[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 106 (Thursday, August 4, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 4, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                        PROBLEMS WITH CRIME BILL

  (Mr. McCOLLUM asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. McCOLLUM. Mr. Speaker, there is nobody probably in the conference 
who has worked more with the crime bill than I have. I have been 
working with it ever since I became the head of our Republican 
Leadership Task Force on Crime. I would like to see us have a good, 
solid crime bill, particularly one the American public would be proud 
of, that does something constructive to help the States with the 
biggest problem we have got. That is to take the 6 percent of the 
criminals who are committing 70 percent of the violent crimes and 
serving only a third of their sentences off the streets and get them 
locked up and throw away the key. In other words, get to truth in 
sentencing, and help the States build the prison that they need to 
build in order to be able to go to sentencing structures that say for 
those repeat violent offenders, you are going to serve at least 85 
percent of your sentences and you are not going to walk back out to do 
those violent crimes again.
  We thought on the House side we had gotten through the necessary 
resources to do this. Unfortunately, the $13 billion that passed out of 
this House did not come back in the crime bill for prison construction 
in the States. On $6.5 billion did out of a $30 billion bill.
  Only a fifth of the bill addresses the major crisis we have got. A 
good hunk of the remainder of that bill goes to things such as creating 
a program that is three times the size of the old CETA Program, 
creating Government jobs to supposedly address the problem of root 
causes of crime, which will not be addressed until we get at the root 
cause truly of putting families back together again an reforming the 
welfare laws of this country and other things.
  But this bill, unfortunately, does not do the job, and it is in bad 
shape right now coming back out of conference, I hate to report.

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