As we were going to press, St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay and Police Chief Sam Dotson were attending a Summit on Violent Crime hosted by U.S. Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch in Washington, D.C. Slay and other local elected officials were discussing “improving public safety and building stronger communities” with heads of an impressive array of federal agencies: the Office of Justice Programs, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Also in attendance were U.S. attorneys from participating jurisdictions, including Richard Callahan from Eastern Missouri, and the leaders of the FBI and DEA in St. Louis.
The summit was organized to identify and examine effective violent crime reduction strategies, to understand better the potential causes of recent upticks in violence in some jurisdictions (including St. Louis), and to discuss collaborative efforts to tackle violent crime. Most importantly, perhaps, for Slay and Dotson, Lynch also aims to explore potential Department of Justice resources that could be used to assist in local efforts to reduce crime. If by “resources,” the federal host means money, then we know the mayor and chief will be angling for federal funds to hire those 160 new police officers they have been calling for. A recent federal grant paid to hire 15 of them.
While we don’t disagree with the mayor and chief when they say they need more boots on the ground to address St. Louis’ violent crime wave – the city is on pace to record 200 homicides in 2015 for the first time in nearly 20 years – we don’t think that simply throwing cops at the problem will fully address it. Dotson has told The American that poverty is the primary root cause of crime, and many serious thinkers from Aristotle on would agree. Their federal host in D.C knows this to be true. “We need children to experience schools that are places to learn and to grow and not zero-tolerance institutions or pipelines into the criminal justice system,” Lynch told the NAACP at its national convention in July. “Ultimately, we need children to see possibilities for themselves beyond the cycle of criminality and incarceration that has too often become a tragic and familiar fact of life.”
St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce also acknowledges the holistic nature of the violent crime crisis. That is why – even as the mayor and police chief bemoan local judges giving first-time gun offenders probation, rather than prison sentences – she applied for and won a competitive federal grant to start a gun diversion program. This program, which she is just now staffing, is designed to keep vetted first-time, victimless gun offenders out of prison and free of the felon stigma. The city’s prosecutor will be adding social workers to her staff as she makes rehabilitating select first-time gun offenders – before they are sentenced – part of the core work of her office. “If we do our job well and it works, we can have people turned around and productive members of society,” Joyce told The American, “rather than going to prison – which, for young people, is finishing school for criminals.”
Mind you, this is the voice of a seasoned professional prosecutor – albeit one who has decided not to run for reelection, and so is free to speak her mind. This is a prosecutor who makes a living trying to put offenders in prison saying there is more hope for their – and our – future if we can divert them from prison through providing appropriate social services. Attorney General Lynch wants us to back up even further than the first-time offender making a plea bargain. She wants us to focus on helping “children to see possibilities for themselves beyond the cycle of criminality and incarceration.” This requires that we provide these children and the youth they become – if they are not first killed on the streets – with more opportunities to be productive. And that requires more of those elusive outside “resources” – the City of St. Louis is cash-starved – and a region-wide commitment to realigning our resources where they are most needed, which is in some of our poorest – and blackest – neighborhoods. It is imperative that we do more to build a more vibrant economy structured to ensure that the benefits are intentionally extended to include the most neglected and needy.
There isn’t any sane alternative to addressing the social roots of violent crime, even as we investigate crimes and prosecute criminals who are deemed unfit for diversion. For if all we do is hire more cops, all we will have is more criminals to prosecute – and send on to the “finishing school” of prison where they can hone their deadly crafts. We must heed the call that Attorney General Lynch sounded at the NAACP convention: “We commit to this struggle – without equivocation or retreat – for our children, who too often bear the consequences of our imperfection and for generations to come, who will inherit the world that we design.”
