[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 26 (Thursday, February 9, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2348-S2350]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                      CRIME AND JUSTICE IN AMERICA

  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I rise this morning to begin speaking on 
the issue of crime and justice in America and the Democratic crime 
bill, the Clinton 
[[Page S2349]]  crime bill that was passed last year, and the proposals 
to change that crime bill. I realize there is sort of a frenzy underway 
here where, to use the old expression, the freight train is rolling 
down the tracks, the contract is underway, and we are in a great hurry 
to change everything here.
  I am going to spend a half hour or so this morning, and then future 
mornings, as we approach the debate on the Senate floor on the changes 
in the Biden crime--in the crime bill, and try to lay out some of at 
least what I see to be the facts.
  Last year, Congress completed a 6-year effort and enacted a major 
anticrime law in which the Federal Government launched a bold and 
multifaceted attack on violent crime and its roots back in our 
communities, not here at the national level. For the first time, the 
Federal Government made major commitments to help States and 
localities, the places where 95 percent of all the crimes are committed 
and all the crimes are prosecuted. We got involved, to help them 
redress the greatest shortcomings in our system. And after years of 
study and overwhelming consensus, it was agreed what those shortcomings 
in our criminal justice system were and are.
  No. 1, first and foremost, there is a shortage of police out on the 
streets of our communities. That is number one.
  No. 2, the shortage of prison space and the need for sentencing 
reform at the State level.
  No. 3, the shortage of effective responses to drug offenders.
  No. 4, the lack of serious response to rape and family violence.
  No. 5, the lack of safe places and positive activities for those 
children referred to as at-risk children, who grow up surrounded by 
illegal drugs, crime, and violence.
  Everybody I am aware of agrees these were the problems we had to 
speak to. I might point out we pretty well have taken care of--which is 
a much easier problem to take care--the Federal side of that equation. 
We have enough Federal prison space in the Federal prison system. When 
you get sentenced, you go to jail for the totality of that term. I was 
the coauthor of that bill. In the Federal courts, if a judge says you 
are going to go to prison for 10 years, you know you are going to go to 
prison for at least 85 percent of that time--8.5 years, which is what 
the law mandates. You can get up to 1.5 years in good time credits, but 
that is all. And we abolished parole. So you know you'll be in prison 
for at least 8.5 years.
  But in the States, the average amount of time people serve once 
sentenced in the State court is 43 percent of the time. So on average, 
in the States--my State being one of the exceptions, the State of 
Delaware, which essentially has the same records as the Federal 
Government; they keep people, on average, 85 percent of the time--but 
most States keep people in jail, if they get sentenced to 10 years in 
the State court, they only serve 4 years 2 months in a State prison.
  So we fixed it at the Federal level. This was to help begin to not 
send rules or regulations or mandates to the States, but to send them 
money to fix the problems. It was to help them fix the problems I have 
stated, which everyone agreed on: Lack of police, lack of serious 
response to rape, et cetera.
  Now, in its breadth, the crime bill we passed reflects the lessons 
learned over the past decade as we studied crime and law enforcement 
and worked on passing this law; namely, that all of the shortcomings 
have to be addressed at one time. Correcting one without the other is 
futile because crime knows no easy single answer. What we found out in 
the States and what we found out in our earlier experience in the 
Federal Government is when you increase penalties and you do not 
increase the number of prison spaces, you do not do much. If you put 
more cops on the street, they make more arrests, you increase the 
penalties, and you do not have places to put the felons, then the 
people just walk. So now you have convicted felons who are out on the 
street, not having served their time. So we learned we cannot just deal 
with one piece of it.
  The anticrime law we passed last year addressed each of these 
shortcomings, as I will detail in a moment. In its approach, as well as 
in many specifics, the law was a result of bipartisan efforts--at least 
at the outset.
  The law is already at work; $1 billion has already been awarded to 
the States and localities to put almost 15,000 new police officers on 
the streets in the community policing program. That is already done. 
The law only passed last fall and already almost 15,000 cops, new cops, 
brand new--not supplanting cops that were on local forces, almost 
