[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 84 (Tuesday, June 17, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H3840-H3846]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             JUVENILE CRIME

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hayworth). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. McCollum) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. McCOLLUM. Mr. Speaker, tonight I come to talk for a few minutes 
wearing my hat as chairman of the House Subcommittee on Crime. The 
reason that I do is because I have been engaged in discussions over the 
past few days and several weeks, for that matter, with respect to 
juvenile crime, where we are going with it, why the bill H.R. 3 was 
shaped the way it was to reform the juvenile justice system, and what 
is going to happen generally in relationship to the whole issue of 
crime in the United States and drugs, which are present on the minds of 
most Americans on a rather continual basis unfortunately.
  I thought that we should start this discussion for a minute by 
putting

[[Page H3841]]

things into perspective, the big picture. There have been a lot of 
statistics recently released by various agencies, the Department of 
Justice, some private institutions that would indicate that there has 
been a decline in the amount of crime, violent crime in the United 
States over the last few years. Indeed the good news is, there has been 
a marginal improvement in the rate of crime and in the numbers of 
violent crimes committed in the Nation as a whole over the last four 
consecutive reporting periods that the Department of Justice reports. 
But I do not think that this should give us any comfort or solace.
  The reason why we are still seeing on television every night violent 
crime being committed in this country, heinous murders, rapes, 
assaults, is because of the fact that there is not enough improvement 
in those crime rates, not by any stretch of the imagination. We are in 
a state of this country where, if you go to the grocery store, let us 
say the 7-11 store, at 10 or 11 at night now, it is four times more 
likely that you are going to be raped or robbed or murdered when you go 
to that 7-11 store than it was in 1960.
  To put that in real numbers, in 1960 there were 160 violent crimes 
for every 100,000 people in our population, and in 1995 there were 685 
violent crimes for every 100,000 people. That is 160 back in 1960 
versus 685 violent crimes for every 100,000 people this last reporting 
period we have in 1995.
  That is a remarkably larger amount of violent crime than most people 
are really willing to accept or understand exists. Just today we had a 
hearing in the Subcommittee on Crime on the issue of gangs and 
intimidation of witnesses who are supposed to testify in gang-related 
violent crime. Unfortunately, the witnesses, all of them in the 
prosecutorial arms of our State governments, from California to 
Pennsylvania to Utah, expressed grave concern about the fact that we 
are not getting the number of convictions that we used to get with 
respect to violent crime in their communities because witnesses are not 
coming forth. The reason they are not coming forth is because they are 
intimidated that other witnesses are being murdered in these gang 
violent situations in an attempt to keep people from coming out and 
telling what they know about what happened in these crimes.
  But along the way, in addition to discussing the intimidation factor, 
we got some alarming statistics given to us about the murder rate and 
crime rates in some of our larger cities. While it is true that in New 
York City, as one exception to this, and a dramatic exception where the 
crime rate has come down dramatically in the last year, and I commend 
Mayor Giuliani and his force for what they have done in that city to 
see that happen. Cities like Philadelphia have not had the same result. 
And the statistics that were given to us today from Philadelphia show 
that in 1965, the number of homicides in the city of Philadelphia were 
205. In 1996, there were 431. The city of Philadelphia has lost 
population since 1965, lost population. But the number of murders are 
up from 205 to 431.
  If that is not alarming enough, the so-called clearance rate, or the 
number of cases that are solved, that they get convictions on and find 
out who did the murder and produce some justice on them, in 1965, the 
clearance rate, the solving rate of these murders was 93 percent. There 
were only 15 unsolved homicides in the city of Philadelphia that year; 
but this past year in 1996, that rate had dropped from 93 percent 
solved, 93 percent clearance rate to 56 percent.
  There were 190 unsolved murders in the city of Philadelphia this last 
year. A large portion of that, it has been expressed to us, is because 
of this witness intimidation and the gang world that Philadelphia is 
locked in. But that is not unique to Philadelphia. Salt Lake City, 
Orlando, FL, Atlanta, GA, Chicago, Los Angeles, any of our larger 
cities are experiencing virtually the same type of results. Similar 
statistics are abundant in those communities. So even though you may 
get a good example once in a while of some very exceptionally good news 
like we had out of New York City last year where the number of murders 
was dramatically down, that is not true of the Nation as a whole.

