[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 122 (Tuesday, August 23, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 23, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
   VIOLENT CRIME CONTROL AND LAW ENFORCEMENT ACT OF 1994--CONFERENCE 
                                 REPORT

  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senate now resumes consideration of 
the conference report accompanying H.R. 3355, which the clerk will 
report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (H.R. 3355) to amend the Omnibus Crime Control and 
     Safe Streets Act of 1968 to allow grants to increase police 
     presence, to expand and improve cooperative efforts between 
     law enforcement agencies and members of the community to 
     address crime and disorder problems, and otherwise to enhance 
     public safety.

  The Senate resumed consideration of the conference report.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, further proceedings 
will be waived.
  The Senator from Wisconsin, [Mr. Feingold] is recognized.
  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I rise today to express my opposition to 
the conference report to the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement 
Act of 1994. Let there be no doubt about the issue or my feelings about 
this subject: Crime, especially violent crime, has reached a level in 
this country that is extremely intolerable. That is agreed upon by 
every Member of this distinguished body.
  Where some of us disagree, however, is about what we, the U.S. 
Congress, can and should appropriately do about it.
  I think that at least one fact has escaped the crime bill debates 
that have taken place in Congress, and that fact is that the architects 
of our Nation purposely did not establish a national police force and 
largely left law enforcement as a State and local responsibility. This 
important aspect of our Federal system, it seems to me, has been lost 
in a sea of rhetoric and political sound bites.
  Historically, the Federal role has been to provide financial and 
technical assistance to the State and local law enforcement agencies 
that are charged with combating the overwhelming majority of street 
crime. We then charged the FBI and the DEA with jurisdiction over 
highly organized criminal activity and crime involving a substantial 
interstate nexus; for example, extensive narcotics trade.
  However, some Members of this body are no longer committed to this 
aspect of federalism and local control. They apparently would have us 
federalize almost every crime that has made a headline anywhere in our 
Nation. They also propose to override the discretion of our Nation's 
Federal judges by slapping a mandatory minimum sentence down for each 
offense. Although I recognize I am part of what is, at least for now, a 
minority on this subject, I, for one, subscribe to the view that 
violent street crime, the kind of crime that our constituents are 
worried about, is still primarily a State and local concern, best left 
in the hands of local elected and other policymakers and best dealt 
with by State and local law enforcement officers.
  In my opinion, the most appropriate Federal role is to provide 
assistance to the law enforcement personnel who serve on the frontlines 
and who at least, under current law, actually handle over 95 percent of 
all crimes committed. This type of valuable Federal support that we can 
and should give is exemplified through proven effective programs such 
as the Edward Byrne Memorial State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance 
Grant Program. That program provides State and local law enforcement 
agencies funds to conduct antidrug operations and prevention efforts, 
such as the rather successful DARE initiatives. This is the type of 
response which this body should support and promote.
  I was, therefore, encouraged by some things I have seen in the bill. 
I was encouraged to see that at least a portion of the trust fund money 
is directed toward the funding of this proven crime fighting program, 
although I feel this program merited more than the share it was 
allotted.
  This bill actually provides less than half of the Byrne grant funding 
level on an annual basis over the entire duration of the trust fund. I 
hope that there are plans to provide this additional funding.
  I am also encouraged to see in the bill that $245 million has been 
allotted for rural anticrime and drug efforts, especially in light of 
the fact that I do not feel the $8.8 billion community policing effort 
will provide as much assistance to the rural portions of our country as 
it will to the larger urban areas.
  In addition, the $250 million provided for the hiring of additional 
FBI agents will help crime-control measures, and the $150 million 
provided for the hiring of additional DEA agents will provide 
meaningful assistance as well.
  As I had the chance to say on this floor during last year's debate on 
the bill, the assistance of DEA agents in the northern portion of 
Wisconsin, in particular, will be extremely beneficial to State and 
local law enforcement antidrug efforts, and I can assure you, Mr. 
President, that their presence would be welcomed with open arms, to say 
the least.
  I was also pleased to see that at least a majority of the conferees 
were sensible enough to drop the provision added to the Senate bill 
that seemingly would have federalized almost every serious crime 
committed with a gun. This shortsighted proposal would not only have 
been an unwarranted intrusion into State and local decisionmaking, but 
could have placed an already stressed Federal court system and thinly 
stretched law enforcement community into what can only be described as 
system overload.
  The adoption by the conferees of the House proposal to grant judges 
increased flexibility in the application of mandatory minimum sentences 
to nonviolent first-time offenders could also be extremely useful, 
given the growing need to reserve space for those actually convicted of 
violent crime who pose a threat to our communities.
  Even the most conservative estimates from the Justice Department show 
that there are tens of thousands of low-level, first-time, nonviolent 
drug offenders serving, on average, over 5 years of Federal prison 
time, costing approximately $20,000 per year to house.
  Mr. President, I was glad to see the conference report provides, and 
specifically sets aside, funds to provide alternative punishments for 
these types of offenders and, hopefully, we will revisit this issue in 
the future and either do away with these rigid sentencing requirements 
or provide for even more sentencing flexibility in order to save 
Federal funds and, more importantly, Mr. President, to reserve prison 
space for the truly dangerous.
  Most unfortunately, there are still many measures contained in this 
crime bill which sound tough but, in reality, will do little to prevent 
crime.
  I am troubled, for example, by provisions such as the hate crime 
sentencing enhancement provision which may satisfy our need to express 
revulsion toward these deeply offensive crimes, but at a cost of 
chilling fundamental protections relating to freedom of expression, 
even the most offensive and hateful expression.
  Mr. President, one of my two major problems with this bill is the 
impact it will have on the further federalization of the response to 
crime control. For instance, what will happen 6 years down the road 
when the trust fund money dries up? There have already been substantial 
rumblings that the downsizing of the Federal work force will not 
provide enough savings to fund a good portion of the programs 
envisioned by this bill.
  During the debate in the Senate, I supported the amendment crafted by 
the Presiding Officer which provided the funding mechanism for the 
crime bill, since I felt it was important that we do send financial 
assistance to State and local law enforcement crime control efforts. 
However, we have all heard that there are questions of whether or not 
State and municipal budgets will actually have the financial 
wherewithal to maintain their respective share of the financing of some 
of the initiatives, such as the community policing program. Under the 
community policing program, the funding grants will be reduced over 5 
years until the State and local government will ultimately be forced to 
assume the full cost.
  Mr. President, I ask, will we have to create another $30 billion 
trust fund in order to respond to the next crime wave? I am not sure 
there will be another 250,000 Federal jobs to eliminate, and our 
Nation's national debt does not leave us with much funding flexibility 
for the future.
  It is my hope that the multitude of crime prevention initiatives 
contained in this bill will have a significant impact on crime 
reduction. Placing an additional 100,000 police officers on our 
Nation's streets, a 20-percent increase over current numbers, and 
actually engaging them in community policing activities, may result in 
a measure of success at some level. But, again, what happens when the 
funding runs out and some of the local governments cannot maintain the 
funding?
  And what happens if violent crime increases? Any criminologist will 
tell you that the best indicator of future crime rates will be driven 
by demographics, since young males tend to commit the vast majority of 
crimes. As their numbers climb, so most likely will crime rates. A 
major concern of mine is how this body will react to further increases 
in the rate of crime.
  This bill already ties the hands of States that need prison 
construction funds. It reserves 50 percent of those funds to States, 
only those States that adopt the so-called truth-in-sentencing law. 
Will the next crime bill further federalize the crime issue? I am 
afraid, Mr. President, we will, since crime is just too tempting an 
issue for many not to politicize and, therefore, the further 
federalization of crime, including street crime, will become highly 
probable.
  We have already witnessed the push for innovative, yet misguided, 
ways in which to show that we are getting tough on crime, as evidenced 
by the effort to federalize crimes involving guns. There are many 
examples that still remain in this bill of federalization of crimes 
that trouble me, not that they should not be punished, but I think they 
should be punished at the State and local level. For example, the 
creation of a new automobile decal crime. If you remove a decal from a 
car, that becomes a Federal crime. And even the federalization of 
drive-by shootings. A drive-by shooting is not inherently an interstate 
act. Who is to say that State and local officials are not capable of 
handling that kind of incident as they always have in the past?

  What will be next? Perhaps we have already forced upon cash-starved 
State and local governments an addiction to Federal funds for law 
enforcement programs. Will the State and local governments be forced to 
succumb to further federalization efforts of a once primarily local 
issue in order to qualify for additional funding?
  In my opinion, this will only result in an unwarranted intrusion on 
State's rights, as was already suggested by the National Conference of 
State Legislators concerning the current bill.
  Mr. President, I was a State senator for 10 years in Wisconsin and 
served as vice chairman of the Wisconsin State Senate Judiciary 
Committee throughout most of those years, so maybe I listened a little 
more to the voices raised at the recent meeting of the National 
Conference of State Legislators. What they said was that they were 
troubled by the notion of the Federal Government dictating how State 
and local governments should deal with crime issues. They severely 
criticized it.
  I will read from a letter they sent on June 8, 1994. The NCSL said:

       Making Federal crimes of offenses that are already illegal 
     under State law not only raises federalism concerns, but also 
     is unnecessary and creates false public expectations of the 
     federal commitment. Federalizing gang and juvenile crimes and 
     gun offenses may have the gloss of toughness, but at base 
     such measures are marginally useful tools that contribute to 
     uncertainty in the justice system. The federal government 
     cannot afford to prosecute, and indeed has no intention of 
     prosecuting the vast number of street crimes.

  So the NCSL said.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that an article from the 
Washington Post containing some of the same negative reaction of State 
officials to this legislation that we are about to adopt be included in 
the Record, along with the June 8 letter from which I just read an 
excerpt.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, July 29, 1994]

  States Wary of Anticrime Bill--Legislators Balk at Measure's Costs, 
                              Requirements

                         (By William Claiborne)

       New Orleans, July 28.--State legislators from across the 
     country reacted warily to the anti-crime bill approved by 
     congressional negotiations today, some saying they would 
     consider opting out of the $30.2 billion package.
       The state lawmakers meeting here said the bill intrudes on 
     states' rights and passes along unacceptable costes for 
     additional police and prisons. They described the bill as an 
     emotional reaction by Congress to the public outcry over 
     violent crime, saying it ignores the long-range impact on 
     state budgets.
       ``We feel Congress is acting irresponsibly by trying to act 
     like a knight on a white horse and is cavalierly putting the 
     costs on the states,'' said Delaware state Sen. Robert T. 
     Connor (R), president of the National Conference of State 
     Legislatures.
       He predicted some states will opt out of the bill's anti-
     crime grants because of the costs that will be passed along. 
     But he said that other states battling rising violent crime 
     rates will have no choice other than to assume the new costs.
       The bill, legislators also complained, forces states to 
     conform to federal sentencing standards or lose eligibility 
     for billions of dollars in grants for prisons and other anti-
     crime measures. They said it federalizes many existing state 
     criminal statutes, leading to the potential for double 
     jeopardy, and superimposes federal law on juvenile crime 
     without establishing an adequate juvenile court system.
       ``We think we are quite capable of writing our own criminal 
     codes without the federal government telling us what we have 
     to do to get their money,'' said Idaho state Sen. Denton 
     Darrington (R), chairman of the conference's law and justice 
     committee. ``This will be a drain on our budgets because 
     we'll have to provide prison space, policemen and additional 
     prosecutors.''
       ``The big question,'' said Florida state Rep. Elvin L. 
     Martinez (D), ``is who ultimately is going to support the 
     operating costs of these new prisons and these policemen?''
       Although the anti-crime bill provides funds for 100,000 
     more police and money for new prisons to alleviate 
     overcrowding, the grants gradually will be reduced over five 
     years until the states assume the full cost.
       Some legislators suggested that instead of burdening the 
     states with new prison costs, the federal government should 
     build the proposed regional prisons and lease space to states 
     as cells become overcrowded as a result of more police, 
     tougher sentencing and other anti-crime measures.
       Apart from the costs, what appears to rankle legislators 
     most about the anti-crime bill is that states must adopt 
     within three years stringent requirements forcing prisoners 
     to serve at least 85 percent of their sentences.
       ``We've had 100 percent truth-in-sentencing since 1982. We 
     don't need Congress telling us what we have to do in this 
     area if we're going to be eligible for their money,'' said 
     Donna Sytek (R), chairman of the Corrections and Criminal 
     Justice Committee of the New Hampshire House of 
     Representatives.
       Alabama state Rep. Michael Box (D) said, ``The idea of the 
     federal government trying to determine on a national scale 
     how crime and punishment should be dealt with on a state 
     level because it makes some congressmen feel good is 
     repugnant to us. We'll take a very close look at this before 
     we buy into it.''
                                  ____

