[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 121 (Monday, August 22, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: August 22, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
THE CRIME BILL
Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. Mr. President, I had occasion to preside over the
Senate for the last 2 hours, and I could not help but be reminded of
that old expression that those who love the law and those who love
sausages should not watch either of them being made. I had a chance to
sit through the rancor and debate around the procedural status of this
legislation, and to have occasion to think for a moment how we must
appear to the people of the public, who do not know about the rules and
about the procedural maneuvers and do not quite understand why it is
taking such an extraordinary amount of debate and is such a long,
drawn-out process for us to achieve a crime bill in this session of the
Congress--a bill, I might add, that the American people want.
I say, Mr. President, in explanation to those people who are more
than mystified at this point about what is going on, and the reason
this bill has taken such a long time to resolve, and the reason behind
all of the rancor and debate and the controversy that surrounds the
crime bill, is because it is important--precisely because it is so very
important to our country--that we have the clash of interests, we have
the clash of perspectives and the clash of ideas going on here in this,
the greatest deliberative body in the world. And that is why finalizing
and enacting into law this crime bill has not been easy for Senator
Biden, who has certainly worked on it so many years, or for all of the
other people here in Congress who have been so passionate about giving
the American people what they want and need.
But, at the same time, because it is so important, I think it is of
critical significance that we continue the debate as long as it takes
to get our job done.
The Senate first passed the crime bill last November, nearly 8 months
ago. At that time, everyone in this body hoped the bill would quickly
become law. Unfortunately for all of us, procedural maneuvering and
partisan politics has delayed completion of this legislation. But now,
at long last, the Senate stands poised to vote on a measure that, for
the first time, will devote substantial resources of the Federal
Government to the effort to reclaim our streets. As far as I am
concerned, Mr. President, this vote is coming not a moment too soon.
By way of background, Mr. President, I come out of a law enforcement
family. My father was a police officer, as were my brother and my
uncle. I have grown up discussing issues relating to crime and
punishment in the criminal justice system in our home all my life. I
served formerly as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Northern District
of Illinois. I served as a State legislator, as a local elected
official, and finally as a U.S. Senator.
For all of these years, Mr. President, crime has been an issue of
great public concern. And for all of those years, the level of crime in
our society has been unacceptably high. But the challenges posed by
violent crime today are greater now than they have ever been.
I do not make that statement easily, but we can no longer ignore the
truth. We live in a country where 7-year-olds are gunned down on their
way to school, and 9-year-olds bring guns to school for protection. We
live in a country where violent crime occurs every 22 seconds. That
includes one murder every 22 minutes, one rape every 5 minutes, and one
aggravated assault every 28 seconds.
The public, the people, are frightened. Fifty-nine percent of city
residents and 57 percent of suburban residents fear becoming a victim
of crime. Sixty percent of all Americans limit the places they travel
to out of fear of crime. We are in danger of becoming a society of
victims.
I can cite statistics such as these for the rest of this evening, but
the numbers only serve to illustrate what we already know. I believe
the Federal Government must act to help take back our streets, to
ensure that every man, woman, and child in this country feels safe in
their communities, in their schools and in their homes. That is why it
is imperative that Congress send this bill to the President as soon as
we can, today or tomorrow. We cannot afford to wait another day.
I want to call the Presiding Officer's attention to our Constitution,
the document that all of us love so much and pledged to be faithful to
in our work here.
The preamble of this Constitution says:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more
perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic
Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the
general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to
ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this
Constitution for the United States of America.
I read that because I think it is important for us to be reminded,
Mr. President, that ensuring our domestic tranquillity is part of what
we were sent here to do. That is our job. It is what we are elected, in
part, to ensure. And, more importantly, it is what the crime bill gives
us the opportunity to do.
I believe that it is important that we remind every Member of this
Senate that ensuring our domestic tranquillity does not mean that we
have to ensure a liberal approach to crime or a conservative approach
to crime. It does not call for us to ensure the building of more
prisons or ``grabbing them by the throat,'' as one of my colleagues
likes to say. What this says is that we have an obligation to focus on
the needs and interests of the honest people of this country, the needs
and interests of the citizens of this country who want to be able to
live without the threat of violent crime. I believe this crime bill
goes a long way in that direction.
