Democrat to try sentencing for Chicago gun violence

Fifix Lawmaker aims for ‘breather’ for areas ravaged by gunplay.

S PRI NGFI E L D, I L L . — T h e refrain is heard almost as often as the fatal gunshots: The way to reduce Chicago’s gun violence is tougher prison sentences for repeat gun offffffffffffenders, keeping them offff the streets and decreasing the city’s mounting death toll.

That idea, pushed by the mayor, police superintendent and others, shifts pressure from patrol offifficers of the city’s West and South sides to the Capitol, where legislators will consider how to balance law and order with fifinding alternatives to imprisoning young blacks and other minorities.

In that building, in the s a me S e nate s e at where President Barack Obama launched his political career and focused on racial profifil- ing issues, Democrat Kwame Raoul plans to propose legislation next month to impose longer sentences for defendants who previously committed a gun-related crime.

It’s a measure that has Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson’s backing. The state’s past attempts to strengthen such penalties have been turned down, met by opponents who worry it’d further incarceration rates in the predominantly black neighborhoods hardest hit by violence and doesn’t address the root cause of readily available illegal guns. The opponents have called for more comprehensive solutions that go beyond law enforcement.

Raoul and the legislative black caucus have said they don’t want to increase mandatory minimums, which have drawn criticism for putting nonviolent drug offffffffffffenders behind bars for decades — something even Obama is trying to undo in his final days through commutations and other actions.

Instead, Raoul says, he’ll propose direc ting judges to use t he higher e nd of the 3-to-14-year sentencing scale when someone has a prior gun-related conviction; Raoul’s measure might have judges consider more than 10 years. Judges would keep their discretion in sentencing, but Raoul’s bill may require them to explain their rationale.

“The question is ... whether (repeat offffffffffffenders) are incapacitated long enough to create a breather for some neighborhoods that are just ravaged by gun violence, and long enough to create a deterrence,” Raoul said.

But such an effffffffffffort could turn into a “war on guns” that would resemble the war on drugs of the 1970s and 1980s, according to Cook County Public Defender Amy Campanelli, whose staffff represents many of the accused. It didn’t lead to a drop in drug usage, but to the “demonization” of mostly young African-American and Latino men, she said.