                                      National Conference of State


                                                 Legislatures,

                                     Washington, DC, June 8, 1994.
     Hon. Joseph Biden,
     U.S. Senate, Chair, Judiciary Committee, Dirksen Senate 
         Office Building, Washington, DC.
       Dear Chairman Biden: I am writing on behalf of the National 
     Conference of State Legislatures to urge rethinking of House 
     and Senate versions of H.R. 3355, the crime bills currently 
     awaiting the attention of the conference committee. Criminal 
     justice is principally a matter for state and local 
     government, yet significant elements of each bill ignore that 
     principle. Therefore, while you seek to reconcile these bills 
     with each other, consider ways that you can also reconcile 
     them with principles of federalism .
       NCSL's most serious concern with the crime bills, and 
     especially the Senate bill, relates to sentencing mandates, 
     which are imposed without consideration of the impact on 
     state prison populations and the costs associated with 
     operation of facilities.
       A three-fold increase in the incarcerated population in the 
     states over the past decade should reassure Congress that 
     states are serious about taking criminals off the streets. In 
     January 1994, the entire prison system of nine states was 
     under a court order or consent decree related to crowding or 
     conditions of confinement. Thirty-three other states had 
     major institutions under court order or consent decree. And, 
     for several years over the past decade, state spending for 
     corrections increased at twice the rate of state general fund 
     expenditures.
       Rather than offering aid to states already facing federal 
     court mandates, the crime bills propose that states adopt 
     laws that would increase their prison populations even 
     further before becoming eligible for federal assistance. To 
     be helpful and effective, grants must be much more flexible. 
     That way states can match the funds to their particular 
     needs.
       Making federal crimes of offenses that are already illegal 
     under state law not only raises federalism concerns, but also 
     is unnecessary and creates false public expectations of the 
     federal commitment. Federalizing gang and juvenile crimes and 
     gun offenses may have the gloss of toughness, but at base, 
     such measures are marginally useful tools that contribute to 
     uncertainty in the justice system. The federal government 
     cannot afford to prosecute, and indeed has no intention of 
     prosecuting the vast number of street crimes.
       We are not rejecting your participation in a partnership in 
     criminal justice. Rather, we are urging that national policy 
     on crime respect the state role in the justice system. NCSL 
     advocates creation of flexible grants that encourage states 
     to work with local governments to craft strategies targeted 
     to the greatest need in each community's fight against crime. 
     This insures the most prudent expenditure of limited 
     resources. In essence, this approach would direct funds 
     through a grant program like the Edward Byrne Memorial and 
     add as options within that program the myriad of new programs 
     being proposed in the crime legislation--from prevention to 
     prisons to police. This suggestion conforms to the sensible 
     recommendation of the National Performance Review.
       Our citizens demand and deserve strong and effective 
     criminal justice. As state legislators, we are committed to 
     that end and welcome a constructive contribution from the 
     national government. If, however, the bill reported from the 
     conferen ce is not more sensitive to intergovernmental 
     relations, we may be forced to oppose it.
       Thank you for your consideration.
           Sincerely,
                                                Denton Darrington,
         Chair, Judiciary Committee, Idaho Senate, Chair, NCSL Law 
           and Justice Committee.

  Mr. FEINGOLD. I thank the Chair.
  So it is truly ironic, Mr. President, when so many people are saying 
in the phone calls from back home that the Federal Government is not 
capable of handling health care reform that we are enacting a bill 
which so dramatically shifts responsibility for crime control to the 
Federal Government. We should instead focus on providing meaningful 
assistance to those on the front lines in the war against crime and 
resist that temptation to over-promise our constituents what we can 
really do about crime at the Federal level and what will actually work 
toward reducing crime.
  Mr. President, I now turn to my other primary objection to the 
conference report. That is that the conference report also kept intact 
the Senate's needless expansion of the Federal death penalty to cover, 
according to most estimates, as many as 60 new offenses. Last year's 
debate during the Senate deliberations over the crime bill I think 
demonstrated the inherent flaws in the implementation of the death 
penalty. As I stated during that debate, I am unequivocally opposed to 
the death penalty. In my view, the death penalty serves no purpose 
since it has no proven deterrent effect and, in my view, Mr. President, 
it only adds to a society's violence by teaching us and, most 
importantly, teaching our children that the way to deal with violence 
and murder is with more violence and death.
  An increase in the use of the death penalty will only add to the 
vicious circle of violence to which all of us are already subjected. 
The renewed death penalty is a disgusting and violent spectacle. Only 
in the last few weeks, in reading only one newspaper, there are 
accounts of various new death penalty achievements, if you will: A 
triple execution in one night in Arkansas--this was a modern record for 
this revolting display; an article in the New York Times from July 31 
entitled, ``As executions mount so do infamous last words.'' Now we 
have a nice, long, ghoulish accounting of the last words of those who 
were being executed, and perhaps most absurdly an account of a 
gentleman who is trying to eat his way off of death row. He is trying 
to gain enough weight so that he can argue that when he is hanged, he 
will be decapitated and therefore somehow violate the cruel and unusual 
provisions of the eighth amendment.
  Mr. President, I find it hard to understand in a society that is 
talking about the impact on kids of violent video games how these 
things do not have if not the same or greater impact of encouraging a 
culture of violence.
  I admire very much the courage of those Senators in this body who 
have brought up the issue of the video games and the violence that they 
cause. Let me just briefly read from the comments of two of them. One 
was the Senator from Connecticut [Senator Lieberman], who said on 
December 9:

       Every day, the news brings more and more images of random 
     violence, torture, sexual abuse and mayhem right into our 
     living rooms. It seems that violent images permeate more and 
     more aspects of our lives.

  Mr. President, I suggest that the death penalty is a tremendous 
example of promoting more and more violent images into our lives. Here 
are some of the excellent words of my senior Senator from Wisconsin, 
Herb Kohl, who also said on December 9, of the video games:

       At the very least, this game sends a tremendously reckless 
     message and turns any effort to discourage youth violence 
     completely on its head. We need to make every effort to 
     reduce this culture of carnage, and we need to make that 
     effort now.

  And then the senior Senator from Wisconsin said:

       There should be no dispute that the pervasive images of 
     murder, mutilation and mayhem encourage kids to view violent 
     activity as a normal part of life and that interactive video 
     violence desensitizes children to the real thing.

  My point, Mr. President, is that if we are serious about the 
desensitizing that video games cause, what about kids watching the TV 
and hearing about that triple execution in Arkansas. Maybe there will 
be a new video game, ``Triple Execution in Arkansas.'' It encourages a 
culture of carnage; it encourages a culture of violence, and it is 
wrong.
  Moreover, Mr. President, the expansion of the death penalty also 
increases the potential for mistakes and ultimately the execution of 
innocent individuals.
  The death penalty is carried out in a discriminatory fashion as well. 
Recent statistics have provided yet another round of evidence showing 
that the ultimate penalty is carried out in a discriminatory manner. 
Under the so-called drug kingpin law adopted in 1988, the death penalty 
has been sought against 36 defendants, of whom 4 have been white, 4 
Hispanic, and 28 black, meaning that 77 percent of the cases in which 
the death penalty has been sought have involved black defendants. This 
is despite the fact that 75 percent of the defendants charged under the 
same statute have been white.
  Despite the disturbing new evidence at the Federal level, the Racial 
Justice Act provision adopted in the House crime bill which would have 
allowed a defendant to prove discrimination in the application of the 
death penalty in his or her individual case by statistical evidence 
showing a pattern of racially influenced death sentences in factually 
similar cases was vehemently opposed by some, and was ultimately 
dropped from the conference report in order to ensure the bill's final 
passage.
  I regret that loss in the conference activity.
  This pointless expansion of the death penalty and opposition to the 
means by which to at least ensure a more fair system to administer it 
comes at a time, in fact in the same year, in which two former Supreme 
Court Justices who helped shape our Nation's modern death penalty 
apparatus, have publicly reversed their longstanding support of capital 
punishment.
  First, Justice Harry A. Blackmun, in a stinging opinion in the 
Callins versus Collins decision before he retired, denounced our system 
of capital punishment by saying this:

       From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the 
     machinery of death. For more than 20 years, I have 
     endeavored--indeed, I have struggled--along with the majority 
     of this Court, to develop procedural and substantive rules 
     that would lend more than the mere appearance of fairness to 
     the death penalty endeavor. Rather than continue to coddle 
     the Court's delusion that the desired level of fairness has 
     been achieved and the need for regulation eviscerated, I feel 
     morally and intellectually obligated simply to concede that 
     the death penalty experiment has failed.

  Justice Blackmun continued:

       It is virtually self-evident to me now that no combination 
     of procedural rules or substantive regulations ever can save 
     the death penalty from its inherent constitutional 
     deficiencies. The basic question--does the system accurately 
     and consistently determine which defendants are to die?--
     cannot be answered in the affirmative. The problem is that 
     the inevitability of factual, legal, and moral error gives us 
     a system that we know must wrongly kill some defendants, a 
     system that fails to deliver the fair, consistent, and 
     reliable sentences of death required by the Constitution.