Stories that have been written about this crime bill have tended to
focus on the critics of the bill, critics who exist on both sides of
the political spectrum. According to the reports, the ``liberals'' have
criticized the bill for focusing too much on the ``lock-em-up''
approach to solving crime, while the ``conservatives'' contend that the
bill places too much emphasis on prevention. Some critics have urged a
vote against the bill because too much money will be spent to build
prison cells or to fund boot camps. Others urge a vote against the bill
because too much money will be spent to fund programs designed to steer
children away from crime and drugs or to provide youth with job
training and career opportunities.
Mr. President, I would like to take this opportunity to address those
critics--again, on both sides of the political spectrum and, frankly,
both sides of the aisle. I certainly hope that those of us in this body
will resist such simplistic analyses. Fighting crime is not an either/
or decision; it is not a liberal or conservative decision; nor is it a
Republican or Democrat decision--or at least it should not be. And it
does not just come down to a choice between funding a social program or
funding a prison cell. The truth of the matter is that there is no
liberal solution to crime, and there is no conservative solution to
crime. There is only a cooperative solution.
We are all in this together, and we should be prepared to take what
works to fight crime. We should be prepared to take a little bit of
this approach and that approach, approaches that have been demonstrated
to be effective, in our effort to fight to secure our domestic
tranquillity.
Common sense tells us that we cannot focus solely on alleviating the
root causes of crime, even though as much as I would like to see that
happen, because even if it were successful, those measures might not
show any effects for 10 or 15 years down the road. But neither can we
simply talk about locking people up and throwing away the key, because
once you need to lock someone up you have already failed at what should
be the central task of the criminal justice system, which is preventing
crime in the first place.
The crime bill we are considering today recognizes both of the
realities, that we have to focus on prevention as well as punishment.
This bill recognizes that we should be prepared to take what really
works to fight crime. Prevention efforts, in my opinion, are important
in securing our future and securing our children's future if for no
other reason than the old adage that says ``a stitch in time saves
nine.'' It makes sense to stop crime before there are victims, even at
the same time as we focus in on punishing those who made a victim out
of all of us. This bill strikes a balance between prevention and
punishment in a way that makes sense.
So let us not focus on just the detractors and critics of this bill.
Let us focus on its supporters. This crime bill has the support of the
National District Attorneys Association, the National Association of
Attorneys General, the Fraternal Order of Police, the International
Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Organization of Black Law
Enforcement Executives, the National Sheriffs Organization, the
International Brotherhood of Police Officers, the National Troopers
Organization, the National League of Cities, the United States
Conference of Mayors, the National Association of Counties, the
National Conference of Democratic Mayors, the National Conference of
Republican Mayors, and Municipal Elected officials, just to name a few.
Most important, though, let us focus on the supporters who matter the
most, the honest citizens who resent being made victims of crime; the
mothers who want to save their boys from gangs; the communities, large
cities and rural towns, that want to preserve a quality of life; and
the people who want to reclaim the domestic tranquility that the
Constitution says is our job to protect.
Why does this bill have so much support? First and foremost this bill
will deploy an additional 100,000 police officers on the streets of our
cities and towns, exactly where they are needed the most. Police
officers hired under the bill will be trained in community policing, a
new idea that really is nothing more than the old-fashioned beat cop
that existed in the days when my uncle first started on the police
department.
Having police walking the streets, as members of the communities,
makes all the sense in the world, and as a member of a law enforcement
family, I for one am delighted that Congress has recognized the value
of encouraging police officers to become part of the community, to walk
the streets of the neighborhoods, and to get to know the residents.
Again, simple common sense tells us that the cop on the beat in the
neighborhood decreases the likelihood that a crime will be committed in
that neighborhood. The addition of 100,000 community police represents
a real opportunity not just to make more arrests and prosecute more
offenders. It offers a chance for law enforcement agencies throughout
the Nation to respond proactively to help deter crime before there is a
need for arrest or prosecution.