  Violent crime is nowhere near a level that is acceptable or 
tolerable. What do we do about it and why has this become such a big 
problem? There are a lot of reasons of course. The root cause of crime 
can be traced back in many cases to single-parent families with 
poverty, lack of role models, no mentoring, a lack of education, a lack 
of hope. There are plenty of reasons why the underlying societal 
problems exist in many of our urban areas that produce conditions that 
lead youngsters into a path of crime and later violent crime.
  I want to discuss a couple of statistics tonight on the front end of 
this. That is the end we see when the police get out on the streets and 
our justice system has to face this situation and then come back and 
address the prevention side of this later on.
  The criminal justice system is currently failing to hold criminals 
accountable for their crimes. Of the 10.3 million violent crimes 
committed in 1992, the last year I have the full statistics for, the 
10.3 million in 1992, only 3.3 million were reported to the police. 
About 641,000 led to arrests, 165,000 to convictions, and only 100,000 
violent criminals received a prison sentence. About 76 percent of those 
prisoners will be back on the streets in 4 years or less.
  The only good news I can report is that, once truth in sentencing 
laws passed this Congress and passed now in roughly 25 of the States, 
at one time, before we passed them and sent incentive grant programs to 
build more prisons and to require prisoners who commit repeat violent 
felonies to serve at least 85 percent of their sentences, States could 
not get the money to build the prisons unless they went to that rule. 
We had only a half dozen States that had a rule that required any 
lengthy prison sentence to be served pretty much in full. But today 
about 25 States do and the Federal Government does. And so we are 
seeing now the percentage of time served by these repeat violent felons 
has gone up from about one-third of their sentences to about 50 percent 
or a little under 50 percent. I wish I could say it were higher, and I 
hope the other 25 States that have not yet adopted truth in sentencing 
have not yet gone to a rule requiring violent criminals to serve at 
least 85 percent of their sentences do so.
  But going back to this statistic, which is still very appropriate, 
albeit a couple years old, the last time we have it, the 10.3 million 
violent crimes committed in 1992, and really only about 100,000 violent 
criminals received any prison sentence at all.
  Now the truth of the matter is, it is really rough in this area, is 
that entirely too great a number of these violent crimes that we know 
about are being committed by juveniles, those under 18 years of age. 
Certainly those under 20 years of age.
  No population poses a greater public safety threat than juveniles and 
young adult criminals. More murder and robbery are committed by 18-
year-olds than any other age group and more rapes by 17-year-olds than 
any other age group. And more than one-third of all murders are 
committed by offenders under the age of 21, a really alarming 
statistic.
  Although the juvenile population is at its lowest that it has been 
since 1965, the juvenile crime rate has skyrocketed. The number of 
juveniles arrested for weapons offenses has more than doubled in the 
last decade. Murder among young people has increased 165 percent and 
juvenile gang killings have increased 371 percent between 1980 and 
1992.
  What is even more alarming is a surge in the number of juveniles in 
the next decade who will be in the age group most likely to commit 
these violent crimes. The juvenile population is expected to increase 
by 23 percent nationwide over the next 10 years. California, for 
example, can expect an increase of 33 percent in the next decade.
  This is really a tough message to bring home tonight to discuss, and 
I realize it is a lot of statistics to throw out, but the bottom line 
is that while we may feel good about ourselves when we see marginally 
declining violent crime rates around the Nation as a whole, it is 
simply misleading.
  We have far too much violent crime, particularly among juveniles. One 
of the great problems we have got today with the juvenile system, which 
I think is thoroughly broken, is the fact that juveniles learn quickly 
they can beat

[[Page H3842]]

the system. Only 10 percent of violent juvenile offenders receive any 
sort of institutional placement outside of the home, only 10 percent. 
The small percentage of juveniles who are placed in confinement for 
murder, rape, robbery, or assault will be back on the streets in an 
average of 353 days. They are youthful but dangerous.
  Juveniles 15 and younger were responsible for 64 percent of violent 
offenses handled by juvenile courts in 1994. And between 1965 and 1992, 
the number of 12-year-olds arrested for violent crime rose 211 percent. 
The number of 13- and 14-year-olds rose 301 percent, and the number of 
15-year-olds rose 297 percent.
  These numbers give you an indication of why we have to do something 
to fight violent juvenile crime more than we have been doing.
  So this Congress, this House, a few weeks ago passed H.R. 3, the 
Juvenile Justice Act, that is now being considered, a version of it, by 
the other body and will be, in fact, marked up by the Committee on the 
Judiciary of the other body tomorrow.
  This act has been mislabeled, misinterpreted, misunderstood by a lot 
of folks. The only thing this bill goes to is one but one very 
significant portion of the puzzle of how we get at this juvenile crime 
problem that is facing our Nation right now.
  We know that there is a drug problem out there. We know that there is 
an education problem. We know that there is a poverty problem. We know 
there are a lot of issues that we need to be addressing. What this bill 
gets at is just one facet of that, not to the exclusion of any of the 
others, but to bring balance and perspective into it.
  It gets it correcting or trying to correct a broken juvenile justice 
system that is allowing this to happen.

