CHICAGO — Almost every time Mayor Rahm Emanuel or Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson is asked by the media about Chicago street violence, they call for tougher laws and longer prison sentences for those arrested with illegal guns.
But the Cook County public defender is calling such a "war on guns" a mistake, saying "increasing prison terms while failing to address the causes of gun violence will serve only to, once again, demonize and incarcerate another generation of young African-American and Latino men."
Likening the approach to the war on drugs of the 1970s and '80s, Amy P. Campanelli said "an old adage states that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Following the same failed path will have the same failed results."
Campanelli made her comments in an op-ed in Wednesday's Tribune.
The public defender said a state mandatory minimum prison sentence already is in place for killing someone with a gun: 45 years with no parole.
"Did it prevent 90 people from being killed in August? Did it stop nearly 500 homicides so far this year?" she wrote.
"Increasing minimum sentences will not stop violence; it will merely incarcerate one generation while another generation steps up and continues the violence," Campanelli said.
Campanelli is urging the hiring of more police, more mental health care, better mentoring of young people and job training.
"Advocating only punishment for those who see no hope will solve nothing," she wrote.
Campanelli's comments come as the city this year topped the number of homicides for all of 2015 and state Sen. Kwame Raoul (D-Chicago) touts a bill that would add more jail time to people repeatedly convicted in gun-related crimes. He has said it will not set ironclad minimum sentences but, using data, would force those convicted to serve longer time behind bars.
Johnson has been calling for state lawmakers to enact stiffer penalties for serial violent criminals since before he was named top cop in March. He has repeatedly insisted that the same 1,500 people — most of whom are cataloged on the Police Department's "strategic subject list" — are causing nearly all the city's violent crime. If prosecutors and judges more aggressively targeted that group, he's suggested, the city would be able to put a lid on its surging violent crime rates.
That effort has met some resistance because people "are afraid of casting a large net over minority communities," Johnson said last month. "But that's not what we're doing. We're using a spear to target repeat gun offenders."
He also has bemoaned societal pressures for the crime wave, telling reporters over the Labor Day weekend, "Impoverished neighborhoods, people that don't have hope, are the [people committing these crimes]. You show me a man without hope, I'll show you a man who's willing to pick up a gun."
Chicago has had more than 500 murders this year.
Emanuel told reporters Wednesday that there's "not one piece to the puzzle" of solving Chicago's gun violence. He plans to elaborate on his plan to hire more police officers in a speech Sept. 20.
"If we don't change the laws associated with gun penalties, but only put more cops (on the street) we haven't done anything to help back them up and the neighborhood up," Emanuel said.
Campanelli has been head of the public defender's office since April 2015. She has spent most of her 28-year legal career in the defender's office, three years as deputy public defender in charge of all five suburban districts in Cook County.
A native of suburban Western Springs and graduate of the Chicago-Kent College of Law at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Campanelli has taken a higher profile in what has traditionally been a position rarely in the public spotlight. She has clashed with Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez over high bonds and has been critical of the Chicago Police Department.
The office has about 500 lawyers and 60 investigators with an annual budget of about $60 million.
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