[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 4 (Friday, January 28, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: January 28, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
POLICE AND PRISONS
Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, in today's edition of the New York Times,
columnist A.M. Rosenthal argues persuasively for more police and
prisons as the most effective ways to fight violent crime.
As Mr. Rosenthal explains, ``A criminal on the loose costs society
twice as much as a criminal in jail--in stolen goods, smashed property,
and of course the medical care for the victims * * *. Yes, a lot of
Americans are in jail. A lot more should be. If your house is burbled,
there is a 1 in 80 chance the criminal will serve time.''
Attorney General Reno and other liberals in the Clinton
administration may say that more prison space can be made available
simply by imposing alternative sanctions on first-time, nonviolent
offenders. This proposal sounds good, but as Mr. Rosenthal correctly
points out, ``All those crowded jails are not filled with pot smolders
caught by cops on patrol:'' 93 percent of the prisoners in State
prisons are either repeat offenders or offenders convicted of a violent
crime.
Congress must not delay in enacting the Republican regional-prison
initiative. This initiative will encourage the States to adopt
important reforms, such as truth-in-sentencing, in exchange for more
prison space to house violent criminals convicted in State court.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the full text of Mr.
Rosenthal's column be inserted in the Record immediately after my
remarks.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Police and Prisons
(By A.M. Rosenthal)
More and more billions for prisons to lock up more and more
Americans who never had a decent chance at life. Are we mad?
Why not use those billions to build more schools to give more
young people living in poverty the education to climb out of
it? It costs as much to keep a convict in prison as to send
him to Yale, for Heaven's sake.
And despite all the other billions the U.S. spends on the
drug war, narcotics still flood the country, users are still
being put into prison, crowding out violent criminals. Why
not legalize drugs and use the anti-drug money on therapy for
addicts and to improve the neighborhoods that create them?
And why those long sentences for convicts? Every year
behind bars makes them more bitter. They return to the same
hard streets. Save money by cutting sentences. Spend the
savings to give released convicts training for decent jobs.
Those three paragraphs sum up a belief important in
American liberal intellectual life--the belief that war
against crime and drugs is largely aimed at and hurts the
poor and wastes huge amounts of money that could be used to
fight the poverty, discrimination and education deprivation
that are the root causes of crime.
The argument is false factually. Worse, it is damaging to
people it is supposed to benefit--Americans, all skin shades,
who live in the streets of poverty and killing.
Economically the struggle against crime is the biggest
bargain the taxpayer gets. A criminal on the loose costs
society twice as much as a criminal in jail--in stolen goods,
smashed property and of course the medical care for the
victims.
The drug war has not yet been won. But it has saved
hundreds of thousands of Americans from lives of addiction
that would have cost the country scores of billions. Nobody
knows exactly how much because drug abuse is the cause of so
many other crimes like family violence, robberies and
muggings.
Most of the crime takes place in poor neighborhoods. Drug
addicts gobble up hospital space and time that would have
gone to the people of those neighborhoods. Fighting crime and
drugs is one tax expenditure that benefits the poor most of
all.
All those crowded jails are not filled with pot smokers
caught by cops on patrol. Prof. John J. DiIulio Jr. of
Princeton and Brookings reports that 93 percent of convicts
in state prisons are violent criminals, many of them
repeaters.
Yes, a lot of Americans are in jail. A lot more should be.
If your house is burgled, there is a 1 in 80 chance the
criminal will serve time.
The trouble with long sentences is that they turn out not
to be all that long. Convicts serve about one-third of their
sentences. A rapist can expect to be out in 5 years, a
convicted murderer in 10.
President Clinton now recognizes the dreadful importance of
crime in American life. But if he is to lead, as he should,
he ought to make sure his top officers are following on
close.
About mandatory sentences, his Attorney General is known to
law officers as Waffle General. His Surgeon General boosts
another study of the much-studied legalization of drugs. Then
after he properly says ``nothing doing,'' she boosts it
again. Either she does not believe what the President says or
just does not care very much.
Most of all, he should tell us the hardest truth of all--
how deeply criminals have hurt the already wounded of
America, the poor.
The President should tell us that criminals who have stayed
out of jail and criminals who got out too early have turned
large parts of the inner city into war zones. ``Build
schools, not prisons''--that's not a choice now, it is a
hoax.
In war zones the money and energy of government and the
people go to surviving, fighting and winning. Sometimes a
little extra money and energy are spent to keep up spirits.
But was there ever a case where in a war zone under attack
there was enough money to make life decent and build for the
future?
The criminals have deprived other citizens of the greatest
civil liberty--the right to live in peace. They have also
deprived citizens of the treasure to build for the future.
That is what the President should tell the country, for it
is the plain truth and will be so until the winning starts.
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