St. Louis law enforcement and criminal justice systems are about to go thru some major changes and influx. The federal system has come forth and stated they intend to adopt and indict as many gun and drug offense/cases from the state level as possible. This will result in higher incarceration and conviction rates as it is much rarer to get probation at the federal level and SIS convictions do not exist. This has been proposed in response to the increasing gun and violent crime rates in the St. Louis area. What do you think of this? Could be effective or could it cause more problems?

Here is an example of a students answer for help and guidance

While I do see this as a good start for combating the violence in the city, I feel that it could cause more issues in the future. What I mean by this is after reading the question I was immediately taken back to the war on drugs during the Reagan Era, while I do believe that the war on drugs was something that was need and a lot of good was done, in some areas the government went completely overboard. The biggest example of this being are large incarceration rate for minor drug offenders that were subjected to mandatory minimum sentences. In many examples where people who had sometimes had as little as 3 oz of marijuana given life sentences without parole. I fear that this way of thinking of getting as many incarceration and convictions can lead to a situation like mandatory minimums of the 80s. Also just obtaining as many people behind bars isn’t going to truly stop the problem as a whole. What we should do is take time to teach children about illegal weapons, drugs, and other such illegal acts. A gun buy back program would also be recommended because even if we only got one unregistered or illegal firearm from that, it would be one less gun one the street that could kill someone.