Councilor Jackson
Boston Herald: The gunplay in City Councilor Tito Jackson’s Roxbury neighborhood has kept him up nights searching for an answer to stop the violence. He found one, he says, in Richmond, Calif.
The small San Francisco Bay Area city pays violent young adults a stipend of between $300 and $1,000 per month for up to nine months to abandon a life of crime. It’s working, he says. Crime is down in Richmond.
Jackson says he wants to see if a similar pay-to-behave program can take root on the Hub’s 300 most violent troublemakers. He’s pitching his “disruptive” plan to the City Council. Something needs to be done, he told the Herald’s Joe Dwinell, to protect city kids:
“This issue has tugged at my heart since I’ve been in office because my district is disproportionately hurt by violence. What are the real solutions? I’ve been searching for innovative ways to stop violence. We cannot continue on the same course. We need to do something disruptive. We have to look at different models.
The Richmond model is a better economic model than locking everybody up and then locking them up again.
In light of the many things that have gone on, I wanted to do something to get ahead of what we could possibly do to head it off by this summer.
To those who want to be critical, just look at the numbers. If the state Department of Correction can spend an average of $53,000 a year on every inmate, $9,000 invested on someone who just got out of prison is money well spent. The recidivism rate — which is 50 percent — would be cut down.
You get no taxes from someone while they are locked up in prison. We need to break that cycle. We need to cut down not just on murders, but shootings, too.
Another reason why it’s compelling is it could also reduce the $60 million being spent this year on overtime for police.
We have to give individuals an alternative. It’s not sustainable to go in and out of jail. Most of the time they get out of prison and are homeless and unemployed. We need to support people through difficult times.
As someone who lived in this city when we had 150 murders one year in the ’90s, I know how bad it can be. We need to continue to engage folks. We have to guide them to sustainability. This is a very real way to do it.
I want to live in a city of Boston where any young person on any street on a bicycle has as their greatest fear skinning their knee — not getting shot.”
He was referring to the 7-year-old boy shot while riding his bike late last month in Dorchester.
“There are about 3,000 people in Boston involved in gangs, with 300 driving the violence. We need to look at the individuals who are the biggest drivers of that violence. We need to target them with street workers. We need radical change.
The objective now is how do we support this. The money could be used to land jobs, get GEDs or keep people from becoming homeless. We need to build a bridge so these individuals can turn their lives around. As for the money, maybe we can turn to the philanthropic community for help.
What Richmond is doing is something we should aggressively explore. This could change behavior — permanently!”
Do you think this is a good idea?
DCG