WASHINGTON – The New Jersey State Police recently released its 2007 Street Gang Survey, revealing that gangs have rapidly spread from urban areas to suburban and rural areas of New Jersey.
According to the report, seven out of 10 New Jersey residents live in municipalities where gang activity can be found.
U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), who authored anti-gang measures that were included in a comprehensive anti-gang bill that passed the Senate this year and who has led the fight to restore broad access to information on the trafficking of guns used in crimes, said in an Oct.26 release that this report is more evidence of the need for a comprehensive initiative that cracks down on gang activity while also addressing the root cause of gang proliferation..
“Gangs are a growing cancer in our communities, and they need to be combated with a comprehensive initiative,” said Menendez.
“Cracking down on gang activity and rigorously enforcing the law is big piece of the puzzle, but proactively starving gangs of new recruits through prevention and mentoring programs is crucial to addressing and ultimately eliminating the root causes of gang involvement. This is a priority of mine in the Senate, and I am working to ensure that the legislation we passed this year is enacted into law.”
Background on legislation
The Gang Abatement and Prevention Act, which passed the Senate last month, is closely tied to Menendez’s Fighting Gangs and Empowering Youth Act (http://menendez.senate.gov/newsroom/record.cfm?id=271326). It incorporates a number of provisions from the Menendez bill, including:
Gang Prevention and Intervention
Expands mentoring programs and creates a new demonstration program to encourage creative approaches to gang activity and after-school programs.
The new demonstration program would provide $5 million per year for five years for grants to “public or nonprofit private entities (including faith-based organizations)” that create innovative approaches to combat gang activity. These projects could include things like teen-driven approaches, educating parents about the signs of gang activity in kids, teaching parenting/nurturing to keep kids out of gangs, and facilitating communication between parents and children. The grant program would require a 25 percent local match.
The mentoring program provides funds to community-based nonprofit and for-profit agencies to mentor youth involved in the juvenile justice system. The current program is funded at $1.6 million and has four mentoring partnerships through cooperative agreement awards (each is limited to $400,000 for four years). The legislation would expand the program to $4.8 million per year in order to fund 12 projects.
The two bills also share several provisions to crack down on gang activity, including provision to:
New and Increased Penalties for Gang Crimes
Make recruiting new gang members a federal crime, with the penalty doubled if a minor is recruited; create a new category of crimes for criminal street gangs for certain violent crimes, such as murder, carjacking, firearm offenses, witness tampering; include violent crimes committed for gang initiation or membership and drug trafficking.
Provide significant increases in criminal penalties for gang members for racketeering violence, carjacking, firearm possession, conspiracy.
Call on the United States Sentencing Commission to review penalties for juvenile offenders.
For further details on the similarities between the two bills, visit: http://menendez.senate.gov/pdf/MenendezFeinsteinBillProvisions.doc.
