In her Chicago Sun-Times column, Mary Mitchell says that locking up repeat offenders does not solve the crime problem. She explores whether an education initiative unveiled by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel could actually help.
… The idea is for private industry to partner with community colleges to prepare students for specific jobs in the workforce.
“We can’t keep looking at 10 percent unemployment and 100,000 job openings,” said Mayor Rahm Emanuel in a phone interview on Monday, hours before he was to speak to the Economic Club of Chicago where his speech would focus on education.
“We need our community colleges linked up to those growth sectors, and to do that, we need our industry leaders linked up to those schools,” said Emanuel in his prepared remarks.
Although this effort isn’t being billed as a crime-fighting tool, but as a measure to close a “skills gap” in the Chicago area, people with good jobs aren’t stalking the streets stealing other people’s cell phones and wallets.
Read Mary Mitchell's entire column at the Chicago Sun-Times.