Jay,

>>What I want to see achieved is what I said above. How this is going be carried out. I don't know. Possibly some laws have to be adjusted. It might be a matter of perspective. If you really focus on a group trouble makers and track them and apply a '3 strike, you're out' policy to them, you're not treating everyone equally either (because you won't focus on everyone). There are instruments helping on this, on first sight unequal system, to support this stance. For example justice could describe such a group as a criminal organisation, which allows different handling of the crimes beeing commited.

>If that were the case then in the US all Italians may have been considered part of a criminal organization in the 1940s. Or the Irish at the turn of the century. Or African Americans now? Because we all know that they are the cause of all the crime in our cities. That's sarcasm, by the way, for anyone lurking. Dressing it up and spraying perfume on it doesn't change the fact that any law like that would be incredibly biased.

I don't think you get the point here. The 'group' is not defined by ethniciy, skin colour, age or religion, but a phisical group committing crimes. There are groups of youth causing problems. You focus on those groups (and not on the described criteria above). Most of the time the group homogenous in ethnicity, relgion, age group etc.

The terroristic attack in Amsterdam this tuesday where a famous (controversial) cineast was murdered is done by a member of a group of muslim terrorists. The letter they left at the victim warned any dutch that if they critisized the islam they will murder them too and specifically was a death thread of a well known politician. Now what I'm saying here is giving them a clear sign that this is not accepted and within the first sign they continue with their fundamentalism, jail them or send them back to the country of origin. In our system we can define those groups in the of fundementalists as beeing a member of a criminal organization and possibly (I'm not a lawyer) take those actions I want to see here.

As I stated before here, the war against iraq is not doing any good in those kind of conflicts. I definately can say "we don't feel safer" and "We are not safer" than before 911.

Walter,