Evanston...heck Cook County Needs A Project Exile

OK....I spent yesterday highlighting problems...now its time to share a solution that works. The example is Project Exile run by the Feds and the City of Richmond, VA. 

The program was designed to address the gang violence which had plagued Richmond. At the time of its inception, the level of murders and shootings had regularly increased each year, with Richmond's murder-per-capita rates being one of the highest five for the country. In 1997, 140 people were murdered, 122 of them with firearms.[1] There was strong community support for federal intervention, the African American community was being devastated by the violence (80% of all the homicide victims in Richmond were African-American) and half of the victims had no prior criminal record, the result of the poor marksmanship of drug dealers often wildly shooting at targets of opportunity leading to the death of innocent bystanders.[1] The belief was that the threat of a stiff federal sentence with no parole would deter criminals from carrying guns and relegating murder to planned rather than spontaneous events.

Project Exile was named for the idea that if the police catch a criminal in Richmond with a gun in a crime, the criminal has forfeited his right to remain in this community, the criminal will face immediate federal prosecution and stiff mandatory federal prison sentences (often five years), and will be "exiled" to federal prison for five years.[1]

In 1997, the program was implemented in conjunction with an extensive public outreach and media campaign to educate citizens about lengthy Federal prison sentences for gun crimes and to maximize deterrence. The message An Illegal Gun Gets You Five Years in Federal Prison was placed on 15 billboards, a fully painted city bus carried the message changing routes every day, TV commercials, Metro Richmond traffic reports, over a million supermarket bags were also used to advertise Project Exile.

The typical opposing yammer was that the program was racist. From the left, Project Exile was condemned, as racist, by Families Against Mandatory Minimums,[6] and opposed by several members of the Congressional Black Caucus on the grounds that it would have a disproportionate effect on the black community since it targeted inner city communities where the crime rates were highest (such as in Richmond and Atlanta). 

The question is would the Westside Community support an effort to get gun toting hard core violent predicate violent felons out of the community.