  These were the words of Justice Blackmun in one of his last opinions. 
And just a few months later it was reported in a recent biography that 
retired Justice Lewis F. Powell, truly one of the chief architects of 
the current death penalty system, had decided since he left the Court 
that ``capital punishment should be abolished'' and that the current 
manner in which it is carried out ``brings discredit on the whole legal 
system.'' When asked during an interview conducted in 1991 if he would 
change any of his votes over his tenure, Justice Powell responded that 
he would have changed his deciding affirmative vote in McClesky versus 
Kemp, a decision which held that the 14th amendment alone does not 
allow the use of statistics to prove race discrimination in capital 
sentencing.
  These wise, retired Justices are sending us a message. In light of 
these recent declarations, it is that much more troubling that so many 
Members opposed the Racial Justice Act provision and supported the 
inclusion of such an unprecedented expansion of the death penalty.
  So to conclude, Mr. President, I have to give my tremendous 
compliments to the efforts of the chairman of this committee, Senator 
Biden, for the enormous amount of work he has done on this bill. There 
is much in it that has merit, and I was encouraged to see Senator Biden 
pledge his support during the conference deliberation that he would 
hold hearings on the issue of racial bias in the implementation of the 
death penalty and the criminal justice system as a whole.
  I look forward to seeing the results of that process and hoping we 
can come back in the 104th Congress and try to address it.
  But at this point, Mr. President, I would like to conclude by saying 
that because of the absurd extension of the death penalty with no real 
gain coming from it, and because of the greatly increased dangerous 
trend for federalization of law enforcement, I feel compelled to vote 
against the conference report.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Dorgan). Who seeks recognition?
  Mr. PRYOR addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from 
Arkansas, [Mr. Pryor].
  Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I first want to thank the Chair for 
recognizing me.
  Mr. President, I have a few comments that I would like to make about 
the pending legislation before the Senate at this time.
  First, I would like to say that throughout the history of our 
country, the American people have been united against those external 
forces which have threatened our freedoms and our liberties. But today, 
Mr. President, we address a danger I think is just as great--in fact, I 
think it is greater--and this is the danger that comes from those 
criminals and those criminal elements who live among us in our very own 
neighborhoods, in our towns, cities, and counties.
  That criminal element is a devastating and pervasive force that we 
must do everything we can in our time and generation to eradicate. 
Violence has taken a very heavy toll on this country. The senseless 
loss of our children, friends, and neighbors leaves all of us with an 
empty feeling of helplessness and fear. But the American spirit I think 
is calling us and calling us loudly and strongly to fight back and to 
fight strongly.
  Mr. President, the American people are uniting in this fight, against 
this problem of violence today. We want to do something to take back 
control of our communities from these criminals. Many are volunteering 
their time to neighborhood watch organizations, or to work with at-risk 
children. But today, we in the U.S. Senate can and must do our part. 
That time is now. That moment is today.
  The crime bill that we have before the Senate is not going to be an 
answer to all of our problems with crime. It may not stem the tide of 
crime as much as we would like it to. But, Mr. President, it is going 
to be a major step. It will be a major attempt to stem the rising tide 
of violence in America. With more police on the beat, more jails, 
tougher sentencing for the most violent criminals, our support for this 
legislation will help to put more violent criminals behind bars. But 
more police, more prisons, and more dollars in itself is not enough. We 
must also steer our children away from crime.
  This bill will provide those funds to our local communities, and in 
those local communities where they know the problems the best, they 
will begin to fight with renewed strength, and with renewed assets 
against the growing despair caused by lack of education and the absence 
of safe places for our children to play.
  Former Chief Justice Earl Warren of the U.S. Supreme Court once 
stated:

       The crime problem is in part an overdue debt that the 
     country must pay for ignoring for decades the conditions that 
     breed lawlessness.

  I am not totally sure, Mr. President, that I agree 100 percent with 
Chief Justice Warren's assessment. But I can state that part of that 
debt which the former Chief Justice was talking about, at least some of 
it, is coming due today.
  I am happy to be able to tell the people of our State of Arkansas 
that these funds will come from a reduction of 252,000 Federal 
Government jobs. In other words, eliminate 252,000 Federal Government 
jobs and plow those savings into a massive and renewed fight against 
crime and violence.
  However, this issue is more than just about dollars and cents. It is 
difficult, if not impossible, I think, to measure how much money spent 
on prevention will in turn save money on imprisoning criminals in the 
future. But I am ready to commit, and I believe my colleagues should be 
ready to commit, the necessary resources to see if we can keep today's 
young people out of these new prisons that we are going to construct 
under and as a result of this legislation.
  This approach also makes sense because it will help keep victims from 
becoming victims, and therefore will help to reduce the fear that is 
paralyzing our communities. Mr. President, there is no dollar amount 
that can quantify safety in our homes and on our streets.
  In my home State of Arkansas, Mr. President, the capital city is 
Little Rock. Recently, Little Rock was named as the country's fifth 
most violent city in America. I repeat that, and I am not proud of it. 
Little Rock, AR, has recently been named as the country's fifth most 
violent city in the Nation. It is hard for us to accept. It is 
impossible for us to explain. But it is not the statistic that bothers 
me the most. It is the fear for safety. It is the loss of freedom. It 
is the hate that violence breeds that really bothers me.
  In 1993, Mr. President, Little Rock, AR, had 38.4 murders per 100,000 
people, a higher percentage rate than New York City or Los Angeles, CA. 
Already this year, 38 murders have been committed.
  Mr. President, Little Rock is a town of less than 200,000. I 
respectfully submit it is testimony to the fact that violent crime in 
America is not just occurring in big, massive, sprawling, urban areas 
of our country.
  Most disturbing of all is the increasing occurrence of juvenile 
murders. While adult murders have remained fairly constant in our city 
and State, kids killing kids, children murdering children is exploding 
in our local neighborhoods.

