Brooke Kelly &
Tiffany Edmondson
Staff Writers
Aproxiamately 15 to 20 Jackson State University students participated in a community town hall meeting Wednesday focusing on crime issues in the Jackson community at the M.W. Stringer Grand Lodge Annex Building near the JSU campus on Lynch Street.
Elected officials, local law enforcement, and various religious groups participated in the meeting sponsored by the Jackson National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Mississippi NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Those in attendance discussed crime issues ranging from hate crimes to recidivism rates.
“Multiple students turned out from multiple majors,” said Jackson State NAACP president, Michael Teasley. “Students got engaged in the dialog.”
In regards to the James Craig Anderson murder case, some students and audience members wanted to know when the accused suspects would be charged.
“Traditionally in a capital murder cases [however], if it goes on 9 to 11 months, that would be considered a long time,” said Teasley.
Teasley also said that District Attorney, Robert S. Smith felt the community would be pleased with the results that will come to pass.
Jason Hardiman is a JSU junior, biology/pre-veternarian major from Jackson who attended the town hall meeting. He said he appreciated how the panelists discussed how they planned to address different issues.
“We were really informed on what was going on,” said Hardimon.
“The revolving door theory that refers to the probability of former inmates going back to prison was an issue everyone agreed is a problem with the community,” said Teasley who added the state of Mississippi has no state funded program to address problems with recidivism. “We would like to see a policy passed that would be state funded dealing with the rehabilitation of first time felons back into the workplace.”
Other community members believe unemployment and drugs are having an impact on local crime.
Wayne McDaniels, president of the Jackson chapter NAACP said the forum was a success and he thinks the message got out to the community, clergy, law enforcements, and the community activist organizations.
“We all need to work together and bring our ideas together so we can come up with some solutions to the problems,” said McDaniels.
The Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU have a program trying to change recidivism rates called “School House to Jail House.” While Teasley said some topics got heated at the meeting, “everyone was moving towards progressive problem solving,” he added.
McDaniels said he believes there are several ways to help reduce crime and issues within the community, and it can start if parents get more involved and start teaching their kids the difference between right and wrong pertaining to crime.
“Some solutions can be economic programs to help find jobs, a race relation program, drug intervention and a re-entry program for ex-offenders, because not all of them are bad. We can also offer some sort of vocational rehab for those who are incarcerated so when they get out they will have some sort of skill.”
According to McDaniels, the location of this forum was significant because crime has gotten out of hand. McDaniels said that it is time out for that, and the community needs to come together. “Instead of being part of the problem, we need to be part of the solution.”
