Trump, Sessions exaggerate gang threat to justify crackdown
By Astead W. Herndon GLOBE STAFF OCTOBER 10, 2017
WASHINGTON To hear President Trump and his attorney general explain it, the epidemic of urban street violence in the United States stems from highly organized gangs of immigrants.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions, in a recent speech in Boston, targeted MS-13, a notoriously violent gang that originated in Los Angeles but has Salvadoran roots, with heated rhetoric and called for combating the group with stronger immigration enforcement.
Trump, also citing MS-13, has linked illegal immigration and sanctuary cities to dangerous and enterprising gangs that have infiltrated our neighborhoods and recruited our vulnerable young people. But many criminologists say this is a disturbing and misleading diagnosis of whats causing violence, one designed to instill fear. In their estimation, the reality of the countrys murder rate in urban communities is more complex, reflecting hundreds of killings per year by individual young people or loosely organized local groups with no broader reach.
That wave of violence has little to do with stereotypical kingpins ordering hits on the streets, say criminologists.
I do not see any evidence that the people making these policies are doing anything except taking advantage of peoples misconceptions about gangs to further their anti-immigration agenda, said David M. Kennedy, the criminologist who developed Bostons successful Operation Ceasefire program in the 1990s.
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