  Only last February in Little Rock, on the last night of his life, 
Taboris Molden, age 15, finished a game of basketball outside his 
church on the parking lot grounds. He said good-bye to his friends and 
started to walk the few blocks back home. About a block from his home, 
a boy only a year older, 16 years of age, in a passing vehicle, leaned 
out of the car window and fired two gunshots into Taboris Molden. 
Wounded, Taboris struggled home to his family, to his mother, brothers, 
and grandmother. He collapsed on the living room floor. Four hours 
later, he died.
  The Little Rock police still cannot find a motive for this murder, 
but believe it may be gang related. A few days after the murder, a 
rumor circulated in the boy's neighborhood that this attack was a 
gang's random act of vengeance for a shooting earlier that day a few 
blocks from the boy's home.
  This can be repeated over and over, State by State, city by city, but 
those are statistics and numbers. I hold up for you, Mr. President, and 
my colleagues to see, photos showing the actual faces of the 38 victims 
who have been murdered in Little Rock, AR, during the year 1994. This 
is Taboris Molden, who I just made reference to, a handsome 15-year-old 
who was playing basketball only a few moments before his death on the 
church grounds parking lot.
  Also, here is the picture of a very close personal friend of mine. 
His name, Andre Simon. Andre Simon was known throughout our State, and 
perhaps throughout the South, as an individual who had acquired, I 
would say, the characteristics and the abilities to be known as one of 
the finest chefs in the entire South. He had a wonderful restaurant 
named ``Andre's'' in Little Rock. One Friday night back in February, 
Andre Simon was in his restaurant visiting with his clients and his 
customers and had a full house, as usually occurred on Friday night, as 
it was a very popular place and still is, I might say. Two men walked 
in with a gun, and in front of all of the people in the restaurant, 
pulled out a gun and shot Andre Simon, murdering him without warning 
and without cause. They took, I believe, some $13 from the cash 
register and casually left the restaurant and fled.
  Mr. President, we are fighting a war in our neighborhoods that we are 
losing. Our children are losing this war. Our elderly people are losing 
this war. This country, this society is losing this war. What fate 
awaits Taboris' little brothers and the young people around them who 
are joining gangs and purchasing guns in an alarming and unprecedented 
way? It is our responsibility today to make it harder, less alluring 
for these young people to buy a gun or to join a gang, or to commit a 
crime.
  Under this legislation, gang activity would become a Federal offense 
with mandatory minimum penalties. It would allow armed offenders who 
are 13 years or older to be prosecuted as adults for Federal crimes. 
Mr. President, that is tough medicine. It would prohibit the sale of a 
handgun to a minor under 18 years of age, and it would make it illegal 
for a minor to possess a handgun, except with adult supervision in 
situations such as hunting or ranching.
  It is a tough measure. It is also our responsibility, Mr. President, 
at this moment, at this time, to provide young people with an 
opportunity to choose a lifestyle that they and their families can be 
proud of. This legislation would establish a grant program to work with 
juveniles and gang members under the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency 
Prevention Act.
  It also establishes $1 billion for ``boot camps'' for first-time 
juvenile offenders, so that young people who do make the mistake once 
will not have to go to a high-security prison with hardened criminals, 
where people are often taught a life of permanent crime.
  Mr. President, this crime bill is, I believe, a balanced and a very 
strong step to combat crime in our country. But its passage can play 
only a part of what we all must do to help solve these problems. 
Congress must further work on ways to prevent crime by reforming our 
welfare system, providing more job training, and looking at new ways to 
educate the young people of America.
  Mr. President, I strongly support the swift passage of the crime 
bill, so that we can get on with these tasks before us, so that this 
new era of crime prevention can start working immediately in our 
neighborhoods like Little Rock, like New York, and like all of the 
other communities across our great country.
  I would also like to take this time to sincerely thank Senator Biden, 
his able staff, and all of those on the committee who have worked so 
hard and so diligently to bring this important piece of legislation to 
the floor for a final vote.
  Mr. President, it is time to act.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. WELLSTONE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota [Mr. Wellstone] is 
recognized.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. First of all, let me thank the Senator from Arkansas 
for his powerful statement. When you see the pictures of innocent 
people that have been murdered in Little Rock, it translates this 
debate into personal terms. I thank the Senator for his words.
  I also would like to thank Senator Biden for a yeoman's job. What a 
difficult task he has had, and he has given his heart and soul to this. 
I saw him on MacNeil/Lehrer last night, and he was so impressive.
  Mr. President, prevention is not pork, it is crime control before the 
crime starts. Let me repeat that. Prevention is not pork, it is crime 
control before the crime starts.
  I do not know whether or not President Clinton said that the final 
product coming out of the House was an improvement over what had been 
reported out of conference committee. I heard a number of people saying 
the other night on one of the shows that the President said that. If 
so, I am in profound disagreement. I do not think cuts in programs to 
prevent young people from becoming involved in gangs is an improvement. 
I do not think cuts in job training for young people is an improvement. 
I do not think cuts in supervised visitation centers to provide a safe 
place for families with a history of violence is an improvement.
  I do not think cuts in substance abuse prevention programs is an 
improvement. I do not think cuts in assistance to delinquent and at-
risk youth is an improvement. I do not think that cuts in community 
schools, schools that young people can be at over the weekend late at 
night as an alternative is an improvement.
  Mr. President, what is interesting to me about this argument--and I 
wish there were colleagues on the floor that I could engage in debate, 
and maybe there will be a time to do that later on--about ``prevention 
is pork,'' is that the words we hear ``prevention is pork'' are never 
the words of the communities affected.
  Let us be direct and honest about this. We know where the most 
violence is. We know the communities that have to deal with this in the 
most dramatic way. And if we were to listen to those people in the 
communities that are most affected by the violence, they are saying to 
us you have to have the money in prevention. You have to put some 
resources toward making sure our young people have opportunities. But 
how interesting it is that those who call these prevention programs 
``pork'' and want to keep cutting these programs do not come from those 
communities, do not know the people in those communities, and I do not 
think asked the people in those communities at all what they think 
should be done.
  Mr. President, I can just tell you that in meeting with students--
students that come from some pretty tough background--students at the 
Work Opportunity Center in Minneapolis, which is an alternative school, 
probably about 95 percent African-American, meeting with the students 
there, many young students who are mothers at a young age and others 
who come from real difficult circumstances, all of them, all of them 
said to me: Look. You can build more prisons and you can build more 
jails, but the issue for us is jobs, opportunity. You will never stop 
this cycle of violence unless you do something that prevents it in the 
first place.
  That is the voice from the very students and young people that scares 
so much of America.
  Then I turn to the judges, the sheriffs, and the police chiefs, and I 
call them on the phone in Minnesota, and I ask them what they think. 
And they say ``yes'' to community police and ``yes'' to some other 
parts of the crime bill, but they all say, if you do not do something 
on the prevention side, if these young people do not have these 
opportunities, if we do not get serious about reducing violence at 
home, Senator, do not believe for a moment that we are going to stop 
the cycle of violence. I wish that voice was heard more.
  Prevention is not pork. It is crime control before it starts. And 
those that make that argument, I think it is easy for them to make that 
argument because all too often the people who make the argument do not 
come from or live in the communities that are most affected by all of 
this violence and all of this crime.
  Mr. President, I am not advocating that we do nothing or that truly 
dangerous, unrepentant, unsalvageable, hardened criminals not be sent 
to prison with full sentences, perhaps never to be permitted to walk 
among us again. I think there are some people who commit violent, 
egregious crimes, and they should be in prison for the rest of their 
life, not out in communities. I am also not saying that highly trained 
police, highly motivated, community-based, sensitive to the people in 
the communities, cannot make a difference. They are wanted and they are 
needed.
  But these proposals and other proposals like them may well assist us 
with the criminal of today, but they will do nothing to prevent the 
criminal of tomorrow. These proposals, even the best, the community 
police will assist with the criminal of today, but they do nothing to 
prevent the criminal of tomorrow.
  Every 5 seconds a child drops out of school in America. This is from 
the Children's Defense Fund study, 1994. Every 5 seconds a child drops 
out of a public school in the United States of America. Every 30 
seconds a baby is born into poverty. Every 2 minutes a baby is born 
with a low birthweight. Every 2 minutes a baby is born to a mother who 
had no prenatal care.
  And, by the way, low birthweight, let me tell you, having been a 
teacher for 20 years, can quite often mean that that child at birth 
will not have the same opportunity to do well in school. And not doing 
well in school and dropping out of school is highly related to crime, a 
point I want to make in a moment.
  Every 4 minutes a child is arrested for an alcohol-related crime. 
Every 7 minutes a child is arrested for selling drugs. Every 2 hours a 
child is murdered. Every 4 hours--I have said this before on the floor 
of the Senate as a father of three children now in their twenties and 
now a grandfather of two children, this figure I cannot accept--every 4 
hours a child commits suicide, takes his or her life in the United 
States of America. And every 5 minutes a child is arrested for a 
violent crime.
  Mr. President, if we do not get serious about the prevention part, we 
are not going to stop the cycle of violence. I see pictures on the TV 
news in Washington, DC, and Minnesota as well, and quite often you have 
a young person and this young person has been arrested for a violent 
crime, has murdered someone, and you see that person with no expression 
on his face, and it is terrifying to me, and I think it is terrifying 
to the vast majority of citizens in this country. I would not for a 
moment defend that kind of violence or murder. Murder is never 
legitimate. That is not my point. The question is, What in the world 
happened? Do we think infants are born that way? What happened?
  All too many young people are growing up in neighborhoods and 
communities in our country where if they bump into someone or look at 
someone the wrong way they are in trouble, where there is too much 
violence in their homes, where violence pervades every aspect of their 
life. And people who grow up in such brutal circumstances can become 
brutal. And that should not surprise any of us.
  But, Mr. President, let me address the issue of education and crime. 
This year we passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. 
Altogether about 1.8 percent of our Federal budget goes to the 
Department of Education. It was $12.35 billion for fiscal year 1995. 
That is 6 cents on the dollar of what our country spends on education, 
6 cents on the dollar. The rest comes from State and local sources. 
Compare that $12 billion to what we spent on the S&L bailout. That is 
compared to $250 billion or thereabouts for defense.
  Now, Mr. President, all these reports, including ``A Nation at 
Risk''--and I think of Jonathan Kozol's ``Salvage Inequalities: 
Children in America's Schools'' about conditions in our schools. If you 
want to know what makes a difference, all the evidence tells us there 
is a direct and positive correlation State by State between high school 
graduation and reduction of crime.
  Mr. President, what do we do by way of our investment in education? 
Let me just, as my colleagues--if you had to go someplace every day 
that you felt was dangerous where you needed to carry a knife or a gun, 
you probably would refuse to go. That is the situation in our schools. 
That is the situation in schools in the Nation's Capital and in all too 
many communities around the country. Is it any wonder that so many 
students refuse to go?
  Mr. President, could you concentrate on your work if you knew that 10 
or 15 Senators had guns in this Chamber? Would you be able to do a good 
job if you knew that 10 or 15 Senators had guns in the Chamber? Could 
you concentrate on your work if we did not have adequate heating? Could 
my colleagues concentrate on their work or would they want to come to 
the Senate if the toilets did not work, if the building was decrepit, 
if we did not have adequate supplies, if we did not have anybody to 
print our bills?
  Those are the conditions in many of the public schools in the United 
States of America. And we do not make a commitment of resources to 
education for young people, and we think that without making that 
commitment, without providing those opportunities we are going to 
reduce the cycle of violence in America? That is, from a law and order 
point of view, a very naive notion.
  Mr. President, there was an interesting study in Hennepin County by a 
county judge from my own State of Minnesota. This study found that over 
the last 2 years, there was a higher correlation between high school 
dropouts and ending up in prison, than cigarette smoking and cancer. It 
is just an interesting statistic that kind of tells a larger story--a 
higher correlation between high school dropouts and being incarcerated, 
winding up in prison, than between cigarette smoking and cancer.
  And, as I said before, States with the highest graduation rates tend 
to have the lowest rate of prison inmates per 100,000 population, and 
the converse is true.
  Mr. President, we are here to extend prison terms. We are here to 
appropriate more money for building new prisons. I ask you, is that the 
right message to be sending to young people in this country, especially 
troubled young people? ``We are willing to lock you up, but we are not 
willing to educate you.''
  Let me repeat that. ``We are willing to lock you up, but we are not 
willing to educate you.''
  Mr. President, we have a vote this afternoon. It is going to be a 
difficult vote for me and I have not yet decided how to vote. I believe 
that the cuts in the programs that were affected by the House in the 
prevention programs, as I said at the beginning, do not represent 
progress. Cutting programs for job training for young people, and 
substance-abuse programs, and all of that, that does not represent 
progress. I thought that we had a balance there.
  On the other hand, I think the community police and community 
policing is vitally important. On the other hand, the Violence Against 
Women Act and the initiatives on domestic violence are extremely 
important. And the ban on assault weapons, narrowly defined category of 
assault weapons is important. But I think the cuts in the prevention 
programs--though there still is some commitment of resources to 
prevention, which some of my colleagues want to cut--but I think the 
cuts in the prevention programs make this not nearly as balanced a 
piece of legislation as it should be.
  Mr. President, when we voted on this in the Senate, I remember asking 
Senator Byrd, was it not true that, above and beyond savings from 
reductions and retirement of Government employees, we were going to 
have to further reduce the caps of domestic spending? And Senator Byrd, 
always being the master of the process and I think having the utmost 
integrity, said, yes.
  So now I say to myself as a Senator, yes, there are good parts to 
this, but it is also true that some of the prevention programs have 
been cut in the second conference report.
  I voted for the original bill in the Senate expecting the conference 
committee to do much better on the prevention part. And that means that 
money spent on this will then come out of some of the discretionary 
domestic spending that I think is critical, absolutely critical to 
prevention.
  Again, I do not think prevention is pork. I think it is crime control 
before the crime starts. I think that is a rigorous analysis, and I 
think the evidence supports me. That is what makes this vote so 
difficult.
  But I do know this, Mr. President, that regardless of the vote, I 
just hope that Senators and Representatives will not fool themselves. I 
hope we will listen to the voice of the people most affected. I hope we 
will listen to the judges and the police chiefs and the law enforcement 
people that are down in the trenches. And I hope we will understand 
that there will not be any real national security in the United States 
of America until we match all of our rhetoric with resources and invest 
in the health and skills and intellect and character of young people, 
all young people regardless of gender and regardless of race and 
regardless of urban or rural.
  We do not do that, Mr. President. And, as long as we do not do that, 
and as long as poverty is on the rise, and as long as whole categories 
or classes or groups of young people and citizens are walled off from 
opportunity, we are naive if we believe that we can dramatically reduce 
this violence.
  Yes, let us do what we need to do to assist the victims and to make 
sure that those people that commit these crimes are punished, but let 
us do what we really need to do above and beyond that to prevent this 
violence in the first place.
  Mr. President, either we invest in young people now, all young 
people, or we will pay the interest on this later on. I would argue 
that that is the most effective way, along with tough law enforcement, 
that we can truly begin to reduce the violence and the crime in our 
country.
  I hope there will be further debate on this today. I am anxious to 
debate this pork argument, because I think it is only a slogan. But I 
think it has nothing to do with the reality of the lives of so many 
children in this country, and the reality of why we have so much 
violence in this country, and the reality of what we must do to reduce 
that violence in our Nation.
  I yield the floor
  Mr. GLENN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from Ohio 
[Mr. Glenn].
  Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I want to congratulate the Senator from 
Minnesota on his statement. It was very eloquent and indeed addresses 
an important part of the debate over the crime bill.
  Now, I would like to speak on other important issues in our debate 
over the crime bill--and some of the reasons why this bill had so much 
trouble getting through the House.
  Mr. President, these are frustrating days in Washington. They are 
frustrating for people outside of Washington also. I think that on some 
mornings here if I offered an amendment in the Senate to commemorate 
apple pie as American, we would have a coalition rise up against that 
because they prefer pumpkin or they prefer mincemeat.
  We are, all of us, getting fed up with bickering and with gridlock. I 
believe the American people want to see progress. They want to see a 
crime bill.
  Is it a Federal responsibility? Basically, it is not. Estimates vary 
all over the lot, but somewhere between 85 to 90 percent of crimes in 
America are State offenses--not Federal. But States are overwhelmed by 
crime and do not have adequate resources to deal with it.
  So the Federal Government says, ``This is a nationwide problem. Let 
us address it nationwide. We will help.''
  And we know that it is just a helping hand. It does not solve the 
whole problem. Nobody claims it does.
  Yet, there are those who want to be supercritical of even this most 
modest amount of help, saying, ``Well, it doesn't do this,'' or ``It 
doesn't do that.''
  I agree that this is not a perfect crime bill. It does not have 
everything I want. It has some things I am not all that crazy about. 
But I think, on balance, it does a good job. It reflects the sincere 
concern of those of us in Congress. We want to help.
  It is not ill considered. It is product of years of discussions, 
hundreds of hours of hearings and debate.
  The law enforcement community, those across the country who know what 
it is to be out there fighting crime on the streets have been party to 
all of these discussions and helped to craft this bill.
  So, these provisions did not just come up out of the blue. It is the 
result of the experiences that law enforcement officials have had out 
there on the streets. We learned of these things from the cops on the 
beat and the prosecutors in the courtroom. And that is why the law 
enforcement community and prosecutors are behind this bill.
  I will not read off this whole page I have here neatly typed of all 
the different law enforcement organizations that are in favor of this 
bill. But it goes across the whole gamut of all those who are concerned 
about protecting the American public from crime.
  We have a very elaborate criminal justice system in this country. We 
have detectives and police officers charged with arresting criminals 
for prosecution. And then we have a justice system. And finally we have 
a penal system, to carry out the sentences after they have been meted 
out.
  So, it is a three part system. We have those detectives and police 
officers charged with arresting criminals to be prosecuted by the 
State. The crime bill before us will allow States to hire up to 100,000 
new police officers and this will help local communities not only to 
bring more criminals to justice, but to deter and prevent crimes from 
happening.
  Will it solve all of our problems? No, not by a long shot. But we are 
putting more people out there in the first stage of that three-part 
process, to apprehend those who cannot live in concert and in harmony 
with the rest of the citizens in this country of ours. We have certain 
laws and we have people who want to bypass those laws. They say it is 
easier to rob and steal and grab an old lady's purse on a street corner 
someplace than it is to go out and get a job and work for a living. We 
have those in white collar crime who would rather try to gyp somebody 
out of something than to make a decent and honest living.
  So we need to apprehend these people, and this system of ours will 
permit us to do that. And this bill will give some help in that area. 
Does it solve all the problems? No.
  We have some of the noted actors on TV saying this bill will provide 
only 22,000 police officers, not 100,000. And there is a debate going 
about how much it costs per police officer and so on, as if that were 
the major point. The point is we are trying to help out a little bit by 
putting more police on the streets to go through this first part of 
this operation in apprehending those who cannot live in harmony with 
the rest of their fellow citizens.
  So we go out and we arrest somebody--at risk, sometimes, to the lives 
of the police officers making the arrest. Then they are tried in our 
court system, the second step. It is a judicial model that is emulated 
throughout the rest of the world. It is the envy of the world. In the 
United States of America we afford each person apprehended every 
safeguard to make sure that his or her constitutional rights as an 
American citizen are not violated. We afford the suspect a multitude of 
evidentiary and procedural and substantive challenges and then the 
opportunity for appeal. And all we have to do is look on TV any day to 
see how that process works. We have all seen the Simpson case which 
illustrates just how time consuming, costly, and intricate these 
proceedings can be. But they do protect the individual's rights and we 
would not short circuit that one iota.
  So a suspect goes through that elaborate system of apprehension and 
of judicial consideration. Then he or she stands up before a judge and 
receives a sentence that is meted out according to certain sentencing 
standards. This is the crucial point at which our system breaks down--
at this critical third phase of the system. The third part of the 
system--the punishment phase that results in deterrence--should be just 
as certain as the apprehension phase and just as certain as the 
judicial phase. That third part of our system, the certainty of 
punishment, is not working because too often there is not prison space 
for those who are sentenced. This is making a mockery out of our whole 
system.
  We go through all sorts of expenditures to make sure that the 
apprehension system works, we have an elaborate judicial system that is 
working, and then once we convict people there is nowhere to put them. 
The cells are full. So the prison gates have become, too often, 
revolving doors and they are churning criminals back onto the street. 
It is forcing judges and prison officials to play a sort of Russian 
roulette to try to determine who to keep locked up and who to let go; 
who can go out and rob again, who can steal again, who can attack 
again, who can hustle drugs again out there.
  I noted in March of this year a comment in the Akron Beacon Journal, 
back home in Ohio. A Canton, OH juvenile court judge is quoted in 
reference to the lack of detention space. And I quote:

