A President committed to reducing crime could:(1) Order the same kind of scrutiny towards American imports for illegal drugs that American air passengers now get every day;(2) Give high-crime areas of the United States financial resources to hire thousands of new police, parole workers, recreation workers, tutors, and others who would aggressively work to get our criminally inclined young people out of criminal subcultures and into the American mainstream;(3) Keep a close rein on the CIA, the State Department, and the Defense Department to stop or at least severely limit deals with drug suppliers achieving foreign policy objectives by easing access to American consumers or otherwise strengthening their ability to get illegal drugs into the United States;(4) Find a way consistent with the second amendment to reduce the flow of guns into the hands of criminals and potential criminals in urban areas;(5) Work to expand access to the middle class through better schools, greater college aid, and clear pathways to job opportunities in order to reduce the appeal of criminal lifestyles;(6) Effectively pressure large American corporations to dramatically reduce films, gangsta rap music, video game murders and other media that collectively glorify criminal subcultures and evangelize for violence, drug use, theft, rape, and other crimes;(7) Work with responsible media elements to develop and distribute and fund alternate media creating compelling images and catchy music and responsible role models of people playing by the rules and having a good, long life as a result.I am sure that many other things could be done as well. A Presidency aggressively committed to reducing crime would undoubtedly lead to a lot of innovative thought and active public discussion and research as to what works and what does not work in the fight against crime.
August 12, 2007
http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=551724#post551724
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During my years in the state legislature, I have voted successfully to re-establish the death penalty and to make death penalty appeals end quicker, to establish and increase mandatory minimum sentences for numerous crimes, to ban guns in schools and on route to schools, to set up special schools for students with severe discipline problems and/or significant criminal records, to allow the admission of DNA evidence, to clear up loopholes allowing guilty people to escape punishment, to meet the conditions of France for extraditing convicted murderer Ira Einhorn, to construct various additional prisons, to more intensely surveill those whose records show them more likely to commit serious crimes, to allow prosecutors expanded wiretapping power, to expand witness protection programs, and to establish and expand programs protecting battered men and women from brutal spouses or lovers.I have worked successfully to increase funding for public education to the extent that Philadelphia schools now get about 63% of their budget from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, to give social workers power to remove children from the homes of parents or guardians who brutalize them, to establish and increase the penalties for hate crimes, to establish boot camps for young and salvageable offenders, to make it clear despite prior precedent that the crime of rape applies to single women who are not virgins, to maintain and increase funding for drug and alchol abuse treatment programs, to create added penalties for crimes against law enforcement officers, to make driving under the influence of drugs a crime, to toughen penalties against drunk drivers and people who fail to pay required child support, to allow confiscation of proceeds from crimes, and to ban legal profiteering from the commission of crimes.I do not think we have done enough. My search for increased workable ideas in the fight against crime is one of the reason for my purchase of various public policy books on crime and my eagerness to serve on Speaker Dennis O'Brien's proposed Commission on Crime Prevention.We have gone from about 10,000 Pennsylvanians in state and local prisons when I was first elected to about 60,000 today, from total annual spending of about $100 million a year for state prisons to over $1.6 billion a year today for state prisons. We need more resources to fight crime--such as financial support for police and intensive resources to monitor and train at risk youths for worthwhile societal roles. We need the same kind of intensive federal supervision of goods shipped into the U.S.--which too often harbor illegal drugs--that we have of airline passengers today. We need the same kind of outrage and resources directed against those who kill law enforcement officers as against those who kill Americans abroad.
August 12, 2007
http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=551724#post551724
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We need more efforts to prevent crimes from occurring. We need to educate all students in peaceful conflict resolution strategies. We need to target those who are most at risk. We need to stigmatize going to prison so that it does not give street cred, so that it is not an acceptable rite of passage. We need to make it clear that life has value, that illegal drugs kill some people and shorten the lives of many. We need a much broader understanding of what legitimate career options are, the futility of either buying or selling illegal drugs, and that those who sell drugs are not community friends or service providers but community enemies.All this takes a lot of money. Some of this is being done by city agencies to some extent already; the mayor has his cabinet will be briefing legislators in detail on what is being done after Labor Day. Reducing the flow of guns in Philadelphia would be helpful for the simple reason that it is much easier to kill or maim someone with a gun than with any other weapon. But I certainly agree that the problem goes far beyond guns.Pennsylvania is something like 8th per capita in prison spending, but only 30th per capita in overall anti-crime spending. I have tried repeatedly without success to get the state to spend more money on fighting crime; Philadelphia certainly could use it.Despite the major problems we now face, there are signs that some good things are occurring. Only about 3% of all Philadelphia murders are of strangers; random murder is now close to being extinct. Spousal violence is way down from its peak across the country. And the current increase in murders follows some of the lowest yearly murder totals since the 1960's.