In my State of Illinois, there should be somewhere in the
neighborhood of 2,000 new police added to the police that are already
in place. That will be in additional support to the big cities as well
as the small towns that have seen a rise in violent criminal activity.
But this bill will not just send out more police officers. It also
provides the funds necessary to give States and local law enforcement
agencies the tools to do their jobs. The bill provides funds for the
Edward Byrne Formula Grant Program to assist State efforts in fighting
drugs. It provides money for fighting crime and drug trafficking in
rural areas. It provides money to assist States in administering the
Brady law, a law that has already proved successful in keeping guns out
of the hands of those who should not have them. It provides funds for
States to acquire the DNA labs and or technologies in carrying out the
fight against crime. And, it provides funds to State courts,
prosecutors, and public defenders to assist in the administration of
justice.
This bill provides for new death penalty offenses, contains a three-
strikes-and-you-are-out provision for repeat violent offenders,
contains discretionary authority to try juveniles aged 13 and above as
adults, gives the States $9.9 billion to provide boot camps to house
hardened criminals.
This bill is very tough on crime. It is, of course, the very
provisions I have just cited that made the bill subject to some of the
criticism. The bill is too tough, some opponents say. It focuses solely
on locking people up once they have committed a crime, but does little
to prevent a crime from occurring.
The fact of the matter is this bill achieves a balance of punishment,
on the one hand, and prevention, on the other. I for one would never
support a bill that focused solely on punishment, but that is not the
bill we are considering. This bill is a recognition of the fact that we
must do both.
The funding in the bill, frankly, is slanted heavily in favor of the
punishment side of the equation. Seventy-seven percent of the money in
here is for after-the-fact law enforcement, for police, punishment, and
prisons. But 23 percent of the funding is for prevention, and I believe
that represents a sea change and step forward in putting together a
collective, cooperative approach that will begin to tackle violent
crime and help us to reclaim our communities.
Mr. President, if we only concentrate on punishing crime we will
never be able to build enough jails and boot camps and prisons to hold
all the people that find their way into criminal activity. We already
in this country have the highest per capita prison population in the
world, yet that has not made our communities any safer. And there is
nothing to suggest that the trend is changing.
I would point out to my colleagues and anyone listening that simply
locking people up is an awfully expensive way to approach the issue.
The taxpayers pay on average $25,000 a year for every person that we
put into a jail cell.
It seems to me, and it seems I think to the authors of this bill,
that we can do a little bit better to diminish the pipeline to prisons.
We can do better to give people an opportunity, an option that will
steer them away from criminal activity and save us all the tremendous
cost of victimization that we are currently experiencing.
We particularly need to give young people a chance, Mr. President. As
President Clinton has stated so eloquently, if we want people to say no
to crime, to drugs, and to violence, we must give them something to say
yes to.
This crime bill does that, by authorizing money to fund drug
education, summer recreation programs, and employment initiatives,
programs that will give young people an opportunity to find good jobs
and lead productive lives and stay away from the lure of the easy
dollar and criminal activity.
This bill will fund programs to allow schools to remain open in the
afternoons and evenings, so young people will have an alternative to
hanging out on the street corners. And it will fund local crime
prevention block grants, which will allow local governments to provide
numerous crime prevention programs ranging from gang resistance
education, Boys and Girls Clubs, supervised visitation centers for
children removed from abusive homes and, yes, even the now-famous
midnight basketball program. This bill recognizes the value of crime
prevention.
Mr. President, I was the original sponsor here in the Senate of the
Midnight Basketball League Training and Partnership Act of 1993. As one
who has observed firsthand the benefits that midnight basketball
leagues have provided not just in my hometown of Chicago, but in 40
other cities across the Nation, I would like to take a few moments to
speak about why it is not only appropriate, but also necessary, that
funds for midnight basketball be included in comprehensive crime
legislation.
