Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 8, 1994 TAG: 9410260009
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Three days earlier, Richmond's Mayor Leonidas B. Young apparently surprised some black community leaders when he endorsed Gov. George Allen's plan to reform parole as a key part of the state's crime-fighting strategy.
Some of Virginia's African-American leaders oppose Allen on this issue. A few have argued that his proposed new anti-parole guidelines will fall disproportionately hard on black felons.
They should think about the fact Young cites: that rampant violent crime, especially in inner cities, is taking a disproportionately large number of black victims. Of the men and women killed in Richmond this year, at least 98 have been identified as black. Nationally, statistics show, blacks are twice as likely as whites to be victims of violent crime.
Young's contention - that nearly half of Richmond's 94 murder victims would be alive today, had Allen's parole guidelines been in place - may be a slightly risky statement. (Gov. Allen, in a statewide telecast in June, spotlighted specific cases in which he said the victims would have been saved by his parole-tightening proposals. As this newspaper reported on Sunday, parole was not a factor in some of the cited cases.) But certainly a good number of those people would be alive, considering that three out of four violent crimes in Virginia are committed by repeat offenders.
And surely it serves no one well to couch crime as a black vs. white issue, or for leaders to divide along racial lines when proposals are made to combat a horrifying epidemic of murder and mayhem.
As Mayor Young observed: ``Blood, whether from black or white victims, is always red.''
by CNB