Chicago Mayor Wants More Prison Time For Gun-Toting Gangsters

Policy proposal said to include anti-gang mentoring and after-school activities

How do you know Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is short (no pun intended) on ideas to stem gun violence? He pitches some of the same old policies that have proven to not work in the past. On Monday, Emanuel asked Illinois lawmakers to increase the minimum prison sentence for gun crimes to three years. The proposal is part of a larger assortment of efforts that include more mentoring, after-school programs, policing and early childhood education. Gang-related gun violence contributed to more than 500 deaths in Chicago last year. The announcement comes after the weekend burial of 15-year-old Chicago high school majorette Hadiya Pendleton, who was mistakenly shot in a gang-related retaliation a week after she took part in inauguration festivities in Washington. The two men arrested in connection to the crime – Michael Ward, 18, and Kenneth Williams, 20 – are alleged gang members, police said, and one of them had been granted probation on a gun charge last year. The problem with filling up prisons with more young black men is that it has long been proven ineffective at stemming gun violence, stimulating the economy or educating and rehabilitating the young men. Someone should tell the mayor to think more about his increased “mentoring” proposals and less about the prison industrial complex. (New York Times)

[SUBSCRIBE TO LOOP 21 RSS FEED]

With 438th Chicago Homicide, City Passes Last Year's Total Before November

Mayor Rahm Emanuel lamented the deaths, but said overall crime is down

Two murders reported Monday evening brought the city of Chicago to a disturbing milestone: 438 murders. That's the total number of homicides in the city this year. And there are still two months to go.

The Chicago Tribune reports that number tied the homicide mark set for the entire year of 2011. It also marked the first time since 2008 that the city's homicide total hasn't decreased year-to-year and it means Chicago is on pace to see more than 500 killings for the second time in almost a decade.

[ALSO READ:Chicago Homicide Rate Worse Than Kabul, LA and NYC]

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said the rise in homicides was "not good," but pointed to statistics showing that overall crime has dropped.

"We have other milestones," Emanuel said at a Monday news conference. "One is overall crime is down 9 percent in the city, has seen the largest drop ever. Second, we're tearing down the 200th building today where gangbangers and drug dealers hang out."

[ALSO READ:Chicago Murders: 14-Year-Old Boy Killed, 13 Wounded [Video]]

Things are still not as bad as they were in the '90s when homicides totaled about 850 to 940 a year in the city, due in large part to the crack epidemic.

[SUBSCRIBE TO LOOP 21 RSS FEED]