Washington - Murders in New Jersey reached their highest level since 1990 last year due to an increase in murders in suburban and rural areas, according to the Uniform Crime Report issued by the New Jersey State Police. 66 homicides took place in suburban and rural areas, 12 more than the year before, contributing to the 427 murders statewide.

U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), who authored anti-gang measures included in an anti-gang bill that passed the Senate this year and who also has been a leader in the fight to restore broad access to information on the trafficking of guns used in crimes, said today that these statistics should be a red alert for the need to implement legislation targeting gangs and cracking down on gun crimes.

"Gangs and gun violence are threatening our communities, and this is a problem that clearly includes suburbs and rural areas," said Sen. Menendez. "This report is a wake up call to anyone who thinks otherwise. We need to give law enforcement the tools to crack down on gangs and guns used for crimes, and we need to cut down gangs at their roots by preventing our state's youth from joining in the first place. That's the approach I have taken in the Senate with legislation to go after gangs at multiple levels, and I am hopeful that the bill we passed last month makes it into law."

Background

The Gang Abatement and Prevention Act, which passed the Senate last month, is closely tied to Menendez's Fighting Gangs and Empowering Youth Act (http://menendez.senate.gov/newsroom/record.cfm?id=271326). It incorporates a number of provisions from the Menendez bill, including:

Gang Prevention and Intervention

Expands mentoring programs and creates a new demonstration program to encourage creative approaches to gang activity and after-school programs. The new demonstration program would provide $5 million per year for 5 years for grants to "public or nonprofit private entities (including faith-based organizations)" that create innovative approaches to combat gang activity. These projects could include things like teen-driven approaches, educating parents about the signs of gang activity in kids, teaching parenting/nurturing to keep kids out of gangs, and facilitating communication between parents and children. The grant program would require a 25% local match. The mentoring program provides funds to community-based nonprofit and for-profit agencies to mentor youth involved in the juvenile justice system. The current program is funded at $1.6 million and has four mentoring partnerships through cooperative agreement awards (each is limited to $400,000 for 4 years). The legislation would expand the program to $4.8 million per year in order to fund 12 projects.

The two bills also share several provisions to crack down on gang activity, including provision to:

New and Increased Penalties for Gang Crimes

Make recruiting new gang members a federal crime, with the penalty doubled if a minor is recruited; create a new category of crimes for criminal street gangs for certain violent crimes, such as murder, carjacking, firearm offenses, witness tampering; include violent crimes committed for gang initiation or membership and drug trafficking. Provide significant increases in criminal penalties for gang members for racketeering violence, carjacking, firearm possession, conspiracy. Call on the United States Sentencing Commission to review penalties for juvenile offenders.

For further details on the similarities between the two bills, visit: http://menendez.senate.gov/pdf/MenendezFeinsteinBillProvisions.doc.

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