One thing’s for sure: the criminals currently running the streets of Chicago are not some of the brightest individuals in the world. And even though they’re quite willing to create havoc, just like their counterparts, the four-legged rat, they scurry away after having done their dastardly deeds.

A while back I wrote that the solution to the criminal problem was cameras on every house. These criminals are quite willing to do the crime, but they run and hide because they’re unwilling to do the time.

The cameras, and maintenance of them, should generate a property tax credit of at least $600 annually. Those cameras need the internet, and $600 would pretty much cover the bill for a year. Individuals getting this tax credit would have to be willing to share the video captured by their system with the police. Don’t want to share with the police? Then lose the tax credit and have to repay it.

Along with cameras on every house, I strongly feel we need the return of the death penalty. To those who want to lambast me because we had folks on death row who were innocent, I counter: Just like DNA freed the innocent, DNA can convict the guilty! When young people today don’t believe they’ll live to see 25, a life sentence doesn’t scare them as it’s literally only 10 years or less in their minds.

Just like the “monkey see, monkey do” criminals that they are, many are shooting on the expressway just to be able to say they’ve done it. Their actions put the lives of many on the line, so I’d also like to see more public executions. Before we became the wimpy society we are now, back in the 1920s and the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, the photos of those dead people were everywhere. It sent a message. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Today we have sanitized everything so that our criminal element does not really see what can happen to them. Hell, they can’t even be named. And that leads to them feeling entitled to commit whatever crime because of the privacy of it all.

And let us not forget the Juvenile Justice system. When juveniles continue to do things over and over again because they don’t even get a slap on the wrist, there’s something very wrong. I’d start with one thing: making them and the adults who are supposed to be their caretakers financially responsible. What if going to juvie also meant being forced to go to school? What if juvenile detention is run like a military base? Up at 4 a.m., exercise, breakfast, clean the facility, education, etc. No more listening to rap music. No televisions or videos and chilling, but being force-fed an exposure to classical music. No more chips and soda, but instead carrot sticks and water.

The lack of structure in many of these young lives is the reason they continue to be out here doing what they do. Our job is to rehabilitate them and, even more so, prevent them from going in that direction.

Sadly we are failing in that regard.