Congressional Record, Volume 143 Issue 85 (Wednesday, June 18, 1997)

[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 85 (Wednesday, June 18, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5893-S5900]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

JUVENILE CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, S. 10, the juvenile justice bill that
will shortly be before this Senate, is one of the best pieces of
legislation for law enforcement that I have seen in a number of years.
I am absolutely convinced that it is the finest reform of criminal
justice in at least 20 years.
This bill was crafted last term by Senator Hatch, who is a prime
sponsor

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of it and who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee. I have had the
dual honors of serving as the chairman of the Juvenile Violence
Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee and also of working with him on
this legislation. We are very proud of the bill that has been produced.
We think it will do tremendous things for law enforcement. It is the
kind of bill that does what it ought to do. It is not designed to get
headlines; it is designed to improve the system of criminal justice in
America.
Mr. President, I served for 17 years, the better part of my
professional career, as a prosecutor. It has been a particular honor
for me to be able to have the opportunity to participate in reforming
juvenile justice in America, because I know from my firsthand personal
experience, gained as a U.S. attorney and as attorney general of
Alabama, that this system is not working well.

I am pleased at this time to be able to recognize Senator John
Ashcroft of Missouri to speak on this issue. He is a former attorney
general of Missouri, and spent two terms, 8 years, as Governor of that
great State. He is a student of juvenile crime and the crime issue in
general. He has spoken eloquently on it in our committee. He will be
having hearings later this week in Missouri on this issue, and I will
be pleased to join with him at that time.
He has some remarks that he would like to share about this bill. At
this time, I am honored to recognize the Senator from Missouri, Mr.
John Ashcroft.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri is recognized.
Mr. ASHCROFT. Thank you, Mr. President, and I thank the Senator from
Alabama.
I, too, am eager to express my appreciation for the reminder and the
sobering thoughts expressed by the Senator from Kentucky. Each of us
has a sense of loss whenever any of us suffers in our families the kind
of challenge that comes when a father is deceased.
I remember very well my father coming to this Chamber to witness my
swearing in as a Senator some 2\1/2\ years ago. My father was on his
``last legs,'' and he died before he made it home. But he had the sense
of knowing that I had come here to do and to support things in which
both he and I believed. I think that meant a lot to my father.
I know that at this time, the minority leader, Senator Daschle, is
very proud of his father and grateful for his father. I think he can
have some sense of assurance that his father was grateful for him and
appreciated a son who would devote himself in the national interest to
doing what was, in his judgment, best for his country.
It is in that sense that each of us has the profound privilege of
shaping public policy. Perhaps that is as great a privilege as any of
us enjoys from the Creator, that He allows us literally to participate
in creating the world in which we will live. We are all destined to
live in some tomorrows, and our children are destined to live in some
tomorrows, and we have a chance to shape those tomorrows. I believe
that is what the process of developing plans involves; it is the
process of developing legislation to try to build a framework in which
our community respects the ability of individuals to reach the
potential that God has placed within each of us.
So it is with that in mind that I think we are compelled to address a
significant problem, which is a challenge to America and a threat to
our future: The growing problem of violent juvenile crime.
It is not that we say that although there is a problem, there is
nothing we can do about it. We believe that we can remediate this
situation. We believe that we can address this challenge, and we
believe that we can be successful. We believe, however, that to do so
we are going to have to change some things, because the things that we
have been doing in the past were designed to address a different
category of circumstances, a different character of culture. What we
have done in the past is not working today.
As a matter of fact, what we do will be instructive to the next
generation. The way in which we view violent juvenile crime signals to
the next generation how we respect life, what we intend in terms of
order and responsibility. If we take crime lightly, they will take
order lightly, because an infraction of order by way of criminal
activity is something we don't care much about. If we take crime
seriously and we impose serious consequences and we demand
responsibility, the next generation will say order is something to be
valued, because when it is interrupted, that order is restored as a
matter of serious concern.

