Joseph Marshall Jr. and Lonnie Wheeler

In the following viewpoint, Joseph Marshall Jr. and Lonnie Wheeler argue that, while the criminal justice system is seemingly successful at reducing gang violence through arrests and incarceration, it is the wrong approach for the government to take. The authors maintain that the government should focus on preventing gang crime through the improvement of urban neighborhoods. According to the authors, if the government provides job training and rids the streets of drugs and guns, inner-city youth will feel they have opportunities in life and be more likely to reject gang behavior. Marshall and Wheeler are the authors of Street Soldier: One Man’s Struggle to Save a Generation—One Life at a Time, the book from which this viewpoint is excerpted.

As...