15,000 new local cops that were not there before--within the next 
several months, after they finish their training, are going to be on 
the streets in the United States of America because of this crime bill. 
Dollars, under the drug court program, the Violence Against Women Act, 
are going to be awarded over the next few months.
  I hoped I could spend the next several months watching over the 
smooth and speedy implementation of this law, as well as turning my 
focus to the substantial issues that still lie before us. Just to name 
two priorities, we must turn all our talk about our war on drugs into a 
real battle, and we have to reform our juvenile justice system as it 
struggles to deal with violent, youthful offenders unlike any the 
current system was designed to handle.
  That is work still to be done. I thought we would be on the floor 
here this next year and the following year, dealing with finally doing 
something real about the drug problem and doing something more about 
juvenile justice because when I wrote the crime bill, I never 
advertised it as--as my grandfather would say, this is not a horse to 
carry the sleigh. The whole sleigh on crime is more than what the crime 
bill was about, and we have said that, frankly, from the beginning. 
What we did, we thought we were going to have in place; we thought we 
were going to be just implementing.
  Very soon, the Senate will embark on a debate, not about new 
challenges, but of the anticrime law we just enacted last fall. The 
House is already taking apart this law piecemeal.
  What is motivating a retreat on the bill that contained so many 
provisions drafted and once supported by Republicans, as well as 
Democrats, quite frankly, escapes me. I will let you draw your own 
conclusions. But I ask you walk with me through the changes the 
Republican leadership seeks to make in the anticrime law. I suspect the 
merits will speak for themselves.
  At the same time, I want to make clear what I will fight for and what 
I will fight against, as we revisit the issues debated in the crime 
bill last year so thoroughly. Let me turn first to the central 
provision of the present new crime law, a program designed to address 
the first major law enforcement shortcoming I mentioned, a program that 
deserves, in my view, to be preserved and one I will fight to save from 
the Republican chopping block. Let me speak first about that program.
  That program puts 100,000 new police on the street. I do not know a 
responsible police leader, an academic expert, a public official who 
does not agree that putting more police officers on our streets back 
home and in our neighborhoods is a good idea, a good idea that goes by 
the name of community policing. The true innovation of community 
policing is that it enables police officers to pursue dual goals. They 
are better positioned to respond to and apprehend suspects when crime 
occurs. But they are also better positioned to keep crime from 
occurring in the first place.
  Today, too many police officers are strangers in their own 
communities. From headquarters or cruisers, they respond to radio calls 
only after crime has occurred, forever behind the curve. Police 
officers are a part of their community. Community police officers will 
be a part of their community. They know their community--the hot spots, 
the troublemakers, the gang members--and they can work to prevent crime 
in the first place.
  I do not want to go back to a nostalgic and romantic view of what 
used to be the case. But most of us who grew up in anything that 
remotely resembles a city or a town that had an identity when we were 
kids, those of us in this Chamber, when we were kids, we knew the local 
cop. He walked down the street. He knew everybody. He knew who owned 
what store. He knew the kids who were troublemakers and those who were 
not. We knew if we got into trouble, he would call our mothers or call 
our fathers.

[[Page S2350]]

  Things have not been working too well is for a whole range of 
reasons--mainly the shortage of bodies--but one of the reasons is that 
we have moved away from community policing. In my own State, community 
policing took the form of foot patrols with a particular focus on 
breaking up street-level drug dealing that had turned one of 
Wilmington's neighborhoods into a crime zone. These efforts 
successfully suppressed drug activity without displacing it to another 
part of the city. The Wilmington example fits the shorthand description 
often used for community policing; that is, putting cops on the streets 
to walk the beat. But in practice, community policing takes on many 
forms, depending on the needs of any particular community.
  The form of community policing takes various forms. From community to 
community, the results coming in from the field are all the same. 
Community policing works. In New York City, a place where crime can 
seem insurmountable, the police commissioner began an aggressive 
community policing program that contributed to a significant decrease 
in serious offenses last year.

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