                              {time}  1930

  It is allowing a message to go out there to young people that if they 
go out in the evening with a group, a gang, or whatever, and they 
decide they are going to vandalize a home or a store or run over a 
parking meter, spray paint graffiti on a warehouse building, the police 
who catch them, if they are caught, are not going to take them into the 
juvenile justice system at all. They will not even take them downtown 
to book them. Chances are, they will ignore it because the system is 
overworked and they do not think the juvenile courts will put them away 
or do anything to them or punish them in any manner.
  But if they are taken in for something that is a misdemeanor crime, a 
juvenile delinquent act, a crime nonetheless, and a juvenile judge sees 
them, the chances are, in our urban areas at least, it will be 10 or 12 
appearances before that judge before any punishment at all is given. 
And by that I mean before community service or probation even, or 
something of the nature of community service, is given, any punishment 
for these kinds of offenses.
  Is it any wonder, then, the juvenile authorities tell us in the crime 
subcommittee, is it any wonder that later, having seen no consequences 
for their acts at all, that these young juveniles get a gun in their 
hands and pull the trigger because they do not believe there will be 
any consequences? They do not believe there will be any punishment. 
They do not believe there will be any accountability for their acts.
  First of all, they do not believe they are going to be caught and, 
second of all, when they do get caught, they do not believe, because 
they see their friends not having it happen to them, they do not 
believe they will be taken in or taken before a court. And, last but 
not least, they believe if they are, they will get a slap on the wrist. 
Even if they are, and ultimately the judge does give some kind of 
punishment for something really serious, a violent crime, and I am 
giving the average here, they will serve less than 350 days for murder, 
if they are a teenage violent criminal. I would submit that that is a 
huge, huge problem.
  So this broken juvenile justice system we have needs some fixing. 
What we did in this bill, in H.R. 3, that is now being considered in 
the other body and we hope to get to the President later this summer, 
what we did was two things:
  One, we proposed we correct the juvenile justice system at the 
Federal level and provide a model, even though there are very few 
juveniles that are actually brought before Federal judges in Federal 
courts for criminal acts, as opposed to those appearing in State 
courts.
  And then we did what was the most significant thing. We proposed a 
large grant program out of existing moneys that are set aside for 
fighting crime at the Federal level, $500 million a year over the next 
3 years, to the States in this country for the purposes of providing 
more probation officers, more juvenile judges, more detention 
facilities, any number of things I will mention in a minute, provided 
that the States assure the Justice Department that administers these 
grants that they have in place such laws and such regulations and such 
rules that every juvenile who commits a delinquent act, a crime, a 
misdemeanor crime of some sort, is punished from that very first 
delinquent act with some kind of sanction, be it community service or 
whatever. And that for every subsequent delinquent act that that 
youngster commits, that that juvenile receives an increasingly greater 
punishment on a graduated scale.
  And that prosecutors in the States, for those who are 15 and older, 
who commit murder or rape or assault with a gun, just those three 
things, that prosecutors be given permission in the States to 
prosecute, 15 years old and older, those who commit those three kinds 
of violent crimes, as adults. And even then there is the check of the 
juvenile judge being able to look over the shoulder of the prosecutor.
  And the third thing that we ask of the States to qualify for these 
moneys to improve their juvenile justice systems is that they keep 
records as adult records are kept for juveniles who commit a felony, if 
it is the second or greater crime they have committed.
  So we could have a felony committed, we could have had a murder 
committed by a juvenile, if it is the only offense that juvenile has 
ever committed, and have no records kept. Or we could have 10 or 12 
misdemeanor crimes and never have a record kept. But when we have had 
at least one misdemeanor crime or one felony crime and then have 
another one, and that is a felony, the records will have to be 
maintained, just as adults.
  The reason we want that qualification is because today when courts, 
particularly those who see somebody who gets to be 18, who is then an 
adult for the first time, then courts may see some young hoodlum who is 
a real thug, who has done some horrendously criminal act, maybe it is 
murder or maybe it is just a very violent shooting of some sort. If the 
judge sees that person and the judge has no record, he may not know 
this person at 17 and 16 and 15 committed an armful or two armsful of 
violent crimes, of murders or rapes or robberies or whatever it may be.
  No records in most States today are kept at all beyond the age of 17 
for these kinds of offenses. So we require, as a condition to receive 
these moneys, that the States keep those records or that they require 
those records to be kept in that given condition.
  Last but not least, to qualify the State has to assure the Federal 
Government that its juvenile judges are given the authority over 
parents who come before the judges with the juvenile to hold the 
parent, not responsible for the juvenile delinquent act, but for some 
charge or responsibility the judge may give to the parent to keep track 
of that child, to make sure that child performs the community service 
or the other admonition that the court may place on that juvenile. In 
other words, enforcing parental responsibility through the court, with 
court sanctions possible against the parent if they do not fulfill that 
commitment to the court.
  Now, in return for doing all of that, for being willing to make that 
kind of commitment, which is not in my judgment much, the States are 
going to be able to build, expand or operate juvenile detention 
facilities, develop and administer accountability-based sanctions for 
juvenile offenders, hire additional juvenile judges, probation 
officers, court-appointed defenders, and fund pretrial services for 
juveniles to ensure the expeditious administration of the system.
  They are going to be able to hire additional prosecutors to target 
violent juvenile offenders. They are going to be able to provide 
funding to enable prosecutors to address drug, gang and youth violence 
more effectively.

[[Page H3843]]

