Chicago Trib Editorial: Reducing crime in Chicago: Instead of jail and a record, a second chance
He was selling in “K-Town,” a rough, gang-dominated patch of North Lawndale, when cops rolled up. Moore darted down a gangway and tossed the cocaine under a truck. The officers caught up with Moore and the drugs, and charged him with felony possession of cocaine. In a flash, he realized he had jeopardized everything — his job, his life with his family, his freedom.
Then, the following month he was given something many young people on the South and West sides never get: a second chance through a nontraditional court process. “I have a son. I don’t want to get incarcerated because of something I could have prevented,” Moore says.
Since 2017, Moore and more than a hundred other young North Lawndale men and women facing nonviolent felony or misdemeanor charges have encountered a wholly different brand of justice at the North Lawndale Restorative Justice Community Court. Gone are jurors, judges' verdicts, prosecutors, public defenders and prison terms.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/editorials/ct-editorial-restorative-justice-court-north-lawndale-second-chance-20201113-r74ushfv6re6rfgo2oklbslvai-story.html
I am hopeful there can be so much more of this. My city sometimes feels like it is dying.
I was surprised to see the Chicago Tribune's conservative editorial board write this article. It made me think maybe things are changing.
= new reply since forum marked as read
and so many of them keep going back to the "War on Drugs" that started with "RayGun!"
After all of these years, isn't it time to "claim victory" in RayGun's war - you know, like we did in Vietnam, and try to find some better way?
Here's an important part about how this program works:
"Community buy-in is at the core of the program."
The "community" has to want it to make it possibly happen.
Think about how the idea of "law and order" is such a big issue now. BunkerBoy ran on that very issue and early reviews show that the "law and order" theme was a big part of his vote total. Many of those voters were upset with all of the protests and riots that caused destruction and chaos in different parts of the US (Portland and the Twin Cities, for instance).
As long as we have so many believing that "punishment" is the answer - we're going to have a difficult time making things better. 
it's where I got the quote. Good stuff - thanks for posting! 
I remember Nixon was a big "law & order" guy too - was able to build on that after the Chicago Democratic Convention (Mayor Daily had his police attack the anti-war demonstrators). Of course there was some hypocrisy there too - the Vice President (Agnew) resigned after being charged with graft........
I guess I'm thinking of the RayGuns and their "War on Drugs" - Nancy's "Just Say No!" (DAMN, wish Donnie's Mom had said that to Fred.......). 
new liberal era again by this century after the conservative era that began around 1978-80 with Reagan, but that the enormous growth in RW billionaires, combined with organization and harnessing of RW religion, enabled them to temporarily hold back or delay the wave of change. Meanwhile, they completed the purging and corruption of the Republican Party and the fostering of extremism in the conservative half the nation. A monster they lost control of as it developed into today's authoritarian extremism.
Yeats's "rough beast, its hour come round at last." As Charles Koch says unpoetically, "Boy, did we screw up!" "What a mess!"
On the liberal side, our Democratic Party just needs the power, not the will. We need the senate! We're as liberal as we ever were and as committed to the need to use progressive government to solve big problems and advance wellbeing. Our grandparents were able to give FDR's administration 12 years of power, all 12 of them with control of both houses of congress, but we still may give Democrats a full 8 years of control. The battle continues in Georgia.
