Ja’Mal Green released part one of his anti-violence plan, which focuses on “changing the mentality and not breeding criminals,” he said in a YouTube video announcing the plan.
Green’s plan for addressing the city’s violence includes Youth Accountability Services and Guardian Accountability Services, which will work in unison. The youth services program will act as an intermediary between nonviolent offenders who get arrested and the criminal justice system.
In tweets elaborating on the plan, the 23-year-old candidate also calls for shortening the school day, increasing extracurricular programming and abolishing the city’s tax increment financing system in favor of a new financial tool “to spur economic development will allow hundreds of millions to be invested back into neighborhood schools,” Green said in a tweet.
Missing from those tweets is whether or not Green would fire Chicago police Supt. Eddie Johnson like his rivals Gery Chico and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle have vowed to do.
Green said promises to fire Johnson are a “political move for everyone to get cool points” and, as a friend of Johnson’s for several years, he wouldn’t decide right now whether or not to fire the city’s top cop.
Addressing the root causes of violence and connecting people to jobs and opportunities are the best ways to reduce gun violence, Green said.
“I feel like we never talk about the root problems,” Green said. “It’s about changing the mentality. If we’re constantly breeding criminals and we don’t address problems as people grow up, we’re just going to keep pouring money into policing. We have to start at an early age and make sure we keep people on the right track as they grow up. That’s how we prevent violence.”
If we continue to look at violence response as a way to deter crime, Chicago will never recover from this epidemic that plagues our streets. We need to look at the mentality that breeds violence and create programs to help change these circumstances.
— Ja'Mal Green (@JaymalGreen) December 27, 2018