  Some of the funding could be provided, it is all at the discretion of 
the States what they use this for, for funding for technology, 
equipment and training that will assist in the prosecution of juvenile 
crime. They are going to be able to provide funding, if they choose, to 
enable juvenile courts and probation officers to become more effective 
and efficient; to get training, whatever it may take.
  They are going to be able to use these monies for the establishment 
of court-based juvenile justice programs that target young firearms 
offenders. They are going to be able to use the money, if they want, 
for the establishment of a drug court program for juvenile offenders; 
to establish and maintain interagency information sharing programs; to 
establish and maintain all kinds of accountability-based programs.
  Essentially, the list goes on and on of those things which are in the 
area of juvenile crime fighting that a State or local community can use 
the funds for, if they simply take the steps of holding young people 
accountable for the very first juvenile delinquent acts and giving them 
graduated sanctions thereafter for other acts.
  Now, why is this important? This is being criticized by some as an 
invasion of States rights. The Federal Government does not have any 
business in the juvenile justice system. We do not have very many 
juveniles in the system, why is the Federal Government getting 
involved? Well, I think I have already mentioned why we are getting 
involved. We are getting involved because there is a crisis in this 
Nation of very grave nature about violent juvenile crime.
  The juvenile justice systems of this Nation are not working. They are 
broken. They are not producing. We are not keeping the violent 
criminals. We are not keeping the records on them when they are young 
people. We are not punishing them. Most of all, we are not giving them 
any kind of a meaningful sanction to demonstrate there are consequences 
when they commit lesser offenses early on. There are no resources of 
any consequence going from the State legislatures and the State 
governments into the juvenile justice system to do these things.
  Yes, some States are doing and there is a movement towards doing the 
kind of thing that we do in part here, and that is encourage the 
treatment of those who commit, who are 15 and older, who commit violent 
crimes to be tried as adults. But the rest of this is not being done 
virtually at all.
  I think that itself is also important, although it is not the central 
reason for this juvenile justice legislation. Juvenile court judges 
transfer just under 3 percent of violent juvenile offenders to adult 
criminal court, according to the General Accounting Office. That is 
really too low.
  And according to the General Accounting Office of the Federal 
Government that does this survey, most juveniles prosecuted for serious 
offenses in adult criminal courts are convicted and incarcerated. 
Barely one-third of juveniles prosecuted for serious offenses in 
juvenile court are convicted and confined. Probation is the most common 
disposition by juvenile courts, and it is what should be the case for 
first time offenders for these lesser offenses, but not for the violent 
perpetrators, particularly repeat violent perpetrators of crimes who 
happen to be, just happen to be 14, 15, 16 or 17 years of age.
  Now, having said all of that, I do not want anybody to be mistaken. 
Again, this is not the entire picture. We need to revive the juvenile 
justice system. There is a need for national leadership. While it may 
be a State matter, there is a need to have incentive grants, there is a 
need for a carrot to encourage the States to do what has to be done and 
to give some resources, albeit limited for the next 3 years, to the 
States and local communities to revive these systems and make them work 
again.
  If we do not do that, the increased numbers of juveniles that are 
coming of age in the population most likely to commit violent crimes is 
going to knock our socks off in terms of what happens to the violent 
crime rate in this Nation over the next few years. The FBI, everybody 
concurs in that fact.
  Now, let me step back for a minute and try to put this into another 
perspective. I have already said prevention is important, and it is. 
The Federal Government today has $4 billion worth of prevention for at-
risk youth. Four billion of money is spent every year. I cannot say it 
is all spent wisely. There are 130 different at-risk youth programs 
today in the Federal Government, 131 of them. There are somewhere 
around 13, 14 agencies of the Federal Government that are administering 
these programs. But there are that many. That is $4 billion worth every 
year.
  And I support doing that. I think we should consolidate some of these 
programs, reexamine them, probably do something differently with them. 
Maybe give a lot more discretion to the States, counties and cities as 
to how to use it. But prevention is important, and education and 
mentoring and all those things are important.
  Also involved is a bill that will be coming out here shortly to the 
floor from the Committee on Education and the Workforce, I believe they 
are marking it up in the House tomorrow, on the Office of Juvenile 
Justice and Delinquency Prevention. It is a reauthorization, and it 
will provide at least another quarter of a billion, $250 million or 
more, for prevention programs. That is a very important piece of 
legislation and I wholeheartedly support it.
  Again, it is balance. We need balance. We need prevention but we also 
need to make the juvenile justice system work. We need to make the 
whole justice system work. We need to have swiftness and certainty of 
punishment, which is the truth-in-sentencing part of this, making 
violent criminals serve most of their sentences, sending a deterrent 
message out there again to the adult criminal population and to the 
juveniles that when they do the crime they are going to do the time. 
When they do a crime, even a misdemeanor crime and they are a juvenile, 
there will be some punishment. There will be some consequence, some 
sanction involved in that.
  Will that solve all of the problems? No. But we will be a lot better 
off if we do it, because the system does not have that today. It used 
to have that in the system and it just simply does not.
  Now, in addition to prevention, in addition to that we have a bill 
coming out of the Subcommittee on Crime later this summer dealing 
specifically with gangs, expanding the interstate efforts the Federal 
Government is making in helping the States and the counties and the 
cities fight gang problems, witness intimidation being a big part of 
that, problems with the wiretap laws being a part of this. There are a 
number of things that need to be addressed specifically because gangs 
are peculiar and present peculiar problems.
  And then, not the least of all, this is a concern I have, and I think 
all of us share, over the relationship of violent youth crime to drugs 
and drug trafficking.
  Our committee has the oversight of the FBI and the Drug Enforcement 
Administration, among other things, and I have been intimately involved 
for a number of years with the war on drugs. It disturbs me when I read 
about our Office of Drug Policy issuing a statement like they did last 
year, that the term ``war on drugs'' is not appropriate.
  I think it is very appropriate. We need to be conducting a war on 
drugs. We are truthfully not doing that today. We do not have a 
mission, we do not have a defined plan that we can execute that says 
when this is accomplished, we have won the war.

