by Phil Campbell
CHICAGO -- Last May, Memphis Mayor W.W. Herenton announced the creation of a criminal-justice coordinating council, an organization that would bring together the most influential public officials involved in criminal justice. Last week, the officials traveled to Chicago to listen to criminal-justice experts and find a mission for themselves.
The Memphis council, however, was not really created to coordinate local law enforcement and criminal-justice tactics or to offer possible solutions to problems such as youth violence.
Rather, it was created so it can dissolve. Now that the council has sat through lectures from officials in three model cities, it will find private citizens to form another committee, this one called a citizens' crime commission, to carry out whatever mission the council gives it.
But can the mayor and the rest of the council create an effective crime commission in Memphis, filled with concerned private citizens who would probably have to fund the commission themselves?
Although committees like these often get panned by the media for being ineffective, it is doubtful that the city's daily newspaper will brand the experiment a failure. The CA has given the council $10,000 so officials could go to San Diego, Kansas City, and Chicago. According to Herenton's spokeswoman, Carey Hoffman, the council exceeded this budget during the Chicago trip, and will have to get more money from a private group to cover expenses.
Herenton's thoughts about the Chicago outing were typically blunt; he didn't wait until the end of the lectures to express them. "I'm just overwhelmed with the magnitude and the complexity of the [crime] problem," he told the Chicago Crime Commission. The revelatory moment for the mayor came when a Chicago spokesman reported that the state of Illinois has built a new jail each year for the last 17 years, and yet there's never enough space for all the prisoners. "Excuse me," he said, raising his hand. "It seems as if this problem has reached a point of insanity."
"More jails? When does it end?" Herenton told reporters later. "I will leave Chicago further convinced that the answer is on the preventive side."
The Chicago Crime Commission claims to be the real "Untouchables" who put mobster Al Capone behind bars. The group prides itself on its independence from the public sector. It is composed of some of the city's top CEOs, who each pay $1,300 in dues each year. "Most nonprofits would kill for a board list like ours," boasted Thomas Kirkpatrick, the commission's executive director.
It's not surprising, then, that the solutions the commission has come up with are conservative, stressing fighting crime rather than attempting to prevent it. The Chicago group prided itself on staving off the presence of casinos on local turf, an issue for which Herenton is a well-known advocate. "The biggest source of revenue for organized crime, or what you call the mob, is gambling," Kirkpatrick asserted. The commission is also pushing to have the possession of one gram or less of narcotics downgraded from a felony to a misdemeanor, a pragmatic move to free up courts in Cook County for the drug dealers and violent offenders.
The most useful nugget of information for Memphis' commission came when the Chicago commission discussed focus groups with its residents living in high-crime areas. To the commission's surprise, the focus group participants believe that crime in their neighborhoods is high because their streets are plagued with drunks, debris, and graffiti, not because a certain person was murdered at a certain time on a certain street. Criminals are encouraged when the "quality of life" of an area is low, concluded Kate Kirby, an executive with the Chicago commission.
After Herenton and his council establish a mission for the citizens' commission, questions will turn to recruiting the right citizens and funding the program. The Chicago commission members recommend finding 10 people who actively pursue the commission's goals. Additional members make an efficient network for accomplishing goals and raising cash.
While the mayor says he wants a "public-private partnership," he wants the private sector to pay for it. He is hoping that the Plough Foundation, which sent two officials to Chicago on private funds, will make a significant contribution to the commission's budget. Crime commission budgets across the country range from $75,000 in San Diego to $800,000 in Fort Worth, Texas.
Plough Foundation executive director Noris Haynes, who went to Chicago, is both optimistic and cautious. The foundation distributed more than $5 million to charities and other programs last year. "We've got to see what the real structure is going to be and the real mission is going to be before it really fits private-sector philanthropy," he says. "We'd love to be part of something positive. We think there's a good possibility."
Haynes added a telling comment. "I'm not an expert. That's why I went on the trip. We're learning. We'll wait and see the debate that takes place." In all, there were only five private citizens who went on at least one trip with the commission, three representing Guardsmark and two representing the Plough Foundation.
Whoever joins the citizens' commission has some catching up to do, and it's not clear if the council members have enough crime-commission experience from which to draw. Except for the initial press conference last year, the trips are the only times the council has met. Of those trips, only four of the 13 officials on the council -- Herenton, Memphis Police Director Walter Winfrey, Shelby County Sheriff A.C. Gilless, and General Sessions Court Judge Ann Pugh -- visited all three cities.
Notably absent from all three trips were Memphis City Schools Superintendent Gerry House, U.S. Attorney General Veronica Coleman, Criminal Court James Beasley, and Sam Bachelor, the mayor's youth development director.