The truth of the matter is, perhaps more important than anything we
do in any singular sense is the way in which we transmit values from
one generation to the next. More important than any other
responsibility of a culture is the transmission of values from one
generation to the next. I think that as we have assembled our policy
relating to juvenile crime, we have been transmitting the wrong values,
we have been saying the wrong things, we have been doing the wrong
things, unfortunately, because we tended to say juvenile crime is the
equivalent of acts of mischief, that it is to be disregarded like
shooting paper wads or spitballs in the hall.
You remember the Charlie Brown rock-and-roll song of the fifties,
always doing those kinds of mischief things. We are not talking about
mischief in juvenile crime; we are talking about assault and murder,
armed robbery and rape. These are the parts of the criminal composite
that are escalating; they are not declining.
At the same time that we have been effective in helping to curb a
growth rate in violent adult crime, we are equally alarmed by the
evidence that we are not succeeding in reducing juvenile crime. One of
the reasons is that our approach to juveniles hasn't been an approach
to them as criminals. It has been an approach based on some less-than-
accurate understanding of what has really happened. We have thought of
it as delinquency; we have thought of it as something less than crime.
If your wife is raped or if you are assaulted or if your child is
murdered, you get a sense that this is not delinquency, it is not
mischief. It is crime. I think as we try to send the right signal, as
we try to make a commitment for the right kind of posture for our
culture in the next generation, we need to say that violent crime
committed by juveniles will be taken seriously.
That is one of the very important things that Senator Sessions has
been able to make sure persists as a unifying thread of character
through this S. 10 legislation--that violent crime is serious crime and
it is not to be taken lightly because someone is less than 16 or less
than 17 or less than 18 years of age. A murder is a murder. It involves
a death. It involves a tragedy. A rape is the same. And this thread of
seriousness is important.
So when we learn that violent crime arrests among juveniles in 1995
were 12 percent higher than they were in 1991, we know that we have not
won the battle. And when we learn that they were 67 percent higher than
they were in 1986, we know that the challenge remains for us to do
something.
When you see the raw data, when you see the statistics and the
carnage that happens to real families stacking up, you know that you
cannot sit idly by. Although the most recent data may reflect some
improvement, the problem is really destined only to get worse given the
demographics. Those who tell us about the future say, given that the
children who were born during the baby boom of the eighties will start
to reach the potential ages for the commission of crimes, that we are
in for real problems if we don't adjust the way we approach this
problem.
One of the areas that I think needs our attention most radically is
the area of juvenile crime records. Because we have thought of juvenile
criminal activity as being mischief or inconsequential, we have decided
to keep any records of juvenile activities very, very closely guarded.
And we have an anomalous situation where we have juveniles who are not
treated as criminals even though they have committed crimes like
murder, rape, armed robbery, armed assault.
They are sent into our classrooms, and yet the teacher in the
classroom has no capacity of knowing what the student has done. As a
matter of fact, frequently, with the mobility that exists in the
American culture now, people move from one State to another and they
take their children with them, or the children move from one

[[Page S5895]]