  We know the use rate among young people is skyrocketing today, of 
cocaine and marijuana, and the sale of those drugs and the street crime 
associated with it is staggering and it is a big part of this overall 
picture. We have a lot of laws on the books but we are not doing a very 
good job of enforcing them, and we are doing a very poor job of 
education and prevention.
  What strikes me that is similar about this part of the picture to the 
juvenile crime bill that we just put through is the fact that we get 
into debate over these matters and it is an either/or proposition for 
too many people. I have a lot of folks, a lot of my colleagues say to 
me, ``Gosh, on the juvenile justice bill we do not have a prevention 
component in it.'' That bill is not designed for the prevention side of 
this. That does not mean we do not want prevention assistance in 
legislation, but that is not what the juvenile

[[Page H3844]]

justice bill is about. It is to repair a broken juvenile justice 
system.
  Well, in a drug war the same can be said. I hear a lot of people say, 
and a RAND study recently said that it is more cost-effective to treat, 
to treat those who have drug habits and are addicted, than it is to 
incarcerate or put people in jail who use drugs. Well, we do not put 
people in jail because they use drugs; we put people in jail who commit 
drug trafficking offenses, and usually pretty darned large quantities, 
quantities large enough to be concerning a lot more than themselves and 
their own personal use.
  We need to do both. We need to have a balanced approach. We need to 
have drug treatment, but drug treatment does not stop drugs from 
getting to a young person who has never used them before. We need to do 
that. That is the single biggest problem on the street today in 
America, is the fact that we have so much exposure to cheap drugs, 
cheaper than ever.
  What we have seen on the drug scene in the United States over the 
last few years is that, and particularly cocaine, which is the number 
one drug of choice in the United States, and to some extent with 
heroin, the quantity is way up and the price is way down. It is cheaper 
than ever, and, therefore, more people are going to use it. The only 
way we can get our arms around this matter is to do things, several 
things.

                              {time}  1945

  One is we have to interdict drugs coming to this country in much 
larger quantities than we are. That is, we have to intercept them and 
capture them and stop them from getting here. That may be done in 
foreign countries. It may be down in Colombia or in Peru before those 
drugs get here, before they are made into the crack or the powder form 
that is used on the streets. It may be done in transit across the Gulf 
of Mexico or the Pacific Ocean or through Mexico, however it is coming 
here, by air. But we need to do a much better job of interdicting and 
stopping drugs from coming in here.
  We need to set a policy that says how much we are interdicting. DEA, 
the Drug Enforcement Agency, sort of estimates that we are interdicting 
about a third of the drugs, maybe 30 percent, but nobody knows what we 
are interdicting. What we do know is that the numbers, the quantity 
percentage-wise at least, is way down from what it was in the late 
1980's and the early 1990's that we are interdicting, and what we are 
seeing is that we are paying a very big price for that. Again, a low 
price for the drugs, a big price in terms of society.
  What we have not done and we need to do and I challenge this 
administration to do, and that is to set a standard, a goal, or an 
objective for interdiction to win the war on drugs, that portion of it 
dealing with stopping the flow from coming in here or slowing it down, 
set a goal by a certain year, the year 2000, 2001, 2002, something very 
soon, of interdicting at least 80 percent of the drugs coming into this 
country.
  Because they tell me if we can interdict or we can stop the flow into 
this country of 60 percent or better of the cocaine and heroin and that 
drug market that is the big bulk of it from coming here, we will affect 
the price, the price will go up, and thereby the amount of use will go 
down. Fewer kids will get onto drugs to begin with. And if we can get 
it up into that 75-80 percent range, we will make the job of law 
enforcement and education and all the other efforts we have to prevent 
kids from getting on drugs much more effective and much more 
manageable.
  But we need to set the goal. We need to say there is a defined 
objective here. There is over 500 metric tons of cocaine I am told that 
reach our shores every year. That is an incredible amount. 500 metric 
tons. I cannot even imagine that. That is what is happening today. We 
need to knock off a whole lot more than we are today, 80 percent of 
that flowing our way, and then set that as a goal.
  Then we need to provide the resources to do that, to the Coast Guard, 
to the Customs, to the military. The Air Force, the Army, the Navy need 
to be given the resources to stop this flow in the right way and the 
authority to do it in the right way.
  Right now, for example, the Coast Guard flies drug intercept missions 
in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean on C-130 planes. They have 10 
or 12 of them. They do not fly at night when these drugs are being 
transported by these small vessels because they do not have any night 
vision. And vessels from Colombia to Puerto Rico to the Virgin Islands, 
wherever they come out, these smaller boats are smart. The guys running 
those, this is organized crime doing this. They have got it figured 
out.
  They just run the boats really fast at night. And during the daytime 
with the whitecaps down there, they slow the boats down or hardly run 
them at all and we cannot spot them with the naked eye from an 
airplane. We do not have the equipment to be able to see them. These C-
130 planes that the Coast Guard has do not have any forward-looking 
infrared, night vision, the type of thing we would expect them to have. 
So they cannot see at night, they are not equipped to do it, and they 
do not fly at night.
  Now that is tying more than one arm behind the Coast Guard's back, 
and they have the primary interdiction responsibility at sea. That is 
just one example of the many things that need to be done to combat this 
war on drugs and to get at the major drug traffickers in the area of 
stopping the drugs from getting here.
  Once we look at that side of the equation, which is the supply side, 
we also need to look at the demand side. The demand side is the side 
where we have the users. Education and the message on not using drugs 
is not being out there. The leadership of the Nation is not speaking 
out as effective as it should be. Some of us are working with our 
leadership on the Republican side, and I certainly hope that the 
Democrats will join us in all of this, on developing a broad plan over 
the next couple of years to join with the administration, I hope, in 
making the awareness of this whole issue much greater than it has been 
so we can set a defined way when we have at home won the war on drugs, 
not just interdicting 80 percent, which will be extremely helpful and 
absolutely essential, by the way, to be able to get the numbers down 
into some defined basis for use at home that are meaningful, but to get 
the use rate among young people down from the level now, which is 
somewhere hovering around 6 percent to somewhere in the neighborhood of 
3 percent, which is back where it was 20 or 30 years ago.
  While that is something I do not want to see, that pie use rate, it 
is at least manageable. It is like the statistic on murders and the 
crime rate, the violent crime in this country, much, much more 
acceptable rate back in the 1960's per capita of our population than it 
is today. We need to get the drug use rate way down, especially among 
young people.
  One of those ways is to have a television campaign, and I do applaud 
the President for his support of getting some funding out of Congress 
to do some paid television advertising to get the message out about the 
badness and the thing they should not be doing when drugs are offered 
to young people. I think, unfortunately, as much free television as I 
would like to see the media offer, and I believe more of them are 
willing and receptive every day and we need to have more drug 
coalitions that my colleagues join in their communities in producing to 
get the media, to get the local television and radio stations in 
particular and newspapers involved in spreading the word about how bad 
drug use is to young people and to get into the schools and to get into 
our businesses of having drug-free workplaces more acceptably and more 
frequently. As much as that is important in this process, we need to 
stimulate this with a concerted, combined effort that gets us into the 
position where we can have a reduction and overall campaign that does 
this.
  But it is not in a vacuum. We cannot put all our marbles into one 
basket. And, yes, treatment is important. For those who are addicted, 
those who are on the drugs, whether they are on the streets as 
relatively minor offenders or whether they are offenders at all in 
terms of criminal activity, treatment is important, and we should not 
forget them and we should put a balanced amount of resources into them.
  But to anybody who says to me that there is too much money being 
spent on interdiction and other things, law enforcement in the drug 
area and not

