[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 137 (Saturday, September 28, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11628-S11630]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM

  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I am pleased to have this opportunity to 
come to the floor today to talk about something that I consider to be a 
very serious responsibility which we in Government are failing to carry 
forward. I come to the floor today to point out a dismal failure in our 
culture, a failure that President Clinton has helped to disguise, and 
perhaps, has even compounded the problem with his own behavior.
  Last February, Antoyne Preston White, 17, was arrested in Washington 
along with several fellow members of a juvenile car theft ring. White 
pleaded guilty, and was released several days later.
  In April, he was arrested again, this time for sexually assaulting a 
4-year-old girl. He pleaded guilty a second time. Sentencing in this 
case was pending when White allegedly shot and killed Mun Hon Kim, a 
mailman eating his lunch in his truck, on June 11th.

[[Page S11629]]

  In total, White has been arrested 10 times in the last 3 years. 
Antoyne White's history is, unfortunately, typical of today's juvenile 
justice system. Teens with multiple arrests for felonies, sexual 
assaults, or violent crimes are returned to the streets and repeatedly 
taught by our system that they can evade and avoid punishment.
  In theory, our laws are protecting kids from the stigma of a 
permanent record. But, in reality, our laws are coddling stone-cold 
killers who hide behind the fact that they are teenagers.
  Juveniles now account for almost 20 percent of all the violent crime 
arrests and over one-third--one out of every three--property crime 
arrests. Yet, we continue to treat the majority of these criminals as 
if they were just good kids gone wrong.
  Criminologists predict that the baby boom of the 1980's will bring an 
explosion of young street criminals as we move into the next century. 
To deflect this onslaught of violent teens, the President has 
recommended what he calls a--these are his words --``gentle 
combination'' of laws and prevention programs. This ``gentle 
combination,'' in the words of the President, includes more proposals 
for midnight basketball, school uniforms, and curfews--more mandates 
from Washington, DC, for social programs that really would be best 
instituted at the instigation and creation at the local level.
  I have to say that I believe this administration's ``gentle 
combination''--to use the words of the President--will not penetrate 
the hardened criminal mentality of these criminal prodigies such as 
Antoyne White. But today's conscienceless, young, violent predators are 
immune to these ``gentle combinations.'' They are accustomed to them. 
They have taken advantage of them. They thrive on them. So they are 
immune to these so-called ``gentle combinations,'' which are designed 
to teach right and wrong but simply have been distorted to provide 
authority and license for individuals to conduct very violent, heinous 
crimes.
  President Clinton has done a good job of posing with the police and 
bragging about misleading statistics. The simple fact of the matter is 
that the only thing criminal about President Clinton's treatment of 
juvenile delinquents is his record in treating juvenile delinquents.
  This administration is not even enforcing the laws that are on the 
books--laws that this administration demanded and called for--laws that 
this administration came to the Congress and asked for in the 1994 
crime bill. Those laws which would be available and could be effective 
to stop the wave of violent predatory juvenile crime are being ignored 
by this administration.
  This administration suggests that if we just have more social 
programming it can continue to ignore the laws which it asked for, not 
enforce those laws, and somehow, if we stick our head in the sand of 
these social programs, that the problem of predatory, juvenile, 
violent, vicious, random crime will go away.
  For example, under the 1994 crime bill, it is a Federal offense for a 
juvenile to possess a handgun. What have we done about the thousands 
and thousands and thousands of juveniles committing crimes with 
handguns in violation of this Federal law that the President called 
for?
  The record is not good. Here is what the record show: We know that 
handguns were used in the greatest proportion of homicides committed by 
juveniles from 1976 to 1991. The data is clear. Why isn't President 
Clinton's Department of Justice prosecuting these Federal offenses 
associated with these possessions of handguns by juveniles?
  Over the last 5 years, only 14--over the last 5 years, only 14--
juveniles have been prosecuted as adults for Federal firearms 
violations. Meanwhile, in 1994 alone, 63,400 juveniles were arrested 
for weapons violations nationwide. If you have 60,000 plus per year and 
over the last 5 years we have only had 14 prosecuted as adults for 
weapons violations, we have a clear failure on the part of this 
administration to carry forward seriously against the epidemic wave of 
juvenile crime that has terrorized citizens across America not only in 
our urban centers but in our rural areas as well.
  In fact, the Clinton administration has prosecuted only 233 juveniles 
as adults since January 1993. At an average of 63,000 weapons offenses 
a year over the last 4 years, that would be over a quarter million 
offenses, and you have 233 prosecutions. We say we need more social 
programs, and we say we need more laws, and we have a law that makes it 
a crime for a juvenile to possess a handgun.
  The vast majority of these crimes are committed with handguns, and we 
walk away blandly to the next political rally and talk about the need 
for more laws and talk about the need for more gentle combinations and 
social programs into which we can thrust our head like the ostrich in 
the sand, but we do not do what is possible. We do not do what the 
Congress has authorized in terms of addressing this problem 
constructively. We must begin to treat criminals as criminals. The idea 
that somehow you can have fewer than two prosecutions per State per 
year when we are overrun with juveniles using handguns in the 
commission of crimes clearly in offense against the Federal law enacted 
by the Congress in 1994, and this Justice Department turns its head, I 
do not understand. I do not understand how the President can go before 
the public and say, well, we have good data and we are moving in the 
right direction. We are not moving in the right direction.
  This is not something that I raise as part of the political campaign. 
I addressed the National Association of Sheriffs several months ago in 
the presence of the Attorney General of the United States, with whom I 
was honored to share the podium, and I shared these same statistics at 
that time. I called upon the administration to begin to be serious 
about this epidemic which affects the safety, health, the quality of 
life, the existence, the capacity for life of so many people. 
Certainly, we cannot settle for the administration's record of two 
prosecutions per year per State.
  I think we have to send an unmistakably clear signal. We have to say 
to young people who are criminals, ``You are going to be held 
accountable.'' We cannot say that you are going to be treated as if you 
did not do what you did because you have been smart enough to realize 
that you are young enough to get away with it. We have provided a 
shield so that they could be assaulting others and deflect any return 
fire. It is time for us to say you cannot use your age as a shield or 
as part of the weaponry you use for an assault on society. Especially 
when this Congress has provided that juveniles in possession of 
handguns are in violation of the law, it is time for us to prosecute 
them for these violations, tens of thousands, twenties of thousands--
63,000 in 1 year, a typical year. The rate is going up, and we ignore 
it. We have 14 Federal firearms prosecutions over 5 years. There is 
more crime than street crime. Sometimes there is the unanswerable 
question about why we do not enforce the law we have and why we 
continue to ask for the promulgation of additional programs.
  In this Congress, we have made efforts to hold violent juvenile 
predators such as Antoyne White accountable. We have offered 
commonsense proposals, proposals that would take the purveyors of 
random violence and death off our streets. Frankly, in each of the 
proposals I have made and the modifications that we have tried to make 
to accommodate those who objected--the Democrats--have blocked us at 
every avenue, coming up with new objections. They have come up with new 
reasons to say we want to just persist with the gentle combination of 
social programming and the like.

  We Republicans have proposed making the records of violent and 
vicious juveniles more available to police, to judges and to school 
officials. Can you imagine being a schoolteacher and the juvenile 
records of a student are unavailable from another State, not part of 
the FBI system? A kid walks into the classroom wearing an electronic 
shackle, one of these radio transmitter bracelets so the authorities 
can keep track of him, but the juvenile laws and records are such that 
you cannot find out what this person did. As you start to go write on 
the blackboard, the student says, ``You don't know whether I murdered 
someone or raped someone, do you, Mrs. Jones?''. And Mrs. Jones says, 
``No, I don't.'' He says, ``Well, you can't find out. I am protected as 
a juvenile.''

[[Page S11630]]

  I have had teachers talk to me about situations just like that, and 
it is time we address those situations. But when we tried to, when we 
tried to provide that the records of violent and vicious juveniles be 
made more available to police, to judges and to school officials, we 
were blocked. A State trooper should know to be cautious with a 15-
year-old repeat carjacker from a city across the country; the idea that 
kids just grow up in a single neighborhood now and the constable or the 
sheriff would know who the kids are in the area no longer holds true.
  I talked to a sheriff from the middle of the State of Missouri, from 
a town called California, Moniteau County. I asked him what his biggest 
problem was. He said it was a couple of teenagers who had moved in from 
Cleveland and were developing the dope traffic there. I said, ``What is 
problematic about that?'' He says, ``I can't get any records. I can't 
get any information about them.''
  It is high time that people who are involved as criminals be labeled 
as criminals, understood as criminals and treated as criminals. Yet, 
when we have wanted to do just a fundamental thing like make their 
records available, we have been stopped. The administration has been 
silent and congressional Democrats have dismissed this approach.
  We have also proposed increasing funds available to States that try 
more juveniles as adults. Once again, the Democrats impeded this 
proposal. They said it was not a gentle combination, it was not gentle 
enough.
  We have also intended that Federal Government would begin to carry 
its fair share of the load in juvenile crime fighting. As I mentioned a 
moment ago, it is baffling to me that we have a situation with this 
administration where the Department of Justice is not enforcing the 
laws that are currently on the books. As this session of Congress 
closes, the Clinton administration has failed to help us with laws 
relating to juvenile predators and to reform juvenile justice laws, and 
it is a shame. The President can pose with police, but this 
administration's failures surrenders our streets to juvenile predators. 
I think it is time for us to work together on that. Gentle combinations 
simply will not get the job done. These teen predators deal drugs, 
threaten lives, they maim and kill, and in the very near future, all of 
the experts agree--even President Clinton has conceded in his remarks--
that there will be a veritable explosion of teen predators on the 
streets.
  It comes down to this. We have to ask ourselves in Congress and in 
our culture, and we need to ask this of the President, do we uphold the 
principles of law and order or do we cling to the discredited notion 
that 16-year-old gangsters who shoot their victims over $5 act out of 
youthful folly?
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. LEAHY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, what is the parliamentary situation?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate is now in morning business.
  Mr. LEAHY. Is there a time limit on statements?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is a time limit of 5 minutes, unless 
unanimous consent is obtained for a longer period.

                          ____________________