CHOICE ONE - GET TOUGHER.

People would feel safer, this choice contends, if at long last criminals in Philadelphia knew that the costs of committing crime would outweigh the benefits.

The solution, in this view, is simple and direct. Make sure enforcement is swift and sure; make sure punishment is swift and severe.

In this view, the city should make sure its police force has the numbers, the equipment and the training to do its part of the job. Then police should be left alone to do their jobs protecting the public. Their hands shouldn’t be tied by second-guessing from community agitators, grandstanding politicians or nitpicking judges.

Common pleas judges, whose leniency this view sees as a major reason Philadelphians don’t feel safe, should have their discretion limited and their performance more rigorously reviewed.

In this view, what ought to be clear-cut roles in the search for safer streets have been diluted by muddled thinking:

The court system needs to pay more attention to the rights of victims, less to the rights of criminals.

Prisons need to about punishment, period.

Social institutions such as schools and churches need to take the lead as they once did in teaching respect for the law and for authority.

Citizens need to be free to take sensible precautions to safeguard their property and families, including legal gun ownership.

• Hire more police.

• Hire more civilians to handle clerical and administrative tasks, to free officers for street duty.

• Let police focus on fighting crime, not social work or providing services such as rides to hospitals.

• Get the media to stop sensationalizing allegations of corruption and brutality, and to cover better the good work police do.

• Eliminate diversity quotas in police hiring; simply hire the most qualified applicants.

• Elect judges who won’t coddle criminals.

• Pass mandatory sentencing laws, to limit the discretion of judges inclined to be lenient.

• Create citizens’ review panel for judges, to force accountability on judges who put criminals back on the street to commit more crime.

• Strictly enforce laws already on the books about illegal gun sales and extra penalties for use of a gun in commission of a crime.

• Give victims a clear say in the punishment of the criminals who victimized them.

• Focus resources for prisons on building jail cells, not on pointless rehabilitation programs or "country club" amenities for inmates. By law, prevent unelected federal judges from ever imposing a "prison cap" again.

• Fight drugs with heavy enforcement, backed by severe mandatory sentences for possession and dealing.

• Arrest people for quality of life crimes such as vandalism and graffiti, and prosecute them fully.

• Impose juvenile curfews.

• Use police in public schools to enforce discipline and teach respect.

• Do not infringe on citizens’ constitutional right to arm and protect themselves; police should offer firearms training to citizenry.

• Severe and certain punishment deters crime.

• To do their vital, risky work well, police officers deserve the full support of the community they protect.

• Lenient judges destroy criminals’ fear of consequences and the public’s trust in law enforcement. They also demoralize the police and prosecutors.

• The surest way to make sure a criminal won’t commit more crimes against the public is to keep him in prison.

• Prison should be a punishment people want to avoid. When prisons provide better educational opportunities and amenities than people have in their home communities, jail terms cease to be a deterrent.

• If you restrict citizens’ right to bear arms, you leave them at the mercy of criminals, who will certainly obtain guns somehow.

• Most allegations of police brutality are hyped by activists and journalists looking to make a name for themselves at the expense of the police.

• Drugs are a destructive scourge. Society can afford to offer no leniency, no matter the circumstances.

• This attitude invites police and the courts to ignore and abuse individuals’ constitutional rights.

• Prisons are schools for criminal behavior; all you do by sentencing young first-time offenders to prison is turn them into hardened criminals.

• The harsher the prison, the harsher and the more crime-prone the ex-con.

• The more guns floating around a community, whether legally obtained or not, the more lethal violence and fatal accidents you will have.

• The war on drugs has been fought and lost on this choice’s terms. We need to move from a military metaphor to a public health approach, and treat drug addiction as the disease it is.

• Whenever people decide to get "tough on crime," minorities are disproportionately targeted for arrest and punishment.

• This choice ignores crime’s root causes in poverty, illiteracy and racism, preferring to go for quick fixes. Money spent on building prisons to handle the results of mandatory sentences should be spent on those ills.

• This choice incites a media hysteria about crime that makes people feel less safe than they are, and more hopeless than they should.

Order. Respect for the rule of law. Just punishment. Security. Taking a stand. Victim’s rights.