"The program that eventually got Fowlkes to see himself differently-persuading him to leave his street corner and pursue job training after years of cycling in and out of jail-was among several community-violence-intervention initiatives that Donald Trump's administration abruptly defunded earlier this year. Trump, who has threatened to send federal troops into what he calls the "Crime Drenched City of Baltimore," is instead relying on a crime-prevention strategy that treats people like Fowlkes, city leaders and criminal-justice experts told me, as irredeemable."
""They were rough, rough and tough. But we're rougher and tougher," he said. "Look at these people here. They're not going to be your local school teacher. Look at this guy. He has killed people numerous times. They're not going to be an asset. They will never be an asset to society. I don't care. I know we all want to say, 'Oh, they're going to be rehabbed.' It's not going to be rehabbed.""
Justin Fowlkes was shot twice — first by a stray bullet at a bus stop and later as an intended target that struck his shoulder. Fowlkes prepared mentally for street violence and felt like a "dead man walking." A community-violence-intervention program persuaded Fowlkes to leave his street corner and pursue job training after years of cycling in and out of jail. The Trump administration abruptly defunded several such intervention initiatives earlier this year. Trump threatened to deploy federal troops to Baltimore and held up a photograph of alleged criminals while asserting that some people will never be rehabilitated. The administration emphasized a punitive crime-prevention strategy that treats people involved in street life as irredeemable.
Read at The Atlantic
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