I have voted to make tough decisions in budgetary times, I've served on two recessionary budgets, my opponent has never served on any a budget committee where there was less money to spend than the year before.
As a society we're always so quick and able to spend money on lawyers for someone for incarceration, but we don't make the corresponding commitment to the preventative components of it.
Certainly other things we can do, we gotta promote after-school employment, give kids an opportunity, raising the minimum wage was part of that, we can't expect that young people are going to feel they can make a living out there for such low wages.
When in some communities selling drugs is so lucrative that that's a pretty big enticement that we have to break down. Part of that is by making opportunities and paying decent wages.
I think that when we're talking about youth violence, we're talking about kids who don't have opportunities, so they're engaged in a certain degree of lawlessness, because we as a society have failed them.
I represented many of these kids as they become young adults in the criminal justice system when I was a public defender. One way of reaching out is by the mind of experimentation.