The midnight sports programs are much more than just fun and games. I
want to congratulate the media for the articles and the stories on this
issue that have pointed that fact out. This is not just about
recreation. This is not about basketball. In fact, if anything, the
basketball aspect of midnight basketball is probably the least
important. If anything, basketball becomes the hook by which we attract
young people and give them an alternative to the streets, an
alternative to the gangs and a little alternative to destructive
activities.
Midnight basketball leagues promote youth development by forming
private-public partnerships with local companies and with the police.
In Chicago, private sponsors have not only contributed funds to help
finance the leagues and the teams, they have also helped midnight
basketball leagues design educational and job-related workshops which
league players are required to attend after the games. Consequently,
these partnerships have provided adolescents with important adult
mentors and role models and also demonstrated themselves in helping
prevent crime, by providing adolescents with opportunities to play
basketball during the hours when most crimes are committed, from 10
p.m. to 2 a.m in the morning.
Midnight basketball leagues have also successfully assigned rival
gang members to the same teams, affecting truces both on and off the
court. They have been successful everywhere they have been tried. They
have kept down crime. They have given people something to say yes to.
They have been an exercise that has more than returned the investment
that we are called on in this legislation to make.
And so, the based on the experience in Chicago, I am proud to say
that many of the midnight basketball league players have recently
completed their GED requirement--in other words, received their high
school diploma--and none of them, Mr. President, were in trouble with
the law during the 3 years that this program was evaluated.
That, it seems to me, Mr. President, is well worth the effort. It
goes directly to the point that we do better making investments in
young people, giving them something to say yes to, providing them
alternatives to the gangs and to the crimes, than with simply locking
them up.
For my colleagues who have complained about the pork-barrel spending
and the wasted dollars used to fund midnight basketball and other
prevention initiatives, I would ask them to consider this. In Chicago,
midnight basketball leagues have been able to serve 80 youngsters a
year at the cost of about $85,000. On the other hand, it cost
approximately $20,000 to incarcerate a juvenile for 1 year. And those
are strictly the incarceration costs, Mr. President. That does not
include what we spend to hire the police to make the arrests, to
provide a prosecutor, a court guardian, a judge to hear the case, money
for restitution for the victims, et cetera, et cetera. So it seems to
me we have a choice. We can choose to spend that money, that $85,000 on
80 youngsters and give them something to say yes to, or we can spend
$85,000 on four youngsters to lock them up and throw away the key.
For those in this Chamber who do not live in communities where
midnight basketball programs have been run, it may seem like a small
thing to do. But I can assure you it makes a huge difference in the
lives of young people who have little opportunity. It can make a real
difference to young men and women who have the potential to make
significant contributions to our society, but ultimately lack the
opportunity to make those contributions.
So I ask my colleagues to come and examine these programs. And I
would be willing to organize a tour, while I have one of my colleagues
on floor who no doubt is a better basketball player than I am, who just
indicated he might be interested in doing that. But I would very much
like to offer to take my colleagues to see my reality, to see what it
is like in the cities and to talk to these young people, to see how
desperately they want to avoid the lure of the people of the gangs and
the lure of the people of the streets and they want to do the right
thing. They just do not have the opportunity.
We can provide them with that opportunity, Mr. President, and this
crime bill is a vehicle in which we can do that. I hope that we will
not miss this chance to do so.
This summer I had occasion to visit the Robert Taylor Homes with the
President of the United States. It was really stunning, because I think
that many times, as we talk about these issues, there is almost a
disconnect. Some of my colleagues do not necessarily know what urban
communities are like, there is a disconnect between the realities they
see and what actually goes on, particularly in some of the inner city
communities.
The Robert Taylor Homes are not far from where I grew up. In fact, I
had an occasion just yesterday to drop off a friend who lives there and
who is doing her level best to raise her children and to keep them
alive in a community in which she has to walk her children to school
for fear of them being shot. I guess the feeling is that she will take
the bullet instead of them.
In the Robert Taylor Homes, there is an 89-percent poverty rate. The
median family income is $5,400, and unemployment there averages 60
percent. Only 32 percent of the adults have more than a high school
education, and 45 percent of the residents are under the age of 14.