State to another, and their record exists only in one State.
They go into a school room, they go into a community, and the law
enforcement community does not know about the heritage of criminal
activity, the history of the individual, the threatening nature, the
violent proclivities of an individual. They do not have such
information because the juvenile records have not been available.
Juvenile records have been sealed, and law enforcement officials and
school officials simply have not had access.
In the few States where they have had some access, that access is
limited to students who committed the criminal activity within the
State. We all know about the interstate mobility of people in our
culture. As a matter of fact, those individuals who get in trouble
frequently are the same individuals who are most active in crossing
State lines. Our law enforcement officials need better access to
juvenile records.
Our school officials need access. I talked to a teacher who said that
individuals were assigned to her classroom who were wearing electronic
shackles. You know, that is the new technology where you put a bracelet
around someone's foot. It is very durable plastic and cannot be cut off
easily. It has a transmitter so law enforcement officials can know the
whereabouts of the person wearing the electronic shackle.
The teacher says that the students are capable of coming into the
room and the teacher cannot know what they have done. I would be very,
very reluctant as a teacher to see a student with an electronic shackle
on his or her ankle reflecting the likelihood that some kind of very
serious offense had taken place and still not have any ability to know
what that student had done.
The student comes from another State and has been assigned to a
juvenile facility in your State but the record is sealed. You are
supposed to turn your back on such a student and write on the board,
not knowing whether the student is a rapist or a murderer. I find that
to be a very serious challenge to the kind of atmosphere we need in the
classrooms. At least I think school officials have a special need.
I talked to a judge one time who was sentencing an individual for a
very, very serious crime and did not have access to the records of this
individual, who had lived in another State previous to the crime, and
later learned that the individual had been involved in previous
homicides.
I think judges, when they are issuing penalties, need to know what
the history of an individual is, what kind of criminal activity has
filled the past of that individual--not just the things that have
happened since the person turned 18--because some of these individuals,
given the violent criminal nature that pervades some components of the
juvenile community, have a rap sheet that would extend from here to
Cincinnati in terms of detailing violent activity that ought to be
before the sentencing authority.
Juvenile records simply do not survive the juvenile's 18th birthday,
and in many situations people start out with a clean slate. I think it
is great to allow people to start over again in life. I think that is
the marvelous part of what America has meant through the years. We let
people get new starts in this country. But I think we have to protect
ourselves. We should not say to anybody, ``You can do anything you want
up to the time you are 18, and then you get to wipe it all clean and
you'll be considered to be an Eagle Scout until your first offense, and
then, even then, the judge won't be able to find what's happened to
you.''

I really believe that inadequate records hamper law enforcement
authorities. According to Police Chief David G. Walchak, who is the
immediate past president of the International Association of Chiefs of
Police, law enforcement is in desperate need of access to juvenile
criminal records. The police chief said:

Current juvenile records (both arrest and adjudication) are
inconsistent across [State lines], and are usually
unavailable to the various programs' staff who work with
youthful offenders.

It seems to me that if we are going to try to work with young people
to have them change what they have done, allowing the juvenile justice
system to hide what they have done is not really a way for us to
confront the past and to change it. We cannot be clouding it and
concealing it if we want to change it. I think to make real change you
have to confront what has happened and move forward.
Chief Walchak also notes:

If we in [law enforcement] don't know who the youthful
offenders are, we can't appropriately intervene.

Part of our ability to prevent criminal behavior by the individuals
is to have the ability to identify people who have had problems in the
past. He has put it very clearly. Here is a police chief who wants to
do what is right. That is not just to punish crime, but to prevent it,
to try to intervene to make sure we do not have these challenges over
and over again. We have his hands tied because we have an outdated
approach to juvenile records.
Well, Senate bill 10, which the Senator from Alabama has so
appropriately noticed as a bill of monumental change and reconstruction
in terms of our capacity to address these challenges, makes some
serious reforms that will help us solve these problems.
The bill would provide incentive grants for States to fingerprint and
photograph juveniles who are arrested for or charged with violent
crimes and to send those fingerprints and photographs to the FBI and to
create and maintain records of juvenile convictions and to share those
with criminal courts, law enforcement agencies, and school officials.
If we really want our schools to do well, we cannot have them
operating in the dark as to who is populating the classroom.
For States to qualify for these funds, States would have to maintain
juvenile records that are equivalent to adult records and to make those
records available to the FBI, to law enforcement officers of any
jurisdiction, to school officials, and to courts for use in sentencing.
It is the kind of thing that I suppose the average American says,
``That's common sense. I wonder why we haven't been doing that.'' We
ought to do it for people who are committing acts which are felonious
in nature and which, if committed by an adult, would result in long-
term incarceration. At a minimum, we ought to allow schoolteachers to
know if individuals in their classrooms have been involved in that kind
of activity.
The bill will also make records available across State lines. Given
the mobility of the American population, it does not make sense to
think we can compartmentalize our approach to individuals who are not
going to be compartmentalized and should not be.
Senate bill 10 mandates that States send records to the FBI. It will
enable State and Federal authorities to make assessments based on the
juvenile's entire record. That is not only in the best interest of the
culture and the best interest of the society, but, frankly, it is in
the best interest of an accused juvenile. It does not serve anyone's
interest to have a judgment rendered on the basis of inadequate data.
We do not make good decisions when we do not have the facts. And
courts cannot make good decisions when they do not have the facts. And
schools cannot make good decisions when they do not have the facts. The
truth is, all we are asking is that the records be made available to
individuals so that they make better decisions, and we can do a better
job of curtailing a problem that threatens us sorely. This bill would
help get that done.

