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: Grits for Breakfast

Kids do less art in school, more in street; Lege reacts with hammer

If the only tool you have is a hammer, the saying goes, then everything looks like a nail. On graffiti, apparently, the only tool the Legislature understands is the hammer, with three bills up in a House Criminal Jurisprudence subcommittee on property crimes Monday all boosting penalties for graffiti (and all backed by Democrats, incidentally).At this point, graffiti crimes have been enhanced so many times that further penalty increases can only be viewed, IMO, as acts of showmanship rather than statesmanship. Lawmakers want to be seen as doing something about graffiti in reaction to angry constituents, but the only thing anyone ever does is jack up penalties, which has basically done nothing to abate the problem.One bill by Martinez Fischer focuses on making graffiti offenders pay property owners restitution, which would be fine if the clearance rate for graffiti crimes weren't well below 1%, making the bill essentially irrelevant in the real world for 99+% of people whose property is tagged...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on March 13, 2009 (boomark / email).