When this mix is aggravated by drugs and guns and overcrowding, it is
not hard to see why these young people might turn to a life of crime.
That is not to excuse their conduct. In fact, there is no excuse for
it. We have to be clear that we insist and demand on individual
responsibility for what one does.
But, at the same time, as President Clinton again stated, we have to
give these young people something to say yes to. We have to provide
them with some alternatives. And, thanks to midnight basketball, the
answer to the question, ``What else can I do?'' is no longer
``Nothing.''
This is a program that gives them an alternative to the streets, that
helps them graduate from school and to find a job.
And in the absence of investment, Mr. President, in other
alternatives, it seems to me that this is a small contribution for us
to make.
I hope that this debate recognizes, as this bill recognizes, that
prevention and programs like midnight basketball have a positive
effect, that the Members of this body will see their way clear to
supporting this conference report.
Mr. President, this conference report also authorized funds for
something called the family unity demonstration project. This
provision, which I was proud to cosponsor, was sponsored by my senior
Senator from Illinois, Senator Simon, along with Senator Durenberger of
Minnesota. This provision will establish five demonstration projects--
four at the State level and one at the Federal level--where nonviolent
female offenders can reside with their young children. In these
centers, women can not only bond with their young children and keep
their families together, but they can receive parenting classes, drug
treatment, job training, and other educational opportunities.
By allowing nonviolent offenders to live in the community with their
children, we can help maintain more stability than if the mother and
the child were separated. This serves two very important purposes.
First, by allowing the mother to form strong bonds and attachments with
her child, we can give the mother a strong incentive to go straight,
and help make it less likely that she will become a repeat offender.
And second, we can prevent the child from being shuffled endlessly
through the foster and group home system that we all know creates so
many problem for young children.
The majority of women prisoners are nonviolent offenders, jailed for
property or drug crimes. These women can serve their time in the
community, alongside their children, without posing any risk to
society. I do not mean to say that these women should not pay for their
crimes--of course they should. But I believe this will give us an
opportunity to provide a win-win situation, where the children are not
made victims because of the error of their parents.
And the crime bill also contains what I consider to be one of the
most important preventative programs ever to be passed by this
Congress, the landmark Violence Against Women Act. Passage of this bill
will, for the first time, put the U.S. Congress on record in support of
the fact that violence against women is just that--violence.
By now, Mr. President, we have become all too familiar with the
frightening statistics on crimes against women. The fact that the rape
rate has risen four times as fast as the total crime rate; that one in
every three women will be the victim of a rape during her lifetime; or
that between 3 and 4 million women are abused in the United States each
year.
Yet we also know that despite the high rate of crimes against women,
rape and domestic assaults often go unreported. Women are afraid to
turn to the justice system for help, fearing that they will be
assaulted a second time by a system that blames the victim. All too
often, they are correct. Who would believe, in this day and age, that a
judge could issue a light sentence to a rapist by asserting that the
victim, ``ended up enjoying [herself]?'' Who would believe that the
police could refuse to arrest an abusive husband because his abuse is a
``family issue?'' But day after day, in courtrooms and police stations
throughout the country, such callous and insensitive attitudes prevail.
This legislation gives long-overdue recognition to a disturbing
reality. And that is, while crime affects all Americans, it affects
women in more insidious ways.
Women who are the victims of rape are nearly nine times as likely as
nonvictims to attempt suicide, and are twice as likely to experience
serious depression. Rape and sexual assault affect even women who are
not victims. Just ask the millions of women who have altered their
patterns of behavior to avoid being alone on the street at night for
fear of being attacked.
This bill will help ensure women are once again free to walk the
streets alone at night if they so choose. It will also help assure
those women who are assaulted, despite our best efforts to prevent
that, will feel free to turn to the justice system without the fear of
being victimized a second time. In short, the Violence Against Women
Act will help create a more responsive justice system for our mothers,
our sisters, our daughters, and our friends. I applaud Senator Biden
for his leadership in introducing the Violence Against Women Act, and
for including it in this legislation.