A Federal solution is critical. Only if all States participate can we
ensure that critical law enforcement and judicial decisions are based
on the entire record. This is a concept which has been agreed to for
centuries in America. In law enforcement, crime records have been
shared because of the responsibility for public safety. They are
clearly matters that are of interest to every State, and they are
indeed matters which have long and traditionally been understood as
matters in which the States need to cooperate and coordinate.
The bill ensures that juvenile records do not disappear when
juveniles turn 18. The truth of the matter is, law enforcement and
other officials need to make sure that that information is still
available. The bill ensures that juvenile records are made available to
those who need them. Courts will be able to sentence criminals based on

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their entire record, not just what has happened since their 18th
birthday.
Law enforcement officials will be able to monitor the behavior of
individuals in their community who are known to be violent and to have
criminal predilections. Teachers and other school officials will know
who they have in their classrooms.
To think that we have to do that to address this problem is a little
bit of a shock to me. I would be much more at ease to say to
schoolteachers, ``We're going to let you find out and know about the
individuals that populate your classrooms.'' I cannot imagine that they
would not want that.
Records sharing. This whole concept of helping us have an orderly
culture where we send a clear message about the nature of criminal
activity and the fact that it is unacceptable and we will not tolerate
it. It is not something that is a partisan issue. This is something
that compels all of us to unite, to send the right message to the young
people of America that we take crime seriously because we view their
personal integrity and safety as a serious matter and that we will not
treat them lightly if they are involved in rape, murder, armed robbery,
armed assault, major drug trafficking, or other felonious activity,
because we care about their future and care about the future of the
country in which they live.
I look forward to the debate on this measure, to continuing with this
measure in committee to make sure that we shape the bill properly as it
comes to the floor of the U.S. Senate. I look forward to a time when
the President of the United States will sign into law this kind of
bill, which would help us send a message about the kind of tomorrow
that we have the privilege and prerogative of shaping by developing
public policy that respects not only the future of juveniles but also
the present of individuals who have been victimized as a result of
juvenile crime and violence, which is far too prevalent in our society.
I commend the Senator from Alabama for his excellent work in this
respect. I look forward to working with him and welcoming him to the
State of Missouri this weekend where we will be conducting hearings
regarding the serious challenges with youth violence which we all face.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
Mr. SESSIONS addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama is recognized.
Mr. SESSIONS. I want to express my appreciation for the exceptional
remarks made by the Senator from Missouri, Senator Ashcroft. He has
talked to us as one who has authority. He has spoken from his heart. He
has spoken the truth. He has identified a problem in criminal justice,
and he is absolutely correct. If you had 5,000 law enforcement officers
and prosecutors in here and they were listening to that, they would
say, ``Yes, that is correct. He is telling the truth.''