        What it says is I am no longer able to use my discretion 
     in determining what is in the best interests of the child,'' 
     said Judge David E. Stucki. I am really reduced to a 
     mathematical gatekeeper, and that is wrong. I am not a Ramada 
     Inn reservation clerk--that is what I feel I am being reduced 
     to.

  Mr. President, 32 States are now under court orders because of prison 
overcrowding--under court orders, 32 States. That is almost two-thirds 
of the States in this country under court order because of prison 
overcrowding. For the first time in the 190-year history of my home 
State of Ohio, Ohio's prison population is nearing 41,000 people. The 
institutions in our State are designed to hold 23,188 prisoners. As we 
debate this crime bill today, these prisons house 40,928 prisoners. 
That is 176.5 percent over capacity and growing, and some facilities in 
Ohio, like the Lorain Correctional Institution and the correctional 
reception center in Orient, OH, are both running close to 300 percent 
of capacity.
  I toured prisons in one of our major counties a couple of years ago 
and had meetings with the prosecutors, the judges, the prison officials 
and so on. The sheriff there told that after people were sentenced in 
his county, he had to give over 2,900 of them a letter telling them 
when to come back to start serving their sentence. And the times were 
up to 18 months from the time they had been sentenced--18 months. They 
are to go home with a bracelet on to keep them identified or something, 
watch TV or do something for up to 18 months. In that same major county 
in Ohio, they had between 50,000 and 75,000 unserved warrants. Why go 
out and arrest more people when you do not have any place to put them 
anyway? How silly can it get?
  So they have to determine who are the most dangerous--or at least who 
do they think is the most dangerous. They will let these individuals 
out today, so we can put some more in. So we let these inmates out so 
someone else can do some time. So we let the others out early and they 
serve maybe a third or fourth of their sentence and the whole system 
becomes a mockery of justice.
  What is most frustrating, of course, is that a lot of the criminals 
passing through the revolving doors are still violent and dangerous 
individuals and they are going back onto the street because a lot of 
the space is being taken up by nonviolent offenders. I want to stress 
that. Over half of those in our prisons are nonviolent offenders. They 
are not dangerous to themselves or fellow prisoners or each other. And 
this population will grow as long as we keep on with our mandatory 
sentences for drug offenses. I would not pull those sentences back at 
all. But the point I am making here, is that only half of the people in 
prison truly need what we traditionally think of as the slammer type 
prison with high security, with locks and viewers and remote controls 
and all that sort of thing.
  We need more prison space. But I do not think we should just start 
constructing this kind of high-cost prison space. I want to make sure 
that when prison space that is added, it is added in the most cost 
effective manner possible. I do not think nonviolent offenders should 
be locked up in the high security slammers, taking up space. I do not 
think the taxpayers should be asked to build marble palaces to house 
these nonviolent offenders.
  The average cost of building a prison today is about $50,000 per bed. 
Does it make any sense to have $50,000-a-bed prisons for drunk drivers 
or nonviolent drug offenders? Some high-security prisons can cost as 
much as $100,000 per prison space. One hundred thousand dollars per bed 
is more than most homes in Ohio cost. It's just incredible. It seems we 
have to have all sorts of things. We have to have a gym with Nautilus 
equipment. We have to have air conditioning and TV, and you have to 
have so much window space for every prisoner. Well, is there an 
alternative for the nonviolent prisoners? Yes, I think there is.
  Mr. President, a couple of years ago, I rose on this floor and made 
some statements about what I thought one of the solutions for the 
nonviolent prisoners might be, low-cost incarceration. There have been 
few times in the 19\1/2\ years I have been in the Senate where I 
received such response from people by making a short statement on the 
floor.
  When I got back to the office, the phones had already lit up because 
we are now being broadcast via C-SPAN, of course. And I got a ton of 
mail over the next couple of weeks from Ohioans asking: ``Why aren't we 
pursuing low cost prison construction?''
  What was the proposal I made? I hearkened upon the experience tens 
upon tens of millions of Americans have already had. When I was in the 
Marine Corps, Mr. President--I spent 23 years in the Marine Corps--I 
spent a pretty good chunk of my life in something called a Quonset hut. 
A Quonset hut.
  When World War II came along, we really had an emergency; it was a 
crisis; it was a crisis for the world. We had to mobilize; we had to do 
things that were necessary. We had to take hundreds of thousands of 
American people out of their homes and send them off to be trained. 
There had to be places to put them. There had to be quarters for them. 
You could not just put them out there to live in mud someplace.
  What did we do? We came up with Quonset huts, followed by Butler and 
other low-cost buildings, at these bases all over the country. And we 
housed hundreds of thousands of people in those buildings--and quite 
comfortably, I might add.
  Quonset huts were so named because they were manufactured in Quonset 
Point, RI. You know what they are. They are prefabricated shelters of 
corrugated metal.
  Once I made my statement back years ago, a man from Conneaut, OH, 
sent in a box one day and in it was a model of a Quonset hut just like 
this. Everybody has to rise on the Senate floor these days with a prop. 
We cannot speak anymore without props or charts or podiums as you see 
sitting all around here. I think if we wanted to decrease the deficit 
each year maybe we ought to look at some of our chart manufacturing 
costs around here. I am sure that just the prop budget has gone up to 
several thousand dollars per year.
  This one did not cost the taxpayers anything. The gentleman in 
Conneaut who sent me this thought that Quonset prisons were a good 
idea. So he set up a little Quonset hut and sent it to me so I could 
have it in my office to use when I wanted to talk about this. So here 
is a prop today that did not cost the taxpayers one nickel. It was sent 
in from the generous State of Ohio.
  There are those who say, well, this type of alternative is too harsh. 
It would be such a Spartan existence. Well, there are two points I 
would make to such naysayers. There were tens upon tens of millions of 
people in this country who spent a significant part of their lives in 
Quonset huts, including me, and I did not find them all that obnoxious, 
and they provided quite adequate living from the Arctic to the tropics.
  There will be those who laugh at the Quonset hut idea--but will it 
house people now who are nonviolent prisoners? You bet it will. I 
figured it up one day. I have spent between 5 and 6 years of my life 
living in Quonset huts. In fact, my wife Annie and my children and I 
lived at two different times in half of a standard Quonset hut, once 
for almost 6 months in a full Quonset hut. They can be quite 
comfortable. We lived through winter. We lived through summer. I lived 
in one all winter in northern China with the cold winds coming down 
from up and beyond the Great Wall of China, but we had the thing sealed 
and it was quite comfortable. There was not any problem with it. I 
lived in Guam for almost 2\1/2\ years in a Quonset hut in the tropics. 
You paint them white. They reflect the heat. It was quite pleasant, no 
problem. I lived in Quonset huts in Quantico, VA, at one time, and at 
the Marine Corps Station in El Toro, CA.
  I only bring up all those experiences to show that these are not 
intolerable situations, when tens of millions of Americans and their 
families on occasion have had to live in something as simple as a 
Quonset hut. We lived through summer without an air conditioner, too. 
Occasionally one or more of us would break out in a sweat. Wouldn't it 
be too bad these days if prisoners broke out in a sweat once in a 
while? That would just be too bad. I think if it is good enough to 
house millions of Americans through all these years--some of those 
Quonset huts of 50 or 60 years ago are still standing, still in good 
shape--if it is good enough to house soldiers and marines serving their 
country, I think it is good enough for convicted criminals.
  They are not plush accommodations, but I do not see anything wrong 
with having prisoners serving their time in what can be a rather 
Spartan existence.
  Now, I will say this. I have talked to some of the wardens and 
received some letters from some of the wardens. They did not think too 
much of this idea, and I can understand that. Wardens like to preside 
over a nice big operation that is pretty, all set up with nice, big 
fancy buildings. I can understand that. But are we interested in doing 
the job and cutting down crime and making sure that every single person 
convicted serves out their sentence or are we not?
  That is the question. Housing nonviolent offenders in some of these 
prefabricated housing alternatives accomplishes two important things:
  First, it ensures that all offenders, regardless of their offense, 
serve time.
  Second, it frees up space in the brick and mortar facilities for 
violent criminals to serve their full sentences.
  I do not know why there are not more States that are under court 
orders out there saying we will build Quonset huts or Butler buildings 
or trailers converted over for prison use, as has been done in some 
areas.
  Why are we not doing more of this? We would not even have to put up 
new prison facilities in most places. Put a Quonset hut on existing 
prison property, right now, inside the fence. You do not even need new 
security for them. But if you wanted to establish a new place, why not 
do it like we did back in the old days.
  What is wrong with, say, taking a 500-acre plot of land, putting up 
some concertina wire and a fence around the thing and putting people in 
there to live in Quonset huts? If they want recreation, do the same 
thing we did before. We did not have Nautilus equipment. You ran around 
the perimeter to get your exercise. What is wrong with that? You want 
more space per prisoner? Build some more Quonset huts. You can take a 
crew of about five or six people in about 3 days, one of them reading 
the instruction book, and you can put up such a facility. I know that 
because I have done it back during the World War II years.
  Mr. President, a number of States are currently using prefabricated 
housing, at least in part, to begin to alleviate their prison 
overcrowding problems. One State even utilizes this Quonset approach 
that I am talking about. In 1984, the Arizona State Prison in Florence, 
AZ faced a severe overcrowding problem. They came up with what was 
considered then an ingenious solution. What did they do? They got hold 
of enough Army surplus material for about 100 Quonset huts, formed some 
prison work crews to put them up and, lo and behold, the prison was no 
longer overcrowded. They did it at a fraction of the cost of building 
other prison space. They did it quickly and, just as importantly, they 
did it themselves.
  I think a hammer in a man's hand can be a real character builder.
  And so can a hoe. If I had my way, I think some of the prisoners 
could be out there growing their own food, also. Have them learn that 
food does not all just come out of a fast food drive-through window. 
Some of them might learn something--that tomatoes grow on vines, and 
peas have pods, and corn can grow in as little as 90 days. Is that not 
amazing? Truly amazing. They can harvest grown food and maybe even can 
some of it for winter or spring. Is it a crazy idea that prisoners 
should grow some of their own food and cut down on costs? I do not 
think so. I do not think it is a bad idea for Quonset huts either, 
because they have been used, they are effective, and these types of 
facilities offer significant cost savings if they are used to a larger 
degree.
  (Mr. BREAUX assumed the chair.)
  Mr. GLENN. Our police officers risk their lives to apprehend 
criminals, and once criminals are caught the public wants them locked 
up. But the public is also being told we cannot afford to lock them up 
because jails cost just too much. To me that is ridiculous. We do not 
have to spend millions upon millions of dollars for palaces for 
prisoners. Compare some of these places which the prisoners live in to 
some of the places where their victims live.
  So our overcrowded prisons are sending a clear message to criminals. 
I do not want to see us as a society that talks like Rambo and acts 
like Bambi; that a career of crime is a career with little or no risk 
of serving time.
  Mr. President, in my home State of Ohio we are not building Quonset 
huts. But we are building some pre-engineered prefabricated buildings 
resembling what are called pole barns. These are costing about $10,000 
per bed. That is a $40,000 savings per bed. We have also been using 
some special thick canvas tents like the ones we saw in Desert Storm. 
That is only running about $5,000 per bed, a fraction, just 10 percent 
of the average cost normally incurred nationally. They can be 
comfortable. They can be heated. They are sufficient in the stiffest of 
Ohio's winters, and are quite livable.
  Mr. President, I offered an amendment to the crime bill in the Senate 
which calls on the Attorney General to encourage this type of low-cost 
prison construction. It is section 20407 in the bill called efficiency 
in law enforcement and corrections.
  We say in that section that the Attorney General ``shall encourage, 
first, innovative methods for low-cost construction and administration 
of prison facilities. And second, the use of surplus Federal 
property.''
  The language also calls on the Attorney General to assess the ``cost 
efficiency and utility of using modular, prefabricated, precast, and 
pre-engineered construction components and designs for housing 
nonviolent prisoners.''
  What is wrong with that? Yet, we see State after State does not want 
