GANGING UP ON GANGS PLAN SPOT ON

The federal Conservatives should ignore any naysaying they encounter
from academia and a variety of experts, and press ahead with a tough
slate of reforms to battle gang crime. The Tories want to see
first-degree murder charges laid in all gang-related killings, make
drive-by shootings a separate crime and bring in tougher sentences
for attacks on police. Calgarians who are growing increasingly
fearful of rising gang violence--and increasingly disgusted by the
lenient sentences courts hand out to gang members -- should welcome
these stronger measures.

Doug King, who heads the justice studies program at Mount Royal
College, says he is "all for tougher sentences to punish serious
violent criminal behaviour by gangs" but that "research from
Correctional Services of Canada and elsewhere"shows that recidivism
is unaffected by longer terms.

Regardless, first-degree murder convictions carry life sentences with
no chance of parole for 25 years and that means keeping gang members
jailed for much longer, delaying potential recidivism-- and keeping
the public that much safer, too. King unfairly dismisses the
Tories'crime package as a sop to snagging votes. Actually, it's
government doing what it was elected to do --acting on what the
citizens say they want done.

And what they want is to see an end to a spate of sentences like that
of Efrem Mehari Kuflom, who was serving house arrest for cocaine
trafficking when he was slain in his car during a daytime shooting
last November in the Beltline area.

King advocates "a multidimensional approach to combating criminal
gangs." This is already underway in Alberta. The province rolled out
its three-year, $470-million crime-reduction strategy in November
2007,which included a renewed focus on crime's root causes, such as
family violence, and creating educational campaigns for kids about
gangs, drugs and crime. Police, who back the latest federal
proposals, also take a multi-pronged approach, including prevention
work among youth.

No aspect of resolving the gang problem is mutually exclusive of any
other. The battle must be fought on numerous fronts. While keeping
kids out of gangs is crucial, so is finding new ways to deal with
gang crime. The public wants children safeguarded from the lure of
gang life, but it also demands that city streets be made safer. That
can only happen when tougher laws keep gang members in prison, where
they belong, for much longer periods.