We do not do a favor to young offenders or to the justice system or
to judges or to probation officers or to mothers and fathers, if we do
not allow the full truth of people's criminal backgrounds to be known.
All over America, police officers--many may not know this--are denied
the right to maintain fingerprints and photographs of young offenders.
This information cannot be held anywhere outside of the juvenile court
because of the secrecy laws.
This bill does not mandate the elimination of secrecy laws. This bill
does not eliminate that great tradition that we adhere to of trying to
give young offenders a chance to get their lives back in order and to
live life without a criminal record held over their heads. But it does
say that records ought to be made available to the criminal justice
system. When a young offender at age 17 commits armed robbery, and is
later arrested in another State at age 19, that police chief, that
prosecutor, or the judge who sentences him for his acts in the second
State, needs to know what kind of prior criminal history he has.
The National Crime Information Center houses confidential criminal
records solely for law enforcement purposes. I think it is a needed
tool and a tremendous step forward.
The Director of the FBI appeared before the Judiciary Committee just
2 weeks ago. I asked him this very question. He said: ``Yes, law
enforcement needs that information. Yes, the FBI will receive it if
it's sent to us from the States. We need it, and we do not need any
additional money to process it.''
Now, some have said it will cost huge sums of money for the States to
implement this. That is, in my opinion, clearly incorrect. We have had
this claim studied by a professional group. Their results show that $50
million is more than enough to handle implementation, and this bill has
$50 million in it for this purpose.
I doubt it will cost that much. In many areas of our Nation, it costs
very little for a local juvenile court to simply report an arrest or
conviction and send it off to the FBI. There is almost no cost
whatsoever. Some of the cities may want to have computer terminals and
dedicated personnel. The money this bill provides will be more than
adequate.
Previous funding for juvenile justice in America was $170 million.
Under this bill, it would go to $700 million, a more than threefold
increase in expenditures because we want to do something about the
crime problem.
Adult crime has been dropping for the last half-dozen years. We have
made some real progress in that regard. One of the main reasons for
that decrease is that we have doubled and tripled prison space for
repeat adult offenders. Prison does work to reduce crime, but we have
not done anything in the realm of juvenile crime to compensate for the
dramatic increases that are occurring.
According to the Department of Justice's own study, juvenile crime
will double by the year 2010. We need to begin to deal with that. It
has already doubled in the last 10 years. Juveniles are committing
serious crimes, as the Senator from Missouri said, including robbery,
murders, rapes. Those are the kind of crimes we must crack down on.
One thing that is important for us, as U.S. Senators to understand,
is that juvenile justice has historically been and will remain a
province of the States. Mr. President, 99.99 percent of juvenile crime
cases are tried in State courts. We need to improve the ability of
Federal courts to prosecute certain selected juvenile crime cases. This
bill will do that. Still, juvenile crime cases will remain the province
of the States. So if we want to improve juvenile justice, Mr.
President, we need to help these States improve their system. That is
what this bill does.
Now, what is the problem with the Federal system? As a U.S. attorney
for 12 years, I know the problem. If you wanted to prosecute a young
offender in Federal court, an offender who appropriately should be
prosecuted in Federal court, a number of things have to occur for this
to happen. First, you have to get approval from the U.S. Department of
Justice. Second, you have to seek certification of that young offender
as an adult to be tried in the Federal system. Before you can do that,
the offender has the right to appeal. Often when that appeal takes
place it goes to the circuit courts of the United States and a year or
more may go by before the case ever comes up for trial. As a practical
matter, it is virtually impossible to effectively prosecute routine or
even significant juvenile cases in Federal court. We have shut the door
to Federal court.
I do not believe that the Federal courts should take over juvenile
prosecutions throughout America, but they ought to be able to prosecute
certain cases that are appropriate to be prosecuted in Federal court.
We need to reform that system. This bill does it. It removes the appeal
process. It would allow a U.S. attorney, in many circumstances, to make
the decision on his own as to whether or not to prosecute and bring
that case to trial, just like any other criminal case. So we are going
to have some very good improvements in that regard in the Federal
system.
In addition, Senator Hatch and Senator Feinstein have worked hard on
a proposal to crack down on the violent gang activity that is
disturbing so many areas of this country. In fact, gang activity occurs
in every State in America. This bill includes very good, very tough,
Federal antigang legislation that will help us break up these organized
activities and will help us put an end to that kind of dangerous gang
activity. We are pleased this bill will do that.
The Senator from Missouri mentioned a very important thing and that

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is the question of intervention. Professionals in counseling talk about
it frequently. By intervention they mean that a person who is on a bad
road, who is heading down the road to destruction, who is making
serious mistakes either in term of drugs, alcohol, or criminality,
needs something to happen to intervene in that process or that person
will end up being destroyed by that problem.

