By Brent Begin
San Francisco Examiner

A joint effort between police, prosecutors and the Mayor’s Office has yielded results in one of The City’s most overlooked crime issues: smash-and-grab car burglaries. Also known as “boosts,” car burglaries are a significant problem in San Francisco: In 2006, there were more than 15,000 incidents — an average of 41 per day — prompting the Mayor’s Office to convene a special car-boosting task force to combat the growing problem. Taking a proactive route, the police conducted surveillance in addition to responding to calls from car owners. On Sept. 9, eight officers specifically targeted the most vulnerable areas in The City and conducted stings. Read more »

By Heather Knight
San Francisco Chronicle

As debate rages over how to solve San Francisco's seemingly intractable homeless problem, city leaders, academic researchers and even some formerly homeless people themselves say progress is being made every Thursday afternoon inside Department 15 at the city's gloomy Hall of Justice. For a couple of hours each week, the courtroom fills with dozens of defendants with serious mental illnesses who have been charged with or convicted of crimes ranging from misdemeanor theft to felony assault and robbery. Almost all were homeless or on the brink of living on the streets at the time of their arrests, and many of them struggle with drug or alcohol abuse.  It sounds like a scary scene, like many city residents' worst fears gathered together in one room. But it's surprisingly touching - and according to Superior Court Judge Mary Morgan, who presides over the court, it's "the most hopeful thing happening in the criminal justice system." Read more »

By Emma Andersson, Stella Burch, Margot Mendelson & Marisol Orihuela
Yale University

Issuing municipal identification cards to undocumented resident immigrants is an inexpensive and effective method by which the City of San Francisco can improve public safety and immigrants’ ability to engage positively and productively in the City’s civic life.  Under current law, undocumented immigrants in San Francisco have no access to official forms of identification.  Without such identification, undocumented immigrants cannot prove their residence, which puts them in significant personal danger and poses a threat to the City’s general public safety.  Many banks do not allow undocumented immigrants to open a bank account, leaving immigrants with no choice but to carry large amounts of cash on their person or hidden in their homes.  As a result, immigrant communities are prone to suffer from disproportionately high rates of theft in their homes and upon returning from work. Read more »

By John DeStefano, Jr.
Mayor, New Haven, CT

Our American values are built upon a careful balance of individual rights and initiative weighed against shared community action and institutions.  In New Haven, we have chosen to accomplish that goal by engaging all of our residents and offering a resident card irrespective of immigration status.  Not all agree with this direction.  And, some ask “What part of ‘illegal’ doesn’t the City understand?”  But, they miss the point and they miss our American history.  The point is that by not acting, the Federal government is winking its eye and tacitly acknowledging and legitimizing the presence of some 13 million undocumented residents. Therefore, we must, for reasons of public safety and for reasons of building a strong community; implement our own solutions.

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By John J. Donohue III and Jens Ludwig

It would be unrealistic to expect crime to continue dropping sharply as it did in the 1990s, but that is no reason to undermine the progress brought by successful policies. With recent FBI data showing crime on the rise, it is time to reconsider the massive de-funding of one of the most successful federal anti-crime measures of the 1990s: the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Community Policing Services (COPS) program. The program, authorized by the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, provides grants to state and local police to hire additional officers and adopt aspects of "community policing." Read more »

By Rosanne Haggerty
President, Common Ground Community

Maryann and Gerry were fixtures at the Times Square subway entrance, well known to local office workers, to the police and the courts.  With a dog as one prop, and Gerry’s drums as another, they had supported themselves and their heroin habits by panhandling, sometimes aggressively, to tourists and the regular business crowd.  Their belongings a makeshift tent, sleeping bags and clothes - were tucked into two carts, which sidewalk food vendors and the security staff at the office building above the station would watch for as they shifted to more lucrative posts over the course of the day or went to buy heroin or tend to their growing array of health problems.   By night, they bedded down at the subway entrance beneath the office plaza. Read more »

Jane Martin, Founding Director
Plant*SF

Ironically, the very imprecision of the term ‘greening’ may be its strength – for the concept is hollow if not holistically applied.  To some “green” connotes a cosmetic layer of beautification.  To others it is a degree of material sustainability.  For all, it is a reminder of our society’s prevailing mode of facilitation, money.  It is only through the mutual inclusion of these three aspects, however, that the application of greening to San Francisco’s streetscapes will be truly successful.  By way of example, traditional forms of public space plantings such as raised beds and hanging flower baskets may provide an immediate beautification lift, but because their soil is isolated and exposed to wind and sun, they require frequent watering even when climate adapted plants are selected.  This is neither environmentally supportive nor fiscally responsible.

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By Charles J. Hynes, Brooklyn District Attorney
San Francisco Sentinel

If the community justice center concept can work in Red Hook, Brooklyn, it can work anywhere.  Why am I so certain? Because as Brooklyn’s elected district attorney for the past 18 years, I have seen the neighborhood of Red Hook transformed. Ten years ago, Red Hook was a high-crime community that had lost much of its hope and energy. Today, the waterfront neighborhood—which includes both the largest public housing development in Brooklyn and blocks of quaint row houses—is revitalized, with safe streets, safe parks, new businesses, and supportive citizens who are working together on even greater improvements.  Who is responsible for this transformation? There are many who can take credit. But there is no question that the Red Hook Community Justice Center is among the vital players.

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By Megan Doyle Corcoran

California’s adult prison population bulges out of the state’s 33 adult institutions, which are at almost 200 percent capacity.  Approximately 175,000 individuals are housed in California prisons, and the rate of incarceration in the state, like that of the rest of the nation, is not dropping.  At this point, California stakeholders are all too aware of the urgency of instituting some kind of change to ensure that the cramped prison conditions are alleviated while public safety is respected.  In fact, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) is presently engaged in extensive litigation in federal court, in which District Court Judge Thelton Henderson is threatening to place the California prison system into a federal receivership, as he did to the prison health care system in October 2005.  Read more »

By Mike Males

As San Francisco becomes the first major city whose youth population mirrors the diversity of the globe, its official attitudes and policies toward youth remain mired in the past. The city’s youth—43% Asian, 25% Latino, 20% white, 11% black—demonstrate that California’s and the nation’s transition from a white-dominated to a multicultural society brings greater opportunities and safer communities. Some initial steps to shaking up and modernizing the discussion include debates over (a) reducing San Francisco’s voting and office-holding age to 15, and (b) classifying anti-youth invective the same as hate speech vilifying racial and other groups. Every group in town endorses some cliché about “empowering youth;” let us now get serious about it. Read more »