August 8, 2006
http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=299799#post299799
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While no one can dispute that crime in cities is greater than in suburbs, crime in the suburbs is clearly growing faster. There is nothing in a suburban location that stops the existence of street crime, and much that both attracts criminals and leads citizens to leave their guard down.It is easier to cover up the commission of non-obvious murders there, because the police are less suspicious of so-called accidents. And crime sometimes goes to the suburbs for the same reason that Jesse James robbed banks: James said he robbed banks because "That's where the money is."If one excludes the large number of crimes that are committed both against criminals by other criminals and against people in poverty by other people in poverty, the crime rate against middle class Philadelphians is far lower than the crime rate against the city as a whole. It is still higher than the crime rate in many suburbs, but not so high that people should be paralyzed by fear.
May 26, 2006
http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=256194#post256194
August 12, 2007
http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=551724#post551724
*
During my years in the state legislature, I have voted successfully to re-establish the death penalty and to make death penalty appeals end quicker, to establish and increase mandatory minimum sentences for numerous crimes, to ban guns in schools and on route to schools, to set up special schools for students with severe discipline problems and/or significant criminal records, to allow the admission of DNA evidence, to clear up loopholes allowing guilty people to escape punishment, to meet the conditions of France for extraditing convicted murderer Ira Einhorn, to construct various additional prisons, to more intensely surveill those whose records show them more likely to commit serious crimes, to allow prosecutors expanded wiretapping power, to expand witness protection programs, and to establish and expand programs protecting battered men and women from brutal spouses or lovers.I have worked successfully to increase funding for public education to the extent that Philadelphia schools now get about 63% of their budget from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, to give social workers power to remove children from the homes of parents or guardians who brutalize them, to establish and increase the penalties for hate crimes, to establish boot camps for young and salvageable offenders, to make it clear despite prior precedent that the crime of rape applies to single women who are not virgins, to maintain and increase funding for drug and alchol abuse treatment programs, to create added penalties for crimes against law enforcement officers, to make driving under the influence of drugs a crime, to toughen penalties against drunk drivers and people who fail to pay required child support, to allow confiscation of proceeds from crimes, and to ban legal profiteering from the commission of crimes.I do not think we have done enough. My search for increased workable ideas in the fight against crime is one of the reason for my purchase of various public policy books on crime and my eagerness to serve on Speaker Dennis O'Brien's proposed Commission on Crime Prevention.We have gone from about 10,000 Pennsylvanians in state and local prisons when I was first elected to about 60,000 today, from total annual spending of about $100 million a year for state prisons to over $1.6 billion a year today for state prisons. We need more resources to fight crime--such as financial support for police and intensive resources to monitor and train at risk youths for worthwhile societal roles. We need the same kind of intensive federal supervision of goods shipped into the U.S.--which too often harbor illegal drugs--that we have of airline passengers today. We need the same kind of outrage and resources directed against those who kill law enforcement officers as against those who kill Americans abroad.
August 12, 2007
http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=551724#post551724
*
We need more efforts to prevent crimes from occurring. We need to educate all students in peaceful conflict resolution strategies. We need to target those who are most at risk. We need to stigmatize going to prison so that it does not give street cred, so that it is not an acceptable rite of passage. We need to make it clear that life has value, that illegal drugs kill some people and shorten the lives of many. We need a much broader understanding of what legitimate career options are, the futility of either buying or selling illegal drugs, and that those who sell drugs are not community friends or service providers but community enemies.All this takes a lot of money. Some of this is being done by city agencies to some extent already; the mayor has his cabinet will be briefing legislators in detail on what is being done after Labor Day. Reducing the flow of guns in Philadelphia would be helpful for the simple reason that it is much easier to kill or maim someone with a gun than with any other weapon. But I certainly agree that the problem goes far beyond guns.Pennsylvania is something like 8th per capita in prison spending, but only 30th per capita in overall anti-crime spending. I have tried repeatedly without success to get the state to spend more money on fighting crime; Philadelphia certainly could use it.Despite the major problems we now face, there are signs that some good things are occurring. Only about 3% of all Philadelphia murders are of strangers; random murder is now close to being extinct. Spousal violence is way down from its peak across the country. And the current increase in murders follows some of the lowest yearly murder totals since the 1960's.
August 8, 2006
http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=299799#post299799
*
While no one can dispute that crime in cities is greater than in suburbs, crime in the suburbs is clearly growing faster. There is nothing in a suburban location that stops the existence of street crime, and much that both attracts criminals and leads citizens to leave their guard down.It is easier to cover up the commission of non-obvious murders there, because the police are less suspicious of so-called accidents. And crime sometimes goes to the suburbs for the same reason that Jesse James robbed banks: James said he robbed banks because "That's where the money is."If one excludes the large number of crimes that are committed both against criminals by other criminals and against people in poverty by other people in poverty, the crime rate against middle class Philadelphians is far lower than the crime rate against the city as a whole. It is still higher than the crime rate in many suburbs, but not so high that people should be paralyzed by fear.
May 26, 2006
http://www.phillyblog.com/philly/showthread.php?p=256194#post256194
posted by Comment on Pennsylvania Legislation at 12:38 PM
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