May 31, 2013 |Column| Chicago Tribune There's a core of substance in Kirk's `empty, simplistic' crime-fighting proposal It's an arresting idea, so to speak. It's an arresting idea, so to speak. Round up 18,000 members of the Gangster Disciples street gang and put them behind bars awaiting trial. On what charges? "Drug dealing," said U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., when he first publicly advanced the notion... we don't have anywhere to put 18,000 new prisoners. Cook County Jail holds about 10,000 inmates, but it's already nearly at capacity. The Metropolitan Correctional Center downtown houses fewer than 500 inmates and the now-vacant Thomson Correctional Center, which Kirk mentioned as a possible repository for the fruits of his proposed gang sweep, has a capacity of about 1,800 prisoners. Third, though 18,000 members is a decent ballpark estimate for the Gangster Disciples in the Chicago area the Chicago Crime Commission puts the number at somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 the organization, such as it is, is so splintered as to make that number difficult to interpret. The commission estimates there are 250 subgroups, many of them bitter rivals, under the Gangster Disciple umbrella. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-oped-0531-zorn-20130531,0,4985146.column
