The Chicago Police Department attributes half of the city’s murders to street gangs. The department has made cracking down on gangs a priority. But some experts say that approach may be backfiring. Chicago Public Radio’s Chip Mitchell has more.

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Ambi: Free throw

The referee of this outdoor basketball league is wearing black-and-white stripes, but he’s a police officer.

Ambi: Whistle

The league is a collaboration of the Chicago police and a Southwest Side nonprofit agency. The district police commander, Ronald Sodini, says the goal is simple.

SODINI: To take over a particular street that has been associated with some violence, and to put young children, young kids, teenagers on the street, playing basketball on a Friday night.

Sodini says the league is part of a citywide strategy.

SODINI: We have adopted a community policing philosophy since 1990 where we’re partnering with the community to address underlying problems that lead to criminal activity.

In recent years, Chicago has coupled that style with more aggressive tactics. University of Illinois at Chicago criminologist Dennis Rosenbaum says the approach floods hotspots with gang and tactical teams.

ROSENBAUM: Some of them are on the streets, stopping and frisking people, trying to get intelligence and send a message that street activity — drug dealing, gang banging — is not going to be tolerated.

The police department says it’s helped reduce the city’s murder rate to its lowest level in decades. But that decline mirrored a national trend. And the crackdown has hit what looks like a wall. Since 2004, Chicago’s annual homicide tally has hovered around 450.

PRANIS: Both Los Angeles and Chicago have remained more stuck than other places in the cycle of violence.

Kevin Pranis co-authored a new report on combating youth violence for a Washington think tank called the Justice Policy Institute. He’s among a number of advocates, scholars and law-enforcement officials who say mass arrests further marginalize young men who otherwise might grow out of their gang. They say police crackdowns often strengthen gang cohesion.

PRANIS: Police overtime is the easiest thing to fund. It’s the program that you can implement overnight. But that’s the wrong tool for a much larger problem of housing, of employment, youth programs, of the educational system.

Pranis says New York has done better against youth violence by improving the balance between law enforcement and social programs. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley hasn’t embraced that approach. He spoke to parents on the North Side last month.

DALEY: It isn’t up to the Chicago police to be your parents, your psychiatrists, your church leaders. These are police. They’re community policing, but it’s up to you. You brought the children into the world. It’s up to you to take responsibility.

These days, Chicago’s searching for a new police superintendent. So far, public debate about that choice has focused on alleged police abuses, not whether Chicago’s approach to youth violence has been effective.

I’m Chip Mitchell, Chicago Public Radio.