Finally, this bill signals our intent to get serious about the gun
violence that is plaguing our streets. The crime bill contains a
provision to ban the manufacture and sale of 19 deadly semiautomatic
assault weapons. I was proud to stand with my colleague from
California, Senator Feinstein, as a cosponsor of this amendment, for if
any provision is essential to securing our domestic tranquility, it is
a ban on assault weapons. I would like to take a moment to discuss what
this ban on assault weapons does and doesn't do.
This amendment in no way infringes on the right of legitimate hunters
and sportsmen. In fact, it specifically exempts, by name, more than 650
rifles, and it also provides a set of functional characteristics to
protect their successors.
What this amendment bans are guns that are designed solely to spray
large groups of people with gunfire in a short period of time--guns
that are designed not to fire precisely, but to fire quickly.
Semiautomatic assault weapons are the weapons of choice for gang
members, terrorists, assassins, drug kingpins, grievance killers, and
drive-by shooters. These guns have no other purpose but to kill as many
human beings as possible as quickly as possible. Hunters have nothing
to fear from this bill, unless of course they plan to hunt humans.
The cynical efforts of gun control opponents to derail the crime bill
because it contains an assault weapons ban must fail for one reason,
and for one reason only: The American public wants an assault weapons
ban. The voices of the American public have prevailed over the cries of
the special interests, and the crime bill is a stronger bill as a
result.
Senator Biden spoke earlier about the fact that a great deal of the
effort being expended to filibuster or derail this legislation by
procedural maneuvering is a direct result of the assault weapons ban. I
think that is really unfortunate, Mr. President, because I am one who
supports the second amendment, who understands and is sensitive to the
concerns of legitimate hunters and honest people who want to have
weapons. But certainly no legitimate hunter needs to have an assault
weapon as part of a private arsenal. And, certainly, as I have stated
previously, given what we have seen time and time again, that assault
weapons are the guns of choice for gang members, drug dealers and
drive-by shooters, for people who just want to kill other people, our
duty to ensure the domestic tranquility requires we pass an assault
weapons ban.
I mentioned earlier my visit to the Robert Taylor Homes with the
President. We went into a police facility located in the housing
development, and saw stacks upon stacks upon stacks of assault weapons
which clearly were not being used for any legitimate purpose. These
weapons clearly were not being used by anyone who wanted to hunt, and
certainly were not being used to protect anyone's security in their
home. They were seized from gangbangers and other young people who were
on the streets terrorizing the honest citizens who live in the Robert
Taylor Homes.
Another critical step in the controlling of gun violence, Mr.
President, is getting the guns out of the hands of the 17-year-olds,
the 16-year-olds, and yes, even our 12- and 13-year-olds. The fact of
the matter is that, today, our Nation's schools are looking less and
less like halls of learning and more and more like armed camps. We
cannot expect our children to thrive in those kinds of environments. I
am proud to have been a cosponsor of the amendment to the crime bill,
offered by Senator Kohl, to ban the transfer or possession of a handgun
by a minor.
It is almost stunning--in fact people are very often surprised when I
tell them--that it is not currently illegal under Federal law for a
minor to possess a handgun or for an adult to give a handgun to a
minor.
While I do not believe a ban on hand-gun possession by minors will
solve all the problems associated with juvenile violence, I do believe
this amendment--along with the provisions already in the crime bill--
can continue to make a difference in combating that problem. I cannot
imagine--getting back again to the second amendment--I cannot imagine
that the founders of our great country intended to grant children
unlimited, unsupervised access to the gun of their choice.
My praise for this bill does not mean I believe it is a perfect piece
of legislation. I do not know that there is such a thing as a perfect
piece of legislation precisely because the process is intended to
function, is designed to function, as a process of compromise and give-
and-take. We pass the best bills we can, and then we improve them over
time.
