Transcript
Thank you. It’s truly an honor to be here, my name is Douglas Wain I’m the Executive Director of a new non-profit 501 (c) (3) in Lexington, Kentucky. Its violence prevention through education. It’s called Win The War! Against Violence. It’s an honor to be here with Secretary Michael Brown I am on his web site constantly. We ‘re taking sort of a different angle as far as law enforcement and incarceration and what intrigued us about this committee was in your description it talked about alternatives to incarceration though education. That’s exactly what we do.
First of all violent crime, which is all we are working with, is still a problem in Kentucky. Most of the numbers of violent victimizations has virtually been steady for about 11 years. This is using the State Police Reports that are on Secretary Brown's site as well the F.B.I. normalization of the numbers that actually just came out for 2010 about a month ago. Although the percentage of Kentucky has gone up in population in 10 years is something like 7 percent. The number of violence victimizations per 100,000 has gone down but the number of violent victimizations has not. And in some cases it has gone up. It’s very poignant that a State Police Officer was here and a Fayette County Police Officer.
Assaults on State Police Officers has increased 300 percent since 2003. From approximately 600 to 1,800. I consider that a very, very, very serious problem. In the Fayette County Police Reports when they do make arrests the number of incidents where a firearm is encountered has gone up is 300 percent since 2000. That is a dangerous job. I mean this are during arrests that they encounter a firearm. I know in my hometown of Lexington, homicide still a problem. So there really has not been a big dent in violent crime.
It’s the last two years there has been the only reduction in the U.C.R. (Uniform Crime Report) numbers and again Uniform Crime numbers by FBI are less than 50 percent of violent crimes. Less than 50 percent are reported. That’s according to the F.B.I. Also during these last two years where there was a 6 percent decrease and 4 percent decrease in the U.C.R. numbers in violent crime there’s also been a switch over to NIBRS system which I’m sure the Secretary knows, National Incident Based Reporting System, and that has an effect on the numbers. I would say it’s not 100 percent certain where we are as far as comparison purposes. So we think it’s a huge problem.
Our suggestion is one of education. Education is without a doubt we think a State responsibility. There has been much said about it. And we think education as far as violence prevention also a States responsibility. We consider violence reduction a Pro-American campaign. Of course in the preamble in the U.S. Constitution “insure domestic Tranquility” is listed even before “provide for the common defense” Again, that’s in the preamble. So we think it’s an imperative.
We are actually trying propose draft legislation for basically a peace campaign, peace competition, where we would challenge the people of Kentucky to reduce the violent victimizations 10 percent in 2012. Again, using these U.C.R. numbers from the State. This is a proposal that we’re offering that costs nothing, involves no regulations. We also have a possible incentive plan in it where they would be a possible free sales tax day if there was a 10 percent reduction in violent crime. The savings would be 10 times that whatever it was.
We found out there’s no consensus on how to reduce violence. There are so many factors and it so complex from poverty to drugs. We figure the problems are not part of the solution. The solution is individual responsibility. Some have higher hurdles to jump. We believe that maybe another taskforce on the other side of coin. Which is not drug offenders which we think is tremendous, because not all drug offenders are violent offenders but certainly all violent offenders are violent offenders. So possibly the flip side of the coin in the juridical system would be looking just at violent offenders. Recidivism is 50 percent. It’s sky high. Enforcement is not necessarily the solution that was alluded to earlier. In the United States criminal judicial system there is over 7 million right now and over 1.7 million incarcerated right now. These number are huge, however again the total number of violence victimizations has really not changed.
And in the last two years where there is reduction, one important factor I think that sends urgency is that we do have so many service people doing us honor overseas, some reports are three times more than normal. There are normally like 200,000 of our service people and independent contractors out of the country there is now upward up to 600,000. These people are coming home and it would be a disservice to them not to be on the front line welcoming them and helping them because veterans unfortunately do have right now a higher percentage of unemployment, domestic abuse and even suicide. So I feel we need some legislation we need some action now or we could see a spike this number, in the number of violent victimizations. But more important than that we need to take care of these people as soon as they hit our soil.
Although there is no consensus on one way to reduce violence, education has the most research attributed to it. We have some articles actually on our web site and here that education does help. So although enforcement is very important what we really don’t want is not more people incarcerated. What we really want is less violence so it will never have come to an arrest.
We just wanted to introduce ourselves and again it’s Win The War! Against Violence and we hope to be a part of some sort of awareness campaign or competition, challenge that would not cost anything in the 2012 legislation that would put the focus on the problem of violence reduction though education without costing the State any money, actually we think it’s a cost reduction program too. Thank you for your time.