That is what this bill attempts to do, both by recordkeeping, so we
can identify whether or not this is a repeat offender so that the judge
and the prosecutor will know that when they deal with sentencing, and
also through drug testing. We know that in the District of Columbia,
where drug testing of every arrestee is done today, 66 percent of the
persons tested test positive for some sort of drug in their system.
That is a significant statistic. Do not think, Mr. President, that this
is only true of Washington. There are cities all over America that have
been involved in testing programs like this, typically to determine the
connection between drugs and crime, and their results consistently show
that from 60 percent to 70 percent of their arrestees for criminal
activity test positive for drugs in their system.
When a young offender appears before a juvenile judge, that judge
needs to know, if he wants to help that child--by crafting a penalty or
a sanction that will help change his lifestyle--whether or not that
person is drug free or whether he is using drugs.
This bill will mandate that the States test every offender upon
arrest, and it provides more than enough money to pay for that mandate.
We are not doing an unfunded mandate. The bill provides more than
enough money to pay for that provision. To me, drug testing is an
essential aspect of any criminal justice system. When a young person is
arrested, the judge needs to know, his probation officer needs to know,
his parents need to know, whether or not drugs are a contributing
factor to that young person's criminal activity.
Eric Holder, who just appeared before the Judiciary Committee as the
nominee for Deputy Attorney General of the United States, a position
which is second in command at the U.S. Department of Justice, was a
former Federal judge in the District of Columbia and is the current
U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. I asked him about drug
testing, specifically whether he thought it was a good idea. He said,
``Absolutely. We did it regularly in Washington, DC. As a judge, that
is the kind of information I had to have to make the right kind of
decisions about whether offenders should be released, how they should
be treated, and what kind of punishment they should have.''
Mr. President, drug testing is not designed to set up a situation
where juvenile offenders would be prosecuted again for another crime.
That is not the purpose. It does not sustain a prosecution for a crime.
But what it does do is provide the judge, the probation officer, the
prosecutor, and the family, with the knowledge that the young person
has a problem with drugs. To me, any effective juvenile justice system
that does not have regular drug testing as a part of it is an
ineffective system. It fails to meet the basic requirements of what a
legitimate criminal justice system is. We are trying to reach out all
over America by supplying funds to help the States and the localities
have the kind of resources they need to do drug testing and improve the
current system.
Some have raised the question that this is a violation of civil
rights; that you cannot make an arrestee be tested. Well, they are
being tested all over America already upon arrest. They have been
tested in the District of Columbia every day for over 20 years. Jay
Carver, who just resigned from that program, had led it for 20 years.
He knows how that program works and he supports it. It is not a civil
rights violation. When a person is arrested for a crime, a judge has
the discretion to determine whether or not to release that individual
from custody. If the judge has the power to keep a person's very
liberty, to deny him his right to walk out of court and be a free
person, he certainly has the right to say you can be released from
custody on probation or on bail but you have to maintain certain curfew
hours and you have to submit to drug testing. That is a far less
intrusive intervention in that person's life. Also, we find the cost of
those tests are $5 to $6 for initial drug screening. We believe that is
a very inexpensive way to deal with this.