As a long time opponent of the death penalty I, frankly, do not
support the expansion of the death penalty to over 60 crimes in this
bill. And, given the overwhelming evidence--and I have spoken to this
on this floor more times than I like to think about--but given the
overwhelming evidence of discrimination in the application of the death
penalty--particularly in the Federal criminal justice system--I regret
that the Racial Justice Act was not included in this crime bill. We
know that, under the Federal death penalty adopted in 1988 for drug
kingpins, a sentence of death has been sought against 36 defendants.
Four of those defendants have been white, 4 have been Hispanic, and
28--77 percent--have been black. This despite the fact that 75 percent
of defendants charged under that same law have been white.
We also know, because the General Accounting Office has told us based
on their evaluation of 28 studies on the effect of race in capital
sentencing, that there exists, and I quote, ``a pattern of evidence
indicating racial disparities in the charging, sentencing, and
imposition of the death penalty.'' So I deeply regret that my
colleagues in this body did not see the need to accord to those charged
with death the same rights as those denied an apartment or fired from a
job--the right to use statistics to prove their discrimination claim.
The fact the Racial Justice Act did not receive the support of this
body is, in my opinion, regrettable. But President Clinton has pledged
that he, along with Attorney General Reno and other supporters of the
Racial Justice Act, will work together to see to that the death penalty
under the Federal justice system will be administered in a non-
discriminatory, fair, manner. That was the only point that the Racial
Justice Act intended to address--that there be some fairness in the
application of the law, and that the death penalty be applied based on
what a person has done, not who that person is.
I am also disappointed the conference committee chose not to adopt an
amendment that I had offered to the crime bill--that passed the Senate
with an overwhelming 64 votes--mandating that juveniles who commit
serious violent crimes with a firearm be prosecuted as adults. Instead,
the conference committee chose to make such prosecutions discretionary.
I am certainly pleased that the conference committee recognized that
we can no longer afford to indulge the fiction that young teenagers are
incapable of appreciating the seriousness of their actions when they
kill or rob or maim someone with a gun. However, I believe the
discretionary nature of this provision will function much the way
similar provisions in State courts have, with minority youth being
disproportionately more likely to be tried as adults than nonminority
juvenile offenders. Eliminating the discretion would have eliminated
the potential for discrimination in the treatment of juvenile
offenders.
But I do not expect to agree with each and every provision in a bill
as large and as comprehensive as this one. For me, the decision whether
or not to support this bill was not predicated on any one particular
provision. Instead, the question was whether or not the bill as a whole
was a good one, one that will make Americans feel safer on our streets,
in our schools, and in our homes.
In closing, I want to commend Senator Biden for all the work he has
put into this bill and, frankly, for his patience in guiding it not
only through this body, but through the conference committee and
through the House of Representatives as well. If anything, the fact
that we have a crime bill at all is due in large part to the work of
the Senator from Delaware, and I commend him on his tenacity. The fact
that it has taken 6 years is probably to be expected, given the kind of
emotion that attaches to these issues.
I think the most important thing we have done here is to begin to
take positive steps to fulfill our constitutional obligation to ensure
domestic tranquility--to begin to give the people out there some hope
that the Congress and the Senate and the House are not unmindful of
what is going on out in the real world, of what is going on in the
streets; that we really are committed to providing honest citizens with
the security to which they are entitled. No community of people should
be victimized or should have to lose their quality of life because of
the activities of a few violent criminals.
This crime bill goes a long way, I believe, in helping us to address
this issue. It will not be a panacea. It will not solve crime. You will
not see crime go away the day after this bill is signed into law.
But it certainly will give us the tools with which to begin to
address an issue that has just gotten worse and worse over time. We
will have some tools with which to begin to reclaim our streets. We
will have some tools with which to begin to give people the notion that
we in Congress are serious about our responsibilities and we are going
to try to help them get back the communities in which they live. We are
going to begin to try to make the United States a safe place in which
to live again.
Again, I encourage my colleagues to pass this legislation, not to
allow it to continue to be wrapped up in partisan politics. This is not
a victory for President Clinton or victory for the House or victory for
the Senate. Instead, it will be a victory for the American people when
the crime bill is signed into law.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
____________________