this. ``Oh, that would be degrading, or something.'' But the Attorney 
General is encouraged by this bill to use this low-cost type 
construction in making grants for prison construction.
  I think it will make the prison construction money in this bill go a 
lot further. It is going to make a lot of taxpayers feel a lot better 
about the way their money is spent.
  Mr. President, there is one other issue in this crime bill that I 
want to discuss just briefly this morning. And that is the provision in 
the crime bill that has received so much attention--the assault weapon 
ban.
  Mr. President, I served in the military. I have seen this type of 
weapon being used firsthand. I have seen its effects. These are war-
making pieces of equipment. These are antipersonnel devices at their 
worst. They shower bullets at their target at high rates of fire, 
hopefully so in a combat situation you can put 8 or 10 slugs into a 
person before he can move out of the line of fire. You want it to be as 
lethal as it possibly can be. They can clear a fire zone with 
devastating severity. We cannot allow them to be used by hoodlums to 
clear city streets.
  Mr. President, I want to applaud the fortitude of the President in 
pushing to keep this provision in the crime bill. We hear a lot about 
the right to bear arms. The Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that the 
right to bear arms does not mean that every single citizen in this 
country can be armed to the teeth to whatever degree they desire. That 
is not what is meant by the right to bear arms. The Supreme Court has 
multiple decisions. I guess those who want to keep the highly 
destructive weapons on the street, say it is their right as a citizen 
to have whatever armament they wish to bear--and they are willing to 
filibuster the U.S. Senate for this. And they have tried to block 
action in the House. The assault weapons ban was at the heart of the 
problems encountered in the House, and it will be the heart of the 
problem this afternoon when we vote here in the Senate.
  We have already had public statements by those who have said what 
they are going to try to stall the will of the people of this country.
  So I applaud the President for his fortitude. But I would say to my 
colleagues, some on the other side of the aisle, maybe some on our side 
of the aisle, who want to retain their ``right to bear arms'' 
unlimited, unfettered, unregulated--at what level to do they propose to 
keep this right to bear arms? If we are to have these AK-47-type 
assault weapons, what are they to be used for? They say, ``Well, we 
want to use them for hunting.'' I do not know how many times you have 
to hit a deer or a rabbit or a quail or a duck with a multifiring 
weapon like that to make sure that it is dead.
  I like to hunt. Let me say that starting out. I used to hunt. I have 
shotguns and rifles at home. So I am not one who says we ban every gun. 
I would defend the right of people who want to hunt. That is fine. I 
defend that. I used to enjoy hunting very much. I remember when we 
lived in Texas going out duck and goose hunting in the morning, and 
being in the blind having these big Canadian white, Snow Geese coming 
down on the blind, and seeing them was a sight to see. Yes, I liked to 
go out and hunt also.
  But when we discuss the right to bear arms, shouldn't we also be 
discussing reasonable limits on destructiveness. Are not we exceeding 
that level of destructiveness when we say that we want to retain the 
right of people out here in northeast Washington or wherever to have an 
AK-47, or any of the other 18 assault weapons that are covered in this 
legislation? At what level of destructiveness do we cut this off?
  Should this also apply to .50 caliber weapons now, which fire 
thousands of rounds a minute, so that you can set them up on a street 
corner someplace? Even if you are not firing them, should you have the 
right to bear those kinds of arms and be a danger to our fellow 
citizens? If something happens to me and I suddenly lose my mental 
facilities and want to start shooting at people, should we have that 
level of destructiveness available to me?
  We also have bazookas. Shall we permit bazookas in somebody's home? 
To do what? Just because they want them there? It is a higher order of 
destructiveness. My colleague, Jim Traficant, said over in the House 
the other day that the right to bear arms certainly does not mean every 
person can put a Stinger missile on their back and start off down the 
street just because they feel they want it--as some extremist or 
terrorist group would do. Should we have no restriction on this? What 
level of restriction do you put on the level of destructiveness?
  We sent Stinger missiles over into Afghanistan, and a lot got away 
and were sold in Iran and, probably, some are in the hands of terrorist 
groups. Does that not give you a lot of pause? Next time you are making 
an approach into Washington National Airport, think of who may be in 
the woods someplace, waiting to shoot, or out at Dulles, or in Los 
Angeles at LAX.
  I will carry it one step further, and I am sure some people will 
consider it ridiculous. We have developed in this country nuclear 
weapons, backpack-type nuclear weapons that can be carried by one 
person. They can be taken in, placed, the dials set, and then you have 
your nuclear explosion. That used to be highly secretive years ago, but 
it is widely known now. I would like to see some of the people on TV 
talking about what a crime this crime bill is if somebody moved in next 
door and said: I have an atomic bomb in the basement because I have a 
right to bear arms; I hope you do not mind. We will just keep it over 
here. I daresay that there would be a house for sale and they would be 
moving out of that area so fast it would make your head swim.
  Is that too much power in the hands of one individual who may go nuts 
or have that weapon stolen? Nuclear weapons in a backpack. The Russians 
have them, and we have them. Does the right to bear arms say I can buy 
one of those from somebody? I am making a point that everybody would 
say it is ridiculous, and I agree.
  Now, going down the ladder of destructiveness, at what level do we 
say we have a right to bear arms? If it is not nuclear, if it is not a 
Stinger, if it is not bazooka, then where is it below that, in which we 
say destructive power in the hands of one individual is so frightening 
that for the public good that we want to limit this, and you should not 
have something that can kill 500 people at one time out there on the 
street.
  It just seems to me that makes common sense. To me, you reach the 
cutoff point with weapons that were designed for war, like AK-47's--and 
fast firing weapons systems like that which can kill hundreds and 
hundreds of people; they are designed for that. They are designed for 
assault. They are called assault weapons. They are not called defensive 
weapons of multifiring capacity. They are called assault weapons 
because that is what they are designed to do in war--to spray so much 
firepower out there that nobody can oppose you when you are making an 
attack--when you are supported by assault weapons and artillery and all 
the other weapons of warfare.
  Yet, we say we will permit that in our society. There are some who 
say we have the right to bear arms no matter what the Supreme Court has 
said, and no matter what the destructiveness of the weapons system. 
That does not make any sense to me, any more than it would make any 
sense to say, yes, we have a right to bear arms, so I want a bazooka in 
my house. I may want to shoot at some robber trying to get away in his 
car. Or I have a Stinger because I have a belief in something, and I 
might want to impose my belief on somebody else. Or I might have 
somebody saying for so many millions of dollars we will sell you an 
atomic weapon, and you can set the dial and it will go off. How far 
down that ladder do we come? No atomic bombs are permitted, no Stinger 
missiles should be out there, no bazookas should be in a person's 
House, no multifiring weapons system like the AK-47. To me, it is a 
crazy argument. Yet, we have found the objection--basically the NRA 
having such sway over in the House that it had a terrible time getting 
that through over there.
  I sometimes think one of our biggest problems around here, to take 
off in a different direction, is with campaign finance. How great it 
would be if we could pass campaign reform so that some of the PAC's or 
other contributors could not hold such sway over some people's minds. 
Maybe that would be the most constructive thing we could do.
  Mr. President, I hope the vote this afternoon is to keep the crime 
bill alive. It is far from perfect. It has been a long time coming. It 
gives help to States who need help. It is not set up as a panacea, as 
something that will solve all of our crime problems. I doubt that for 
the next few years we will see a tremendous difference whether we pass 
this bill or not. But is it not a step in the right direction? We know 
States are hard pressed. We want to see this justice system of ours 
work, and we want to see more criminal apprehensions out there and we 
want to see the judicial system prevail--both of which this gives 
support to.
  We also want to make sure that we do not spend a lot of money in a 
crazy way building big brick and mortar palaces to put prisoners in 
when 50 percent of the people apprehended are nonviolent prisoners and 
can be incarcerated in low cost facilities. We can build adequate 
facilities for these individuals at a lower cost. That way, serving 85 
percent of the sentences, as is proposed, would mean something. Now we 
do not have anyplace to put them to carry that out.
  Mr. President, to repeat my last point, I have no doubt that this 
vote this afternoon will go largely on the basis of those who believe 
that the right to bear arms, at any level of arms, is permissible. I do 
not believe that. I think you reach a certain destructiveness level 
with the weapons systems out there now, and that the public good 
transcends any of these other considerations. Otherwise, our whole 
system does not make much sense.
  And unless we start locking people up, we are making a mockery of our 
justice system. I guess that summarizes what I want to say this 
morning. But I want to repeat that we do not seem to be able to get up 
and make a statement without having a chart or something available to 
us around here. I repeat that this model was not made by a Senate 
employee. A model maker gave me this from Conneaut, OH, when I made a 
speech like this one on low-cost incarceration a couple years ago, and 
he thought it was a great idea sending this model of a Quonset hut.
  Mr. President and my colleagues in the Senate, let us move ahead on 
this bill. It deserves support. It does not need more objections and 
delay. I urge my colleagues to vote for the crime bill this afternoon, 
as I plan to do myself.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. DeCONCINI addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. DeCONCINI. I ask unanimous consent that I may continue my remarks 
past the 12:30 recess time, if I am still speaking.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DeCONCINI. I compliment the Senator from Ohio for his outstanding 
remarks this morning. I think he really puts it so well, and I can only 
tell one little anecdote--not quite as many as the Senator from Ohio 
can--about Quonset huts. When I was a young boy, near the University of 
Arizona there were four square blocks set off with Quonset huts. There 
was a military unit stationed there during the war, and I went down 
there with my father to visit a friend. I remember spending some time 
in this little neighborhood and I thought it was wonderful. What a 
great little place, all these neat little houses and places the 
military kept up.
  People were not complaining. Of course, housing was short in those 
days and these were relatively new Quonset huts. They were torn down 
maybe 15 or 17 years ago when the new medical school was put up. But 
during that time they were used for student housing and students were 
glad to have them. They were low cost although they required some 
maintenance because of their age.
  But why we cannot do as the Senator from Ohio points out and put our 
prisoners in this kind of housing is beyond me. Why do we have to spend 
thousands of dollars per square foot in some instances, certainly 
multiple hundreds more than the NRO or CIA or Defense Department is 
spending on their buildings, to build prisons? That goes beyond my 
imagination.
  Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
  Mr. DeCONCINI. Yes, I am glad to yield.
  Mr. GLENN. Earlier in my statement today I said Arizona has taken the 
lead in this area. In 1984 Arizona had a prisoner problem. There were 
not enough places to put them. Arizona bought 100 Quonset huts and put 
them up. People moved in. They worked fine. They worked very well. 
There was no problem at all.
  That is the State of Arizona, and the Senator from Arizona was the 
attorney general there at one time. The planning for that may have 
occurred when he was still the attorney general. I do not know.
  Arizona moved forward on this. Other States are beginning to follow. 
We wrote into this bill to encourage the Attorney General to encourage 
this by means of where grants go, and so on. There just is not any 
doubt in my mind. I do not understand the opposition to it. They were 
not as pretty as big buildings, but they will work and will lock people 
up and the justice system will mean something for a change, not become 
a scofflaw out there. It will mean something. Once they are assigned to 
a prison term for nonviolent prisoners it can serve a use as well. 
Arizona takes the lead.
  Mr. DeCONCINI. I thank the Senator.
  When I was a prosecuting attorney rather than attorney general, I had 
a lot to do with the State prison system. It has been overcrowded for 
years.
  Senator Glenn, as usual, points out a commonsense approach, and that 
is what this bill is. It is a common-sense approach, and it goes after 
the problem of crime in this country.
  Senator Glenn also pointed out it is not going to instantly lower, or 
maybe not even lower the crime rate over a year or two, but I can tell 
you if we do not do something about it, if we do not pass this bill, 
the crime rate is going to continue to accelerate.
