[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 119 (Friday, July 21, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1491-E1492]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                         JUSTICE WARREN BURGER

                                 ______


                        HON. ANDREW JACOBS, JR.

                               of indiana

                    in the house of representatives

                          Friday, July 21, 1995
  Mr. JACOBS. Mr. Speaker, our friend, Warren Cikins, has written a 
predictably eloquent piece for Legal Times about Justice Warren Burger.
  I am pleased to share it with all those members and scholars who read 
the Congressional Record.
          Warren Burger's Quest for ``Factories With Fences''

                           (By Warren Cikins)

       Much is being written of Chief Justice Warren Burger's 
     commitment to strengthening the criminal Justice system and 
     to ensuring the punishment of wrongdoers, but the occasion of 
     his death at 87 on June 25, should also be an opportunity to 
     highlight his determination to give offenders a chance to 
     reform. As he proclaimed in a 1981 speech, ``When society 
     places a person behind walls and bars it is an obligation--a 
     moral obligation--to do whatever can reasonably be done to 
     change that person before he or she goes back into the stream 
     of society.''
       Burger's commitment to prison reform was part of his 
     broader interest in improving the administration of justice. 
     The number and breath of his contributions are themselves 
     remarkable. In ``The Politics of Judicial Reform'' (1982), 
     Burger's early endeavors are described by Dr. Mark Cannon, 
     who held the position of administrative assistant to the 
     chief justice from 1972 to 1986--a position Burger helped 
     create to facilitate these reforms. Cannon chronicles 
     Burger's joint efforts with the American Bar Association to 
     create the Institute of Judicial Administration, his support 
     of the interbranch Hruska Commission created in 1972 and 
     continuing operations until 1975), his expansion of the 
     functions of the Administrative Office of the Courts, his 
     work with the Department of Justice to create the position of 
     assistant attorney general for the Office for the 
     Improvements in the Administration of Justice, and the 
     greater involvement by the Judicial Conference of the United 
     States (which he headed as chief justice) in the preparation 
     of data necessary for legislation of major significance to 
     the judiciary.
       Burger also sponsored the National
        center for State Courts at Williamsburg, Va., supported 
     the creation of the Federal Judicial Center (a brainchild 
     of his colleague, Justice Tom Clark), promoted the 
     National College of the Judiciary in Reno, Nev., helped 
     create the State-Justice Institute, and sponsored the 
     creation of the National Institute of Corrections and the 
     National Corrections Academy in Boulder, Colo.
       At his urging, the Brookings Institution sponsored a series 
     of annual seminars that began in 1978 and continued through 
     1993. Attendees included the chief justice, the attorney 
     general, the chairman and other members of the Senate and 
     House Judiciary Committees and numerous other jurists and 

[[Page E1492]]
     senior Justice Department officials. As Burger noted in 1983, at these 
     seminars, ``the topics range from subjects as old as federal 
     jurisdiction, to subjects as new as the impact of automation 
     on the judicial process.''
       These seminars were more than theoretical discussions. As 
     Burger stated, ``Many proposals considered at Williamsburg 
     have been enacted by Congress. They include the division of 
     the 5th Circuit, the creation of the Court of International 
     Trade, the merger of the Court of Claims and the Court of 
     Customs and Patent Appeals into the Court of Appeals for the 
     Federal Circuit, the passage of the Omnibus Judgeship Act of 
     1978 and the Dispute Resolution Act, the relaxation of Speedy 
     Trial Act time limits, improved juror protection and 
     compensation, and clarification and expansion of magistrate 
     jurisdiction.
       As these extensive and varied efforts demonstrate, Chief 
     Justice Burger was deeply committed to fostering cooperation 
     between the three branches of the federal government to 
     improve the administration of justice.
       Burger's thoughts on prison reform began to form even in 
     his childhood. In a
      foreword to a 1993 book, ``Privatizing Corrections 
     Institutions,'' he wrote, ``I remember a visit as a Boy 
     Scout to the Stillwater prison where some inmates were 
     indeed `warehoused' even though Minnesota was a pioneer in 
     prison production.''
       As chief justice, he continued his work on this issue, 
     which he characterized in a 1981 speech as a choice between 
     ``more warehouses or factories with fences.''
       Burger's efforts on behalf of meaningful corrections reform 
     ranged from appearing on Ted Koppel's ``Nightline'' to taking 
     a distinguished group of Americans to Scandinavia to observe 
     prison industries. Lloyd Elliott, then president of George 
     Washington University, agreed to create a Center on 
     Innovations in Corrections. An advisory board of senior 
     government officials and representatives for the private 
     sector was assembled to assist the center's director, Dr. 
     Judith Schloegel. Job-training projects were identified to be 
     implemented at the state level.
       These efforts spawned the creation of the National Task 
     Force on Prison Industries. Chaired by Frank Considine, 
     president of the National Can Corp., this group included 
     other prominent business leaders, criminologists, and senior 
     government officials from all three branches of the federal 
     government.
       The task force helped create a national climate of 
     acceptance for prison industries. This was (and continues to 
     be) an especially sensitive issue, since inmate production 
     engenders valid concerns about competition with nonprison 
     workers.
       A high-water mark of Burger's prison industries effort was 
     a 1985 conference at Wingspread, in Racine, Wis. Participants 
     considered the full range of legal and practical issues, 
     including management, procurement, marketing, inmate 
     compensation, staff and inmate training, job placement, 
     business and labor concerns, research and evaluation, and 
     media and public relations. Particular attention was given to 
     controlling prison costs and to the establishment of programs 
     designed to help inmates defray some of the costs of 
     incarceration.
       Among the representatives from private industry, 
     corrections, legislatures, universities, and the public were 
     a number of cooperating business people, some of whom went on 
     to create or run prison-industry programs. For example, the 
     Control Data Corp. set up a computer assembly plant in the 
     Stillwater, Minn., prison and promised inmate workers jobs 
     when they were released: Jack Eckerd of the Florida drugstore 
     chain, Eckerd Stores, later took over on a private basis the 
     job-placement effort for Florida state inmates.
       When Chief Justice Burger retired from
        the Supreme Court in 1986 to give full-time attention to 
     his job as chairman of the Bicentennial Commission, he put 
     his involvement in prison industries on the back burner. 
     By the early 1990s, however, he was back in the fray, when 
     he took up the cause of UNICOR, the federal prison-
     industry program created by Congress in 1934 to provide 
     job training in federal prisons, paid for by products made 
     by inmates.
       The House of Representatives had adopted an amendment to 
     the 1990 crime bill that would sharply restrict UNICOR in 
     four key areas: furniture, textiles, apparel, and footwear. 
     While this proposal was in conference--and appeared about to 
     be adopted--Chief Justice Burger went into action.
       As The Washington Post front-page story of Nov. 12, 1990 
     reported, ``Burger fired off letters to House and Senate 
     conferees labeling it an ``astonishing proposal'' that would 
     be ``an incredible setback to one of the most enlightened 
     aspects of the federal prison system.'' Conferee Sen. Strom 
     Thurmond (R-S.C.) told his colleagues that he would not 
     accept the anti-UNICOR amendment, and that ended the matter.


                             middle ground

       Burger lent his considerable energies to efforts to find a 
     middle ground between the federal government and adversely 
     affected industries and labor unions. He revived the Prison 
     Industries Task Force, and prevailed upon former Attorney 
     General Griffin Bell (and later, the former head of the 
     Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence 
     Agency, Judge William Webster) to serve as chairman of that 
     group. In his January 1994 address to the task force, Burger 
     cited the Scandinavian governments as role models for 
     recognizing that most incarcerated individuals eventually 
     return to society and therefore should be made literate and 
     trained in meaningful jobs. ``The U.S. needs to focus on 
     education, training, and work to try to make offenders better 
     people than when they entered the system,'' he urged.
       Burger rejected the notion that his views on prison reform 
     were at odds with his law-and-order approach to criminal 
     justice. As the Post quoted Burger as saying, ``My position 
     on this is the most conservative one you can imagine. If you 
     can take an individual and train him so he can do something a 
     little more useful than stamping license plates, he's a 
     little less likely to go back [into prison]. This isn't for 
     the benefit of the criminal community. It's for the benefit 
     of you and me.''
       Chief Justice Warren Burger continued his commitment to 
     prison industries until the end of his life. In this quest 
     for inmate rehabilitation, Warren Earl Burger honored his 
     country.
     

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