Justice bill represents good start
On Tuesday, the Milwaukee Common Council is slated to vote on whether it supports a package of bills in the state Legislature aimed at stiffening the penalties for repeat violent offenders. One of the measures specifically targets carjackings, which are a growing scourge in the Milwaukee area.
The bills received the support of a council committee on a 4-1 vote, as well as three aldermen at a news conference last week. The eight bills that make up the Victim Prevention Package are worthy of the council’s support and passage in the Legislature. They are sponsored by state Sen. Leah Vukmir (R-Brookfield) and state Rep. Joe Sanfelippo (RNew Berlin).
Police statistics show that in the first 10 months of 2016, more than 80 teenagers were arrested for armed carjackings, a sharp increase from previous years. And although the 464 carjackings in the city of Milwaukee in 2016 were down 9% from the 512 in 2015, they were still up sharply from 2014, when there were 354, according to police statistics.
Tougher consequences are needed for crimes such as car theft and carjackings, and for repeat offenders. Police Chief Edward Flynn and Mayor Tom Barrett have long argued that the justice system has taken some crimes and some offenders too lightly.
The youths arrested in the death of Greg “Ziggy” Zyszkiewicz, the widely respected city home inspector who was shot and killed while on duty during an attempted carjacking, all had criminal records.
Sanfelippo said the eight bills introduced so far were the result of two years worth of work involving meetings with judges, district attorneys, police officers and others.
“We are not doing people any benefit by allowing them to continue to remain on the street and commit crimes without any penalties,” Sanfelippo said.
But toughening penalties is only half the battle. Aldermen and others also should insist that legislators reform a broken juvenile justice system that has led to accusations of abuse and mismanagement at the state’s youth prison facilities. Putting more kids into Lincoln Hills School for Boys and Copper Lake School for Girls, which are still under investigation by the FBI, makes little sense without significant change.
In fact, those facilities should be closed and replaced with smaller alternatives with treatment programs closer to Milwaukee.
The state needs a twopronged approach, as Sanfelippo has argued. Sanfelippo and Vukmir are right that one prong has to address the penalty side. But the other has to provide the programs youths need to avoid becoming career criminals. It would be good to see Sanfelippo and Vukmir working on that as well.