[[Page H3845]]

enough on treatment, I would say that is just the opposite of what the 
case is. Less than 10 percent of the Federal drug fighting budget of 
this Government, less than 10 percent is used on interdiction, on 
stopping drugs from getting here, on helping the Coast Guard or the 
Army or the Navy or the Customs or the DEA or anybody else stop the 
drugs from getting here in the first place, less than 10 percent.

  That is not a balanced approach. We need to beef up our interdiction 
efforts. We need to stop as much of the 500-plus metric tons from 
getting here as humanly possible, set a target for doing it, like 80 
percent, go after it with all the power and resources of our 
Government. If we need more airplanes and ships and manpower days, and 
I think we certainly do, we need to provide that and we need to be 
creative about it. And at the same time, we need to have an all-out 
effort and education directed at our kids at every level, from the 
grass roots in the community to a national television advertising 
campaign, some of it paid for and some of it voluntarily done, because 
it cannot all be one way or the other. We need to have national 
figures, sports figures and figures whom young people look up to, be 
more forceful with their support for this program. We need to have rock 
stars and music stars and movie stars, who kids identify with, get with 
the program and join us in this. And we need to have the business 
interests, the moguls of television and movies and music, join in this 
effort. They should establish drug-free workplace programs for all of 
the recording studios in this country and all of the movie studios in 
this country. They should have drug-free workplaces and drug testing 
for their employees and their artists, just as the businesses of this 
country have done in many communities today to establish drug-free 
workplaces. There has to be a unified balanced approach to win this war 
on drugs. There has to be. And, yes, drug treatment is a part of that 
too.
  That brings me back to violent juvenile crime. So much violent 
juvenile crime is based on drug trafficking. There is no question about 
it. If we do not get at the issue of drugs, then we cannot expect to 
really get the numbers of violent crimes committed by young people and 
committed against our citizenry down to a norm that was in the range 
that it was back years ago on a percentage of our population.
  At the same time, though, we cannot lose track of the fact that there 
are other missing pieces. We just do not go after drugs and just after 
the drug kingpins, which we all want to do, we also correct broken 
juvenile systems around the country, we put consequences back in it for 
juveniles, we go after those who have done these crimes in the streets, 
particularly in the United States. There are organized criminals 
distributing the drugs, ordering the murders. There are gangs that need 
to be addressed. All of this needs to be done in a composite. There 
needs to be an overall view of this taken, not one peace of the puzzle 
to the exclusion of another.
  I did this special order time tonight because I wanted to talk about 
crime in America and to put it in perspective. That is the primary 
thrust of it. I do not want to diverge very much from it, but I have a 
few minutes remaining and I do want to address another subject very 
briefly.
  Before I leave crime, though, I have got to say that there are 
hundreds of thousands of men and women in this Nation every day working 
on the streets of the United States and in many foreign countries to 
try to protect us from these criminal elements, from these drug 
dealers, men and women wearing the uniforms of the police and law 
enforcement, men and women serving as judges and probation officers, 
men and women who have worked long and hard hours in many, many 
ministerial duties all over this country trying to protect us and 
giving of their lives in many cases to do so.
  While we read about the problems we may have with an FBI crime lab in 
a famous case like the McVeigh trial, which did apparently turn out 
well in the end, at least most Americans I think believe justice was 
done, while we do have our problems, occasionally reading about a Waco 
or something else where a mistake is made by law enforcement, by and 
large, those men and women have been doing an outstanding job for our 
Nation; and we should be behind them, we should be supportive of our 
police and our law enforcement and our justice officials at all levels.
  Where there are those who carry on activities we do not approve of, 
we have got to let the public know and we have got to bring them to 
account. But by and large, they are doing a magnificent job, and we 
need to support them, both from the standpoint of Government and the 
public. And where they are the silent heroes, we need to applaud them 
wherever we get the opportunity.


