"It does work when you intervene, when you keep people on a positive path, doing good things for their community instead of getting involved with gang-bangers and drug dealers that afflict many communities, and use violence to kill children in particular," Quinn said.

"Most people who have looked at this issue, who are experts, say the best way to fight the violence is to have after-school programs for children who can get in trouble after school, have programs of mentoring so they have positive role models, have programs where they can have a job, even if it's just a part-time job, a seasonable job."

But Murphy said those temporary jobs are just "another way of providing welfare."

"You're not giving young people a chance to advance by giving them this flier-passing-out job," Murphy said. "You're not creating an environment where job growth that is lasting is going to take hold."

Today, the Neighborhood Recovery Initiative has been scaled back, with a much smaller budget of just $15 million. It's also being managed by a different state agency.

And the jobs? A spokeswoman for the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority said that's being reworked to put "youth in more traditional employment and mentoring situations."