Again, as I view the drug testing program, it is a diagnostic tool.
It is a tool to help identify the real problem that a child might be
facing and to help the justice system and the parents develop a
strategy to deal with that.
There are a number of other parts of this bill that we think are
extremely important and will help to actually reduce juvenile crime in
America. Those things include removing unnecessary and burdensome
mandates that law enforcement tells me cause young offenders to be
released routinely for offenses they should never be released for. They
tell me over and over that the young offenders are laughing at them
because of their inability to carry out sanctions.
Mr. President, I am delighted to take this opportunity to recognize
the distinguished Senator from New Mexico, Senator Domenici. He has had
a very strong interest in juvenile justice. He has submitted
legislation on that that has been made a part of this legislation. I am
delighted he is here.
I am prepared to yield any time he desires to share his thoughts on
this important subject.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico is recognized.
Mr. DOMENICI. Senator, how much time do you have?
Mr. SESSIONS. We have until the end of the hour.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair observes that the Senator has 23
minutes and 30 seconds remaining.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I will try to use less than 10 minutes.
First of all, Mr. President, let me commend the Judiciary Committee,
and in particular, the subcommittee chaired by the distinguished
Senator from Alabama, Senator Sessions.
Frankly, I am of the opinion that it takes us too long to address
issues that are obviously important to the American people. That is why
I urge we not let this year pass without passing a major Federal reform
of our Nation's juvenile justice system.
The Federal juvenile justice system is a very small part of the
overall justice system, but it does have a very big impact on how
things are going out in the States, and in many instances needs reform
so it does not stand in the way of the difficult job that our cities
and States have in this new evolving era of juvenile crime. I am sure
some of the talks on the floor of the Senate today have indicated some
of the areas we must reform. I will leave that to those who are on the
committee. Those are patent. They are clear. But they will be highly
controversial.
Nonetheless, we should do something to make sure that our laws are
not in the way of cities, counties, and States--reasonable, rational
efforts to control this major, major criminal epidemic.
Having said that, I believe we also ought to take a lead role in
suggesting to our States that if they want some Federal help, then they
must modernize their juvenile justice systems.
It is very strange in America, that we have had for many, many years
an adult system of justice, a penal system, probation, and the like.
What is new to America is that more and more of the crime is being
committed by young people from 13 to 18 years of age. The proportions
are exponential in terms of growth of juvenile crime of a serious
nature.
I am not talking about when we were growing up, maybe shoplifting or
truancy, which is probably 90 percent of what the police were concerned
about with kids. Now it is murder, it is gangs, it is thievery, it is
drive-by shootings, it is all kinds of violent criminal acts that are
scaring the adult population for two reasons. They are fearful for
their own lives, and they also wonder what will happen to this
generation of teenagers if that group committing these crimes grows and
grows. Where will we end up incarcerating them?
Mr. President and fellow Senators, there is no question the system is
not working. Go to your States and ask how many times must a teenager
commit a serious, serious crime before they are taken from society and
put into some kind of penal system to try to keep them from committing
more

[[Page S5898]]

crimes and try to help them. It is startling. In many jurisdictions
they commit as many as 10 to 15 serious crimes before anything is done
to them. It is amazing how ancient, archaic, and broken down the
juvenile justice system is. It didn't come into being and take a long,
long time to perfect itself. It was put together in little pieces and
patchwork, where it actually, in many instances, just doesn't work.

Now, what we have tried to do--Senator John Ashcroft and I have
introduced a bill that does a lot of things. But after participating in
a series of hearings in New Mexico and talking to victims, it was
absolutely something that, as long as you are a Senator, you won't hear
anything worse than hearing from the victim of teenage violence. I
heard from a beautiful young girl who is a dancer, who for no reason
was just stabbed in the throat. She was doing nothing, not causing any
commotion at all. We heard about the trauma that beset that young woman
and her family and the way the juvenile justice system treated her and
the family. It is as if the only thing that counted was the
accommodation of the criminal, not the victim.
But what we would like to do is to set up a $500 million program that
is essentially an incentive grant program. Part of it will go to the
States just to help them with juvenile justice, and the other part will
go to States who choose certain options to modernize their system and
make it work better. What we heard over and over again is that we wait
too long before we do anything to correct the situation among
teenagers.
Now, anybody that has been a parent--and I have, and I note the
occupant of the chair has, my dear friend, because I hear about them
often. If you let them get away with little things and more little
things and more little things, and you do nothing, when they do
something a little worse, it is too late. If you wait long enough,
without some corrective measures, you will find yourself engulfed in
serious misbehavior. Kids learn by receiving some kind of punishment
for every misdeed and wrong act they do. Even if it is a tiny
punishment, to know that they are not getting away with it and they
must shape up is obvious to everyone who has raised children. The
justice system must do that also. No misdeed must go unattended,
regardless of how small, even though the punishment would be small. We
call this graduated sanctions, and it is an important part of our bill.
We have set out in our bill, which we hope will be incorporated, a
number of things like that. And many, many other important reforms that
we found out there in our hearings would have to be adopted by our
States if they desire to receive additional money to help them in this,
what must be a war on teenage crime.
If we wait too much longer, we are going to, once again, be a joke as
the Federal Government. We are going to come along and society is hit
with this pending disaster. They are will wonder where the Federal
Government was. Some Senators are going to come to the floor--I hope
not many--and say it is none of our business. The States ought to take
care of crime.
I will tell you, I have learned that there is no easy way to draw a
line about what is our business as a Nation and what is a State's
business as a State. But we can all say that the one thing that is not
getting any better in America is juvenile crime. It is getting worse.
As statistics show, some of the adult crimes are coming down a bit. The
Senator has been part of these hearings. But, juvenile crime continues
to go up and up.
So I am very hopeful, and I challenge our leadership--I already know
what our distinguished leader Trent Lott thinks about this. But I think
at the first opportunity we have we ought to get this bill reported out
and get it to the floor. The public would be very excited about a
debate on this issue. We debate many things they aren't interested in.
But they would be interested in this and in the philosophy, and perhaps
the difference in philosophy between the two parties on this, too.
I thank the Senator for yielding time and for arranging this
morning's discussion on this very, very important issue.
I yield the floor.
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I appreciate very much the comments of
the Senator from New Mexico. People are angry. We need to do better.
There was a case in Alabama 2 years ago where three juveniles murdered
a man. Those 3 offenders had 7, 8 and 15 prior arrests each and yet
they were out on the streets murdering somebody. He is exactly correct.
We need a system of increased sanctions, and this bill calls for
graduated sanctions. That means increasing the punishment for each
offense to send a message that juvenile offenders are not going to walk
free.

