To tackle Chicago’s gun violence problem, Illinois state senator Kwame Raoul and other sponsors of the Safe Neighborhoods Reform Act focused their bill on one of the root causes: repeat gun offenders.
Other lawmakers have previously proposed bills targeting repeat offenders, as well as increasing penalties for gun crimes—which you and other lawmakers have pushed back on. What makes this bill different from those other bills?
There’s also a number of nonviolent offenses that we attempt to do either one of two things for: reduce the sentence, or in some cases we’ve expanded the eligibility for offender initiative programs—second-chance probation and first-offender drug probation. We expanded the eligibility for those things to more individuals and offenses. If they’re diverted to services and they comply with those services, they may get out without a criminal record. So not only do we divert them from the Department of Corrections, we give them an opportunity, if they participate in services, if they comply with the terms, to have a fresh start—presuming they don’t have any other background.
So the importance there is to show that there’s more to consider?
On the opposite end of the spectrum, you’ve said the bill will expand alternatives for nonviolent first-time offenders. What are these alternatives?
People talk about how there’s blight in the community. I partnered with Commissioner Bridget Gainer and I sponsored legislation that allowed for the formation of the Cook County Land Bank that is acquiring abandoned properties and rehabilitating them and interestingly, creatively using a diversified workforce that includes offenders. So yeah, the people who say we need to find work for them, well, you know, I think I’ve made a contribution to doing that. But that doesn’t mean that somebody who’s out there with a loaded automatic or a semiautomatic weapon, or any sort of deadly force, that we don’t hold them accountable.
