Romuald Lenou,
Graduate Assistant
Sometimes, the solution to a problem isn’t in changing laws.
Instead, it’s in changing minds, and it’s in emphasizing the good in humanity.
Consider gun violence in Chicago. From Jan. 1 to Oct. 6 of this year, a
shooting took place every 2.84 hours for a total of 2,349 shootings in Chicago,
according to the Daily Caller.
DePaul School of Public Service’s distinctive competency
lies in the teaching of our namesake, St. Vincent DePaul, who said: “Make it a
practice to judge persons and things in the most favorable light at all times
and under all circumstances.” Vincent’s words inspire me to address this
problem from two perspectives: public policy and public service.
The City of Chicago should not wrestle with this issue
alone.
Up until recently, the city had relied on a holistic
approach to solve gun violence. It did that through adoption of CeaseFire
Illinois, a local branch of a national program called CureViolence. The program
uses former gang members age 30 to 40 to serve as “credible messengers” to
treat at risk individuals through counseling, according to a paper by Charles
Ransford, Candice Kane and the program’s founder, Gary Slutkin of the
University of Illinois at Chicago. But PBS reported in 2013 that “CeaseFire had
at times a “tense relationship” with Chicago police, who said they’d received
tips that “some interrupters had slipped back into criminal activity.” PBS
reported in the same article that the city had cut its funding of CeaseFire.
A 2014 report from CPD entitled “The impact of illegal guns
on violence in Chicago” showed that the city started to focus more on a
legalistic approach that emphasizes toughening the penalties for gun violations
and creating a database for law enforcement to track shifting gang alliances.
In its conclusion, the report declared: “Chicago’s violence problem is largely
a gun problem.”
I suggest the city use a humanistic approach, one that
stresses the good in human behavior. We should not treat gang members as
eternal villains. Rather, the police department should incentivize them to join
its network and collectively address gun violence.
Solving this problem strictly through a structural frame
that prioritizes policies over relationships hinders cooperation and fosters
mistrust between gang members and law enforcement. CureViolence/CeaseFire was a
good start in that respect because the initiative aimed to put a lid on the
gang members’ assertion that law enforcement was only targeting them. Yet I
think CPD made a mistake in painting all gang members with the same brush,
especially since some clearly had given CeaseFire a chance.
My humanistic approach stimulates social capital and
mobilizes civil society as a new solution to gun violence.
To have an effect on gun violence, the City of Chicago
should again extend its outreach — to educational, religious, business and
nonprofit organizations. Since some gang members and troubled youth do not
trust law enforcement, those civic institutions can fill this vacuum of trust.
Once CPD builds social capital among its various stakeholders and mobilizes
civil society, it could implement my Alternative to Gun Violence (ATGV)
initiative.
To ensure effectiveness, law enforcement must evaluate ATGV
through performancebased management. Gang members should take a leadership role
and design rules and policies in consultation with the state and nonprofit
sector. They would receive incentives in the form of job placement and
expungement of non-violent criminal records only if the city sees a significant
and steady drop in the violent crime rates.
We cannot solve this problem only from a public policy
perspective; public servants should also address gun violence through a public
service lens.
I encourage the DePaul community to volunteer with
nonprofits such as Freedom4youth that rely on college students, ex-gang members
and former troubled youth to fight gun violence. I also recommend a summit on
gun violence in which students identify three data-driven gun-violence
strategies that the City of Chicago can adopt to ensure everybody’s safety.
Candidates for the 2016 presidential election seem to agree
on the need for universal background checks for weapons purchases. Although it
would restrict the access to guns for certain unfit people, such a move would
fall short of solving the underlining problem of gun violence in cities such as
Chicago.
Resolving the issue of gun violence is not simply about
changing the laws. It is about changing the minds of gang members and troubled
youth.
A humanistic perspective, through its provision of social
capital and mobilization of civil society, is the first step that we must take.
‘My humanistic approach stimulates social capital
and
mobilizes civil society as a new solution to gun violence.’