Mr. President, I am delighted to have Senator DeWine from Ohio here.
He is a former prosecutor, former Lieutenant Governor of the State of
Ohio, who has great knowledge in these law enforcement matters. He is a
leader on the Judiciary Committee, a leader on our committee to reform
juvenile justice. I am pleased to yield to him at this time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio is recognized.
Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Alabama for the
great work he has done as the subcommittee chairman. Let me also
compliment my colleague from New Mexico, as well as my colleague from
Missouri, for the great work that they have done to call the attention
of the Senate to an issue that is certainly on the minds of the
American people, and that is the issue of juvenile crime.
We always have the question, as my colleague from New Mexico has
pointed out, of what is the proper role of the Federal Government in
what has historically been a matter that has been dealt with by the
States. I think there is a role. I think what is important, as we look
at Senate bill 10, which is currently in the Judiciary Committee,
awaiting markup--as we look at that draft, it's important for us, with
the finite amount of money that we do have to spend, that we spend that
money wisely, and that we spend it with an understanding that the
criminal justice system, particularly the juvenile justice system, is
inherently a local system. So what we need to do in Congress is to do
those things that matter, to do those things that maybe only the
Federal Government can do to try to give assistance to the local
communities. So we need to sit back, I think, and think about what that
is, what can be our unique contribution.
I want to talk this morning about one particular area that we have
been able to get in the draft of the bill, which the chairman of the
subcommittee, Senator Sessions, has been very much supportive of. It is
an area that I have worked on for a number of years, going back to the
time when I was a county prosecutor, and that is the sorry state--if I
can use that term--of our criminal records system in this country. I
have worked long and hard to try to improve that system. It is an area
where the Federal Government can be of assistance because the reality
is that what happens in Ohio affects what happens in New Mexico and
what happens in Alabama, as far as the keeping of criminal records. If
Ohio doesn't put our records in the system and someone from Ohio goes
to New Mexico and commits a crime, then New Mexico is the loser because
the local law enforcement does not have that information. So this is an
area where we have a national system, administered by the FBI--a
criminal records system for adults, administered by the FBI. But if we
don't get the local input and information, then it doesn't do any good.
That same principle applies to juveniles. The only difference is,
historically, we have not shared records of juvenile offenders. We have
proceeded under the assumption that a person who commits a crime in
Ohio before the age of 18 is a juvenile. Their records are sealed. They
are not available to anyone. In fact, they may not even be available
outside the county in which the individual committed the crime, or with
the individual in Ohio, where that person resides. That is where the
records are kept.
I think we now