                  Support Helms-Burton or Libertad Act

  There is a criminal south of my State of Florida a few miles by the 
name of Fidel Castro, and I cannot let the evening go by without 
raising the fact that he has been in power for 38 years and he has 
strangled freedom in that tiny island and we have a very, very 
difficult situation still going on with one of the few dictatorial 
regimes, professed communist regimes left in the entire world just 90 
miles off our coast.
  The reason I raise it tonight, though, is not simply because I do 
think what he does rises to the level of criminality, much like those 
who are the drug lords and the major violent criminals perpetrating 
these horrendous crimes in the United States, but because in a few days 
the President of the United States has an opportunity again to enforce 
a portion of a law designed to bring down Castro's regime and his 
dictatorship; and I fear, based upon representations the President has 
made, that for the third consecutive time, he is going to pass that 
opportunity by. I think that the public needs to hold the President 
accountable and there needs to be a more thorough debate on this 
subject, and I am dedicated to the proposition of making that debate 
occur.
  Just to bring everybody up to speed on what I am talking about is 
that Castro benefits from unjust enrichment by using property 
confiscated from individuals and private corporations that he 
confiscated and he stole when he came to power years and years ago. 
This property was owned by individuals and corporations of American 
citizens, of U.S. nationals. Many of the major companies of the United 
States owned businesses in Castro's Cuba before he became the one who 
is in charge down there in his dictatorship.
  We passed a piece of legislation not too long ago in the last 
Congress called the Helms-Burton or the Libertad Act that codifies all 
existing Cuban embargo executive orders and regulations, denies 
admission to the United States to aliens involved in the confiscation 
of U.S. property in Cuba or the trafficking of confiscated U.S. 
property in Cuba, and allows, and this is the important one here, 
allows U.S. nationals to sue for money damages in U.S. Federal Court 
those persons that traffic in U.S. property confiscated in Cuba, which 
is the so-called unjust enrichment issue.
  Now I am going to say to my colleagues that this is a problem because 
the President has been given the power in legislation if he thinks it 
is in the national interest of the United States and would promote 
democracy in Cuba to waive the enforcement of this last provision. That 
is to say, he is not going to let U.S. nationals, American citizens sue 
in United States court those companies and businesses in other 
countries like Canada and Germany and France, and so on, who are 
operating businesses in Cuba today, benefitting from those businesses 
that are actually owned by the American citizens.
  But if the President thinks, and he says he does believe that this 
furthers the national interest of the United States to not allow this 
provision to take place, not allow these lawsuits to take place, a huge 
ability of the United States to both be fair to its American citizens 
for property being improperly taken from them is withdrawn and 
withheld, but also a tool to further pressure in a meaningful way Mr. 
Castro to get him out of office, to get him out of the power structure 
he has been in for years is lost.

                              {time}  2000

  It is beyond me why the President is about to do that again. He first 
did it last year about the middle of the year, around July 4. He waived 
it again in early January of this year. And I believe that he will do 
it again the weekend of July 4 this year, which is a kind

[[Page H3846]]

