Outgoing Mayor Richard Daley jumped head-first yesterday into some of the most contentious city and statewide debates involving incarceration and crime.

On Tuesday, 19-year old Timothy Herring was charged with two counts of first-degree murder for allegedly shooting Chicago police officer Michael Flisk and civilian Stephen Peters in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood. The crime is heinous, to be sure. It was so horrifying, in fact, that the mayor (a former state's attorney) told the media that Herring should face the death penalty if he's eventually convicted. "I believe in the death penalty. I’ll be very frank," he said. Watch a clip, courtesy of NBC 5:

Daley's statement was delivered at roughly the same time that State Rep. Karen Yarbrough (D-Chicago) was trying to whip up support for legislation (SB 3539) abolishing the death penalty in Illinois entirely. Her bill, which passed committee yesterday, would end capital punishment and redirect money the state pays in death row prosecution and defense fees ($100 million in the past seven years alone) to support law enforcement training and programs for the families of murder victims. One has to wonder if the mayor's declaration had any impact on the debate in Springfield, particularly among local members.

Since 1977, 13 men in Illinois have been exonerated for murders they did not commit. And as Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, a Chicago native, recently argued in the New York Review of Books, the death penalty provides "only marginal contributions to any discernible social or public purposes." While the issue is morally complex, these are concerns Daley did not begin to address in his press conference this week.

In the wake of the South Side tragedy, Daley also urged state lawmakers to revise some of Illinois' sentencing laws. Flanked by Chicago Police Superintendent Jody Weis, the mayor suggested that anyone serving jail time for committing a gun crime should be disqualified from early parole. (Herring had previously been convicted of armed robbery and was sent home with an electronic monitoring bracelet attached to his ankle in September after serving three years of a six-year sentence.) Weis agreed. "I think if you use a weapon, it should be a mandatory sentence," he said. "It's insane that people are getting out early after they've tried to kill someone."

The state's criteria for electronic home monitoring under parole is not excessively lenient. The most serious offenders -- those who have committed crimes against persons and/or sex crimes -- are already excluded from consideration. From the state statute:

"Excluded offenses" means first degree murder, escape, predatory criminal sexual assault of a child, aggravated criminal sexual assault, criminal sexual assault, aggravated battery with a firearm, bringing or possessing a firearm, ammunition or explosive in a penal institution, any "Super‑X" drug offense or calculated criminal drug conspiracy or streetgang criminal drug conspiracy, or any predecessor or successor offenses with the same or substantially the same elements, or any inchoate offenses relating to the foregoing offenses.

Lawmakers should also be wary about making changes to incarceration mandates too hastily; Illinois' prison system is "bursting at the seams" thanks to a backlash against the Quinn administration's accelerated meritorious early release program.

Speaking of Weis, retiring Ald. Ed Smith (28th Ward) urged Chicago's next mayor to keep the police superintendent atop the department next year. Morale has dropped among rank-and-file officers under Weis' watch, but Smith says that's not reason enough for a change. From the Sun-Times:

"I don’t think that, just because police are upset, it’s enough to get this man out of here. The man needs to stay in his position, let the police do their job and those [who] do not want to work, let them find another job."

Because South Side and West Side neighborhoods face disproportionately high levels of dangerous crime, Smith's ward would likely benefit from a controversial police allocation proposal Weis unveiled at a city budget hearing in October.

Another big change the outgoing administration is undertaking before they ride off into the sunset is an overhaul of the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS) program, which has been held up both as a model of proper community policing and criticized as window dressing by some criminal justice reformers. One central component of CAPS, community meetings between neighborhood residents and beat officers, are being sharply curtailed, according to a report from Mick Dumke at the Chicago News Cooperative:

The frequency of beat community meetings—a staple of Chicago’s community policing program since it was launched in 1993 to improve communication between police and residents—will be cut in many areas of the city from every month to every other month starting the first of the year, Ron Holt, the director of the CAPS program, told the Chicago News Cooperative Tuesday.

Until the city gets its fiscal house in order, we can expect to see more headlines like this one in the coming months and years.