You might ask: Why has Republican Attorney General Rob McKenna made it such a priority to push legislation to combat gang violence this year?

And you might wonder, cynically, whether getting tough on gangs has anything to do with McKenna's likely plans to run for governor in 2012.

You might call Shankar Narayan of the ACLU of Washington about all this, and if you did that, you might get this answer: "I will only say that this is a bill that is intended to look tough on crime, but its reality is that it’s tough on taxpayers and is going to cost us a lot of money in the long run. But it plays well politically.”

What, specifically, is McKenna's gang bill all about?

It's getting a hearing right now in Olympia if you want to livestream the details, but briefly: The bill would up the sentences for gang-related felonies (and double them when a gang-related crime occurs near a school); require more supervision of those convicted of gang-related felonies once they're released; "increase the penalty for tagging/graffiti from a gross misdemeanor to a class C felony"; and, most controversially, give prosecutors the ability to obtain what are essentially restraining orders that would prevent gang members from returning to certain areas or neighborhoods.

“The centerpiece of McKenna’s legislation is this thing called protective orders," said Narayan. “I think the biggest problem is it really flies in the face of the evidence we have about what really works to combat gang activity.” These protective orders are modeled on those that already exist in California, but they've drawn criticism from civil libertarians down there and are now drawing similar criticisms here. Narayan said it's too easy, under McKenna's bill, for prosecutors to obtain protective orders against people who may look to them like gang members (but may not in fact be gang members), and that McKenna's bill does not provide for accused gang members to have public defenders to help them fight such accusations.

Narayan adds that McKenna's bill, on the whole, is mainly about sending more people to prison for longer periods of time (costing the state more money), shuffling gang problems around through the use of protective orders (and quite possibly slapping innocent people with gang member labels), and increasing the extent to which state prisons become incubators for hardened gang members.

McKenna, obviously, feels differently.