  Mr. President, the Senator also pointed out some valid points on 
guns, and I have some charts on that issue. I did not want to let him 
down. I brought some charts that show the street sweeper that he 
mentioned so eloquently in his remarks and I will discuss them 
momentarily.
  I rise today to support the conference report. This bill will put 
100,000 new policemen and women on the streets of America. This is a 
new, innovative, approach and it happened to come from our sitting 
President, President Clinton. Now we see it being picked at, critics 
saying, ``well, we really do not want these cops. They are rookies. 
They are new. What we need is investigators, trained detectives, we 
need people who have communications skills and who can do the 
investigating work in preparation for trial.''
  But, in fact, community policing, where it has already been 
established, works. In Tempe, AZ, they were awarded a very specific 
grant from the Justice Department to continue a community policing 
program that they have. And what does that mean? That means that the 
same police officers will stay in the same neighborhood on their 
shifts. They will get out on the street. They will knock on the doors 
and say: ``How are you doing today? What is going on? Oh, you heard a 
gang last night. You heard the shooting last night. What did you hear? 
What was it? Oh, you saw a car go by.''
  That does not happen when you are driving around a neighborhood in a 
patrol car. That is what community policing is about.
  There is $75,000 per officer in this bill to keep each officer in the 
community. Arizona, a small State like we are, will add a minimum of at 
least 500 and possibly over 1,000 new officers based depending on this 
program.
  I have talked to many of the law enforcement officers in Arizona. 
They welcome new officers. But they would also like to have other 
things. They would like to have money to spend on equipment, for 
overtime, and other programs. Guess what? Overtime, equipment, special 
programs are also in this bill.
  This bill funds prisons. It funds prisons in our States. It helps 
construct prisons and hopefully the common sense that the Senator from 
Ohio talked about here would be contemplated as well. A portion of the 
prison funding is tied to a truth-in-sentencing whereby 85 percent of 
the sentence must be served by the inmate. If you comply with that you 
get set aside as a State in a special category for these prison funds 
for construction. In this regard, this conference report is better than 
the conference report that we had before the House altered it this last 
weekend. It raised from $6.5 billion funding for State and local 
prisons grants, to $7.9 billion. So we have added money to an area 
where States are so overburdened today, and that is the ability to 
house prisoners.
  The bill provides stiffer penalties for violent crimes. You heard the 
NRA, the National Rifle Association, say we do not need to eliminate 
guns; guns do not kill people; people do; what we need are tougher 
penalties. And when do they come rising and arguing for tougher 
penalties? Whenever there is even the hint of some restrictions on 
guns.
  So the NRA must support this provision. They support tougher 
penalties. As a matter of fact, they say we are not tough enough, that 
they are interested in enhancing tougher penalties.
  The bill triples the penalties for criminals who use children to deal 
drugs near schools or playgrounds. That is a tough penalty. I think it 
is something that this body ought to favor.
  It includes penalties for over 70 criminal offenses dealing mostly 
with violent crimes, drug trafficking, and gun-related offenses, crimes 
that leave the public asking why do we not stop them, why can we not 
get after this problem?
  They are asking us, and we have an opportunity to get after these 
problems by passing this conference report.
  The bill provides funding for rural law enforcement. One of the areas 
that is often left out in law enforcement are rural counties, or a 
county sheriff or police chief in a small community which maybe has 8 
officers or 10 or 12 officers. They generally get left out in Federal 
programs because supposedly they do not have a crime problem like they 
do in the metropolitan areas.
  But that is not the way it is in rural Arizona. Most all of our rural 
communities in Arizona are on major highways with tremendous amount of 
traffic coming through, and a tremendous amount of influence. A 
tremendous amount of economic benefit is left with that community, but 
also a tremendous amount of influence; some of it is bad, some of it is 
criminal. This bill permits these rural communities to participate in 
these programs.
  The Border Patrol, which I have fought for years to enhance and 
expand gets over $1 billion in this bill. Do you realize what that 
means to this Nation, not just to the four Southwest border States, but 
across our borders and into the States that are on the interior? We 
have an opportunity, if we have the personnel at our border, to stop 
the undocumented people coming across our borders who often bring 
contraband.
  In Arizona we are short at least 100 Border Patrol officers. This 
administration has been criticized by Republicans primarily, saying 
that Arizona did not get enough officers--they only got 33. They are 
correct. We did not get enough. But it is the first administration in 
the 18 years that I have been here that has added to the Border Patrol 
without a congressional initiative. Furthermore, when the Congress did 
add to the Border Patrol here on the floor, the provision was either 
dropped in conference, or if it was added in conference and became law, 
the administration, the Justice Department would fail to assign the 
people to the border.
  In 1992 there was a GAO report that pointed out just that, that funds 
were taken from Immigration and Naturalization Service Border Patrol 
officers and used to enforce other areas of the immigration authority.
  So this is going to help us in Arizona. This is going to help all 
Americans by giving some resources to the Border Patrol.
  The bill is tough on crime, but in order to develop a long-term 
strategy of fighting crime, we have to build prisons. We have to have 
programs that enhance our police officers. We have to have stronger 
sentences. We have to have better courts. We have to have programs that 
are going to deal with the neighborhood problems.
  Why do young people join gangs? Why do young people go out and shoot 
each other when they are in a conflict? Why? Because society has 
changed and because of the tremendous amount of guns that are 
available.
  In this crime bill, there are a multitude of prevention programs. I 
could craft a crime bill that would add some and subtract some. But 
these programs, if you want to call them pork, then you ought to be in 
favor of pork because these programs bring dollars from Washington, DC, 
to our communities to help get at the problems in the neighborhoods. 
That is what they do.
  For example, the midnight basketball program, which is scoffed at 
around here and over the weekend in the House of Representatives. The 
newspaper last week showed a cartoon of people from Congress in a 
gymnasium where kids were playing basketball, saying, ``Hey, you can't 
play midnight basketball here. Don't take shots in here. Go outside.'' 
Of course, outside were a couple of people shooting each other. That is 
what this program is all about--keeping kids off the streets.
  In Arizona, it is a successful program. It is not that we are going 
to pay anybody to come and play basketball. Nobody is getting a check 
based on how many points they make. No, they play for fun. But they 
have to join a team and a league. They have to show up. They have to go 
through the training. There is some counseling that goes along with it. 
These are programs that help people help themselves.
  So at midnight, in parts of Phoenix that have a high crime rate, 
there are as many as 70 and sometimes 120 young people playing 
basketball. And then there are several hundred watching them at 11 
o'clock at night, at 12 o'clock at night, in the summertime. We do it 
out there for obvious reasons--it is so darned hot.
  But believe me, it works. I have talked to these kids. Where would 
they be? They would be out on the streets at midnight. They would be in 
fights and going around with gangs.
  What do they do after they finish basketball? Do they get in the car 
and go shoot up the neighborhood they are playing in? No, they do like 
everybody else does at a sports event. They sit around and talk about 
their good shots and bad shots, and then they go home because they are 
tired. They are not into crime, as many were before that program 
started.
  A very important program, I believe, is one that the Senator from 
Delaware has spent the last 6 or 8 years working on, and that is the 
Violence Against Women Act. It is an act that he crafted, an act that 
he educated this body on year after year, an act to reduce the abuse 
that women have had to almost accept in our society.
  When I was a prosecuting attorney in Tucson some 20 years ago, we 
started a program called the Victim-Witness Counselor Program. That 
program, for the first time, offered victims of rape and other sexual 
crimes counseling, somebody to talk to them, to prepare them when they 
had to go to court and be cross-examined by the defense attorney and 
asked all kinds of questions about their background and what they did 
that might have precipitated the criminal act that the defendant was 
accused of; someone that would go home with the victim if their home 
had been broken into and they had been sexually molested or raped; 
someone to stay with them, to help them.
  That is what this program does. This program provides for that kind 
of counseling and that kind of assistance to victims, particularly 
women, and it is something that is long overdue. I am proud that this 
bill and this conference report contains these provisions.
  Money is available here so that communities can keep schools open. 
Imagine, keeping schools open in the afternoon so kids can play 
basketball or they can study, so they have a place where they are not 
going to go out and get beat up or join a gang; and keep them open in 
the evening so they can use the facilities. It is something that makes 
sense, common sense, and it is money well spent which will be provided 
for those schools.
  We should not confuse prevention with being soft on crime. This bill 
punishes those young people who break the law, but those millions of 
youth who have never been in trouble but have very few positive 
influences in their life, these prevention programs will keep them from 
slipping further and further down that slippery slope of being involved 
in crime and ultimately being in prison.
  One such program with which I am very familiar because it was started 
in Phoenix, AZ, by the Treasury Department under the Bureau of Alcohol, 
Tobacco and Firearms is called the GREAT program, the Gang Resistance 
Education and Training program. Based in schools, law enforcement 
officers are trained for a couple of days on how to prepare and how to 
pose questions to seventh and eighth graders about how do you deal with 
it when a friend or a relative is in a gang and they want you to join. 
This program helps build up the self-esteem necessary to say, ``No, I 
don't need it.'' How do you think you get out of a gang if you are in 
it today?
  You know, if you want to get into a gang, you have to get beat up by 
that gang to get into it. That is how you get in. Once you get beat up, 
you are in. Then, of course, they are supposed to protect you for life 
and you are supposed to go along with whatever they do. But if you want 
to get out, you cannot get out. You cannot get out without some 
community support, without maybe a police officer that you can talk to, 
without the ability to stand up and feel good about yourself and tell 
gang members that you are out of here, you do not need this anymore, 
you are not going to participate.
  The program is conducted by trained officers wearing their uniforms, 
so these young people have an opportunity to see firsthand what a 
police officer looks like, talks like, what they do in their job, and 
how to relate to police authority, how to relate to their parents and 
to their peers. It has reached over 100,000 at-risk students so far in 
this country, where I believe there are 12 programs now under 
existence.
  This bill would provide for $45 million to expand that program. 
Nobody is getting paid, except to help train the officers. These 
officers are volunteers from the local law enforcement and they are the 
ones who do the work, paid for by their police organization.
  The bill also has a drug court, which is very similar to the 
diversion program that I have spoken of so many times on this floor. It 
says to a nonviolent drug user: If you comply, we will divert you out 
of the system. What do you have to comply with? Community service. You 
have to stay in school or get in school. You have to keep your job or 
get job training, and attend counseling. If all of those are complied 
with during the period of your sentence, you stay out of jail. If you 
fail in one of those requirements, the slammer comes down, you are out 
of the program, and you are in jail.
  In the House last week, we saw with the defeat of the rule and the 
attempted motion to recommit on Sunday, pure procedural gimmickry. In 
the House, we saw what I think this body needed to see. We saw all the 
excuses that have been perpetrated on the American public for why this 
bill should not be passed. It took some courageous Members of the 
Republican Party on that side of the aisle to come forward and change 
their vote after gaining a reduction in some of the spending in the 
bill.
  But do not let anybody think anything different. What that was all 
about over there was not pork, was not money, was not sentences, was 
not prisons. It was guns. What this is truly all about in the Senate is 
also guns.
  How else do you explain the fact that none of our colleagues across 
the aisle raised a budget concern when they were casting 41 out of 42 
possible Republican votes in support of the trust fund that funds this 
bill? The senior Senator from Texas offered a motion to instruct that 
we voted on here, and I believe over 90 Members, including this 
Senator, supported, advising the conferees to maintain the trust fund.

  What is this trust fund? The trust fund was put together by the able 
Senator from West Virginia [Mr. Byrd]. There are many of us who were 
concerned, as Senator Byrd was, that we do not add to the deficit in 
trying to fight crime. We have to do something better than that.
  So there is an effort by this administration to reduce Government 
employees, and they have succeeded so far, in the first year and a 
half, in working toward the goal of reducing the work force by 250,000 
employees over 5 years. That saves about $30 billion. That is the 
amount of the trust fund and why it was created, so that those funds 
will be spent here instead of increasing the deficit to fund this bill.
  So, those who now are moving a point of order that the trust fund 
violates the Budget Act are doing it because guns are in this bill. And 
if the point of order succeeds and if this conference report fails, 
then what is pending? What crime bill is pending before the Senate? The 
crime bill that is pending is the original House crime bill that had no 
gun ban in it at all. They passed a bill with no gun restrictions. Then 
they had a separate vote on a bill on assault weapons outside their 
crime bill. And in the conference we included the Senate assault 
weapons provision.
  So the budgetary argument here holds no water. Because what we have 
is a point of order that this violates the Budget Act and thereby we 
should vote it down. If you vote it down, that means you vote down any 
restrictions of these assault weapons that are devastating. That is 
what this vote is all about.
  Do not for a minute think we are here voting because some Senators 
want a tougher penalty here or they want another few hundred million 
dollars taken out here. The Senator from Delaware just yesterday 
offered to take their amendments if they would stipulate and agree with 
the unanimous consent that the gun provision would stay in. Of course, 
they did not and would not agree to that.
  The reason is simple here. This point-of-order vote is a vote on 
whether or not you want to restrict assault weapons and ban some 
assault weapons or, do you want to go back to a crime bill that has no 
assault weapons provision in it and has what is known as the Racial 
Justice Act relating to the death penalty, which weakens the death 
penalty, in my judgment.
  In the past I have strongly opposed gun control. I have been the 
Legislator of the Month on behalf of the National Rifle Association--
and I thank them for that--because early in my career I stood up to 
some registration programs that the administration as well as Members 
of Congress were pushing, and I said ``no'' and voted against those 
bills. But I came to the conclusion about 6 years ago that something 
had to be done about the types of weapons that I am going to show you 
in a moment.
  The weapons used today are not for hunting. These are not sports 
weapons. There is no sport in using an AK-47 to kill a deer. I have 
used some of these assault weapons on the range, and you do not want to 
use them against an animal. You want to use them to kill people, that 
is all you want to use them for. And that is what they are used for. 
They were created solely for that purpose--to kill human beings, as 
many as possible as fast as possible. Moreover, these weapons are often 
used to gun down law enforcement officials acting in the line of duty. 
This fact should not be overlooked by anyone and it should be as 
offensive to the law-abiding sportsmen as it is to someone who has 
never even picked up a gun.
  I have long supported the men and women of the American law 
enforcement community, but we cannot pretend to stand by these people 
if we pass a crime bill that does not ban the very weapons that are 
taking them from us on a day-to-day basis. The assault weapons ban has 
passed both Houses now and the Senate has included, in both conference 
reports, the Senate assault weapons ban provisions despite the 
relentless efforts of the National Rifle Association and other gun 
lobbies, which refuse to let the will of the American people prevail.
  That is what is troubling me most: While the majority of citizens 
support the assault weapons ban, and yet the National Rifle 
Association, how that association--as important as it is, with the good 
work that I must say they have done in training people in safety with 
use of firearms--will now attempt to keep the American public safer by 
prohibiting a vote on this conference report that would ban some 19 
assault weapons. The simple fact of the matter is that these weapons 
kill people.
  Let me briefly talk about a couple of them.
  One is the Tec-9, before you here. It weighs 50 ounces. It is a 
semiautomatic assault pistol. During the years 1990-93, these accounted 
for 3,710 of the firearms traced by law enforcement officials 
nationwide: 838 narcotic investigations, 319 murder cases, and 234 
instances of assault.
  On July 1, 1993, gunman Gian Luigi Ferri killed eight people and 
wounded six others at a San Francisco law office using two Tec-9 
assault pistols with 50-round magazines. That is one of the weapons 
that is banned.
  The next one is the popular--if you want to call it that--AK-47. 
These assault weapons are semiautomatic. They were made in Communist 
countries for sale for military purposes. During the years 1990 to 1993 
these firearms accounted for over 2,000 of the firearms traced for law 
enforcement officials nationwide. The trace included 226 narcotic 
investigations and 272 murders. On January 17, 1989, some might 
remember, Patrick Purdy killed 5 small children and wounded 29 others 
and 1 teacher at the Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, CA, using 
a semiautomatic version of the AK-47 assault rifle, imported from the 
People's Republic of China. That weapon had been purchased from a gun 
dealer in Oregon and was equipped with a 75-round magazine. Purdy shot 
106 rounds in less than 2 minutes. This gun also killed two CIA 
employees just a year and a half ago right here in northern Virginia.
  The last one I will show is the one Senator Glenn spoke about, and 
that is the Street Sweeper. This gun was produced in South Africa. 
Actually, it started in Rhodesia but it was produced on a massive scale 
in South Africa to control the population under apartheid. It was used 
to kill and to scare, and, indeed, it did it for a number of years. It 
fires 12 rounds of shotgun shells in less than 3 seconds.
  The simple fact of the matter is these weapons have no place in our 
society, and this bill would take these killing machines off the 
streets. But rather than do that, we are left to fend off efforts by 
the NRA and other second amendment groups who would rather kill this 
bill than acknowledge that they have lost the debate.
  How many innocent people are going to have to die before the special 
interests will get the message? It is time for this body to stand up 
for the American people and put them ahead of political interests. We 
ought to stop the games, the parliamentary maneuvering, and start 
responding to the people who sent us here, and get rid of these 
weapons, get them off our streets.
  I thank and acknowledge Senator Metzenbaum of Ohio, who started this 
effort long before this Senator got into it and has stayed true to his 
convictions all during this time. The Senator from California [Mrs. 
Feinstein], also fought hard for this provision.
  Last, I pay tribute to the distinguished chairman of the Judiciary 
Committee, the Senator from Delaware [Mr. Biden]. He worked the entire 
weekend until 3 and 5 o'clock in the morning with the House Members, in 
the most persuasive manner, trying to bring about some bill that could 
pass both Houses and, indeed, would ban guns, have prisons, have 
community policing--and the bill is before us here today.
  I compliment him for his tireless effort, and his staff that worked 
with him there, as well as Michael O'Leary and Karen Robb of my office, 
who stayed there throughout the whole process, and who kept me 
informed, on the phone; I must say I had the easy part of the job.
  The Senator from Delaware has crafted a bill in a competent, credible 
way, and we ought to pass this conference report and not be held up by 
the maneuvering from some on the Republican side.
  I wish to also compliment the senior Senator from Pennsylvania, who 
spoke out yesterday morning in support of the conference report. 
Senator Specter has a long, distinguished career in law enforcement. He 
knows what law enforcement people need to combat crime. I compliment 
those Republicans who can put the people first, ahead of the gun 
lobbies, and vote for this conference report.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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