Solution lies behind bars

They can start all the midnight basketball leagues they want. They can have outreach programs until they're blue in the face, create another 50,000 summer jobs in the mailroom of State Street Bank, allow ministers to pitch tents on city streets.

But there is nothing that will stop the senseless violence across this city quicker than the simplest solution of all: Put gun-toting punks in jail.

The liberals, of course, are aghast at harsh action. How dare anyone hassle young victims of broken families trying to survive the streets of an increasingly mean city? We ought to be guiding them, not incarcerating them.

Yeah, well, sorry. Most of those liberals aren't living in Dorchester, Mattapan, or Roxbury. They're not lying in bed at night listening to gunfire crackle in the near distance. They're not sending their kids to a grammar school on a road that's raked by bullets during recess.

How bad is the problem? I was talking yesterday to Barry Mullen, head of a neighborhood association in Fields Corner, and he was marveling that people in Dorchester know the difference between the sound of gunshots and fireworks. ''Isn't it disgraceful?" he said.

As bad, Mullen said, is the lack of police response. ''I go to two crime watch meetings a week, and I hear it again and again, that our 911 calls aren't answered," he said. ''The police do the best they can, but they're overworked."

Over in Codman Square, Bill Walczak, the head of the Codman Square Health Center, spoke of a new gang in the neighborhood, an increase in robberies, gunfire in the night. Then he offered a strategy with Mark Twain-like simplicity: ''Some bad guys need to go away."

As I was asking Walczak and Mullen about the problem, Mayor Thomas M. Menino was behind closed doors in City Hall with Police Commissioner Kathleen M. O'Toole and Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley hashing over solutions. They emerged with a laundry list of ideas: sweeping hardened criminals off the streets with existing warrants, pushing for a gun court, putting more emphasis on witness protection. In separate telephone conversations, all three struck the chord that Walczak already had: Put bad guys behind bars.

''You have to calibrate between prevention, intervention, and enforcement, and we obviously need more enforcement right now," O'Toole said.

''The term for these guys is impact players," Conley said. ''They're out there causing serious problems and wreaking havoc in some of our poorer neighborhoods. They didn't get the message of intervention and prevention, so they have to be treated harshly."

This meeting was an excellent first step, and credit to the mayor for acknowledging the breadth and depth of the problem. But it is just one step.

Back in the crime-fighting heyday of the mid- and late 1990s, when murders were at a notable low, judges seemed to have worked out a private agreement not to grant low bail or light sentences to gun-wielding punks from Boston.

At the same time, the police commissioner, the district attorney, the attorney general, and the US attorney worked in lockstep, indicting the worst thugs in town. If prosecutors had the chance to send a punk to Leavenworth for 20 years rather than South Bay for 20 months, they pushed the case into federal court. Word spread on the street pretty quickly.

People like to talk about all the outreach in the 1990s, but most of the success was because authorities put criminals behind bars. This same coordination needs to happen again -- immediately. O'Toole, Conley, Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly, and US Attorney Michael J. Sullivan need to make this their collective priority. I know all about the rising number of juveniles and the decreasing number of cops. I know all about the flow of convicts being released from jail.

But I also know that good people, innocent people, hard-working people are living in constant fear in their homes.

Boston has handled this before, better than any other city in America. It needs to spare no effort to get there again.

Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. His e-mail is mcgrory@globe.com.