[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 115 (Tuesday, August 16, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 16, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                    CRIME BILL EMPHASIZES PREVENTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
February 11, 1994, and June 10, 1994, the gentlewoman from Colorado 
[Mrs. Schroeder] is recognized during morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. Mr. Speaker, I am glad to have a little time on this 
floor to try to bring back something to the crime bill that has been 
lacking, and that is: facts and truth.
  If you really look at what has happened, we in America won the cold 
war and we have lost the war on crime. And this crime bill does go a 
different direction. I think it is a very important direction. That is 
why we are having so much trouble getting it moving.
  What do we have in this crime bill that we have not had in crime 
bills for the last 12 years? We have a prevention piece, a prevention 
piece. Why is it in this crime bill? Because even today, after 12 years 
of passing tougher and tougher and tougher and tougher crime bills, and 
this one also has even more tough provisions, believe me--the gentleman 
from California talked about those, they are there, they are real, 
``three strikes, you're out,'' all sorts of things. But we still know, 
after all of that, 95 percent of the crimes in America often there is 
no arrest for. The figures go between 91 percent and 95 percent.
  So the idea is, if there is anything that could prevent the crime 
from happening in the first place, the average American citizen is much 
better off. In military terms we call that deterrence.
  We looked around, we had all sorts of hearings. Midnight basketball 
was one of them. We had hearings on it. I am sorry it was named 
midnight basketball. Let us call it late-night. It can start at 8 in 
the evening if you want it to. There is nothing that says it has to be 
at midnight. But the reason that it was named that was because in order 
to get into the basketball league, you had to, A, be in school or a job 
training program and, B, come from the study hall first that lasted a 
couple of hours.

                              {time}  1050

  Mr. Speaker, I think to call it pork is really ridiculous because it 
is very targeted. It is only targeted to the neighborhoods that need 
it, the neighborhoods where they do not have a father presence, and 
that is what this is, coaches, volunteers, and study hall people trying 
to become a father presence. This program has been tried in both 
Chicago and Maryland. It had strong bipartisan support. In fact, it was 
unanimously supported by the Select Committee on Children, Youth and 
Families.
  And all this for $2,000; that is all of what it costs an average 
community to fund an eight-person team for midnight basketball, and 
that $2,000 just pays for the insurance, the rental of the place, and 
the kind of things that bother volunteers, so all the volunteers have 
to focus on is those kids, and get them to go the right way, and where 
it has been in effect we find there has not been the crime going on by 
these young people, many of whom had an arrest record, and had been in 
trouble and were doomed to do it again.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to say to my colleagues, ``Civilizations are 
known not by how many prisons they build, but by the next generation 
they build, and we have not been doing a very good job as a nation on 
this next generation.''
  So, yes, we put some prevention programs in there, and we have been 
tried and true, and we have had hearings, and they are so cost 
efficient that my colleagues may not be able to believe it because it 
is $2,000 for eight people on a basketball team versus $40,000 apiece 
for each of those kids per year if they go on to jail, not to even 
mention the crime costs.
  What else did we put in this bill we have never done before? We put 
in things like assault weapon bans. Yes, those are military weapons. 
Those weapons do not belong in the hands of citizens out there. We do 
not even have them in the hands of our law enforcement officials. They 
are way overarmed. Again put it in cold war terms. The criminals are 
better armed than our policemen.
  We need more policemen; we have it in this bill. We need more 
prevention because when we are only arresting people for about 
somewhere between 9 and 5 percent of the crimes committed, we got to do 
a better job of preventing it on the front end.
  There is an old, wonderful Ben Franklin saying about an ounce of 
prevention is worth a pound of cure. That is what this bill is trying 
to tilt toward.
  And we also have in there the Violence Against Women Act which is 
terribly important. When this bill left the House the people voted for, 
there was $500 million more in programs than when it came back, and 
people voted for it then. There was also a lot less money for violence 
against women that there is now.
  Mr. Speaker, I think the excuses my colleagues are hearing are not 
based in fact. I think it is indeed criminal that we are having such a 
tragic factless debate on this, and I hope we get this crime bill back 
on track. America certainly needs it.

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