Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall believes people are becoming increasingly concerned about the rise in crime in Alabama and across the country. He also is proposing steps that lawmakers can take to reverse the trend.
This month, Marshall released his plan to get tough on criminal gangs in the state, which is just one of the many issues on crime he wants to address.
Friday on Alabama Public Television’s “Capitol Journal,” Marshall discussed the issue of combating the rise in crime in Alabama.
“It’s the principal issue that people stop and talk to me about,” Marshall said. “When I’m in the grocery store, when I’m out and about in this state, that’s the one thing they ask about is ‘What are we doing to combat criminal activity?’ So that’s real.”
The attorney general said concern about crime is not just a “political narrative,” but is backed up by real things Alabamians are seeing in some of their major cities.
“(T)hat’s not driven by some political narrative,” he said. “That’s based on what their perception is based on their own communities. Look, we need to look no further than Birmingham for example, with the most recent year that we had with the record number of homicides, and not only that, but with a Birmingham compared historically with a population that’s decreased.”
He also pointed out that many areas across the country are taking the wrong approach on this issue and thinks we should not copy their mistakes.
“We can’t retreat from things that we know have worked,” he said, “or from giving the tools to prosecutors and law enforcement to be able to combat this issue … We saw that lax policies from prosecutors around the country have had an impact on property crime. Think about San Francisco. Think about some of the stories we heard from Chicago and New York, where now we’ve had recalling of prosecutors, we’ve had prosecutors that didn’t get reelected.”
Marshall reiterated that being soft on crime doesn’t work, and he’s not going to allow that to happen in Alabama.
“I’m a big believer in sort of that broken windows theory that New York used so successfully to reduce crime many years ago,” he said, “that I think people are now seeing there’s value in making sure that we hold people accountable and that we do that in a very significant way.”
Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” weekdays 9-11 a.m. on WVNN. You can follow him on Twitter @Yaffee
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