of ironic time, our national Independence Day, to be running around 
waiving this provision. I urge him not to waive this. This is title III 
of the Helms-Burton bill, the Libertad Act. It is critical that this be 
enforced. Because our allies by the encouragement and the not saying 
anything to their businesses and companies that are operating and 
benefiting from U.S.-owned businesses in Cuba are encouraging the use 
of stolen property and they are encouraging contributions through this 
method to Castro's economy which otherwise would not be able to sustain 
this dictator in power. I think it is abysmal and abominable that the 
President would choose to thumb his nose at this piece of legislation 
and continue to not let these lawsuits go forward.
  Our allies in Europe and in Canada are crying about this. We have 
seen a lot in the media lately over the last few months that this is 
terrible, that somehow we are doing something against them and their 
businesses and that we are interfering with trade and we are doing all 
kinds of things. Mr. Speaker, it is really not the case.
  The case is that there is nothing unfair in my judgment, and I would 
not think anybody else's, to allow a business interest in the United 
States that is properly and legally owning, and recognized by 
international law as owning a business in Cuba from suing in United 
States court a foreign business, not the government but the business, 
from Canada or Europe or wherever who is doing business here in the 
United States as well, that is why the courts of the United States 
would have jurisdiction, suing them in United States Federal Court for 
the unjust enrichment, for the gains, the profits they are making on 
the American businessman or his business's property that he owns. It 
just makes common sense to. It is good foreign policy. It should be 
good economic policy. The world should adopt it as part of the 
international accords that exist out there. Certainly it should be our 
sovereign right, and what Congress is intending to do and was intending 
to do with the Helms-Burton Act, to let American businesses collect 
rightfully what is theirs in United States courts if they have the 
right to do so, if they have jurisdiction to do so.
  I know it is a little complicated, but if a foreign business is doing 
business in the United States, the law that Mr. Clinton is saying he is 
not going to let happen, that we passed out here, if he would let it 
happen, would allow American businesses that own property in Cuba, 
internationally recognized that they still own it, that was confiscated 
years ago, would allow them to sue for this extra profit, this unjust 
enrichment being made on their property, with contracts these 
businesses in the other countries have in Cuba, that they have to 
operate or run or manage or sell products through the businesses that 
are American-owned but not in American hands that are still in Cuba.
  If the President does not change his ways, if he waives for the third 
consecutive time the title III provisions, it is my intent when this 
Congress reconvenes after the July 4 recess to introduce legislation 
that would abolish his right to make this waiver. I am all for giving 
the President tools to operate under, but when he abuses it as he 
apparently is about to do for 3 consecutive times without making a case 
that I think is justifiable or this Congress should think is 
justifiable for doing that, then it is time for this body to withdraw 
the power of the President to make that waiver. It is time to let the 
American national interest prevail over the interests of some of our 
allies and their rather belligerent voices that are about all we are 
hearing today in the media. America first in this case. There is no 
reason why it should not be first. There is no reason particularly when 
we have got a dictator like Castro ripping us off and then having our 
allies' businesses stick it in our faces even more and rip us off a 
second time to the benefit of Castro. That is absolutely the height of 
absurdity. I cannot see how waiving this provision and letting them 
continue to do this is in the national interest of the United States or 
in any way furthers democracy in Cuba. I just cannot see it. I would 
suggest tonight as we are talking about crime and drugs and heinous 
things that it is perfectly appropriate to talk about trying to do 
something to get rid of Castro, free the people of Cuba and help the 
American businessman and citizen recover some of his lost property that 
is down there right now. I am again announcing that I intend to 
introduce such legislation.
  To bring this back full scope before I yield back my time, I want to 
say again that as the chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime in the 
House, I took out this time this evening to paint a broad big picture 
on the issue of crime in America today. I would repeat for my 
colleagues who may not have picked up all I have been saying this 
evening that there is a big picture out there. While the rate of 
violent crime has slightly declined in the United States marginally 
over the last 4 years, it is still way too high. We had 160 violent 
crimes for every 100,000 people in our population in 1960. In the last 
measurable year, in 1995, we had 685 violent crimes for every 100,000 
people; 685 compared to 160 for the same number of people in our 
population. Now this reduction, this tiny fraction of that, in our 
country. We have an enormously large proportion of those violent crimes 
being committed by juveniles under the age of 18, more murders by 18-
year-olds than any other age group, more rapes by 17-year-olds, a huge 
proportion of the violent crime in this country by juveniles, and we 
are about to see a big, big increase, a 23 percent increase in the 
number of juveniles in the age group most likely to commit these 
violent crimes over the next 10 years. I think that if we do not make 
steps that correct the problems of a broken juvenile justice system and 
give law enforcement more tools and get with it on the war on drugs and 
actually define how we win that war and provide our Coast Guard and our 
Customs and our law enforcement community, our military with the 
resources necessary to accomplish those goals and objectives to win the 
war on drugs, unless we do all of those things, unless we put 
consequences back into the juvenile justice system so that when a kid 
vandalizes a store or home they know they are going to get some 
sanction for that misdemeanor crime, as well as if they commit a 
violent crime of murder or rape or assault with a gun that they are 
going to be tried as adults more likely than not and given long 
sentences, unless we put consequences back into the acts of our 
criminal laws, both for juveniles and for adults, and mean something 
about swiftness and certainty of punishment and mean there is a 
deterrent out there, all of the other things we may do to try to 
control the problems of drugs and crime in our streets today will be 
wishful thinking. It does not mean I am against prevention, it means I 
am for a balanced approach; $4 billion in prevention programs, I think 
we should continue a lot of those, we should consolidate them, we 
should do them, but we should also correct and repair a broken juvenile 
justice system and we should do something to make certain that we have 
a war on drugs that is winnable, define the mission and the goal, 
charge the right individuals with the responsibility to carry out that 
war in a way that is designed to win it rather than tying their hands 
behind their backs, give them the resources necessary, put all of this 
into a comprehensive program over the next 3 or 4 years and just get 
the job done. It can be done.
  We are drowning in a sea of violence, we are drowning in a sea of 
drugs. America deserves better. We can have it better. We need to pass 
H.R. 3 in both the House and in the Senate, but we need to do a lot 
more than that as well.
  Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to bring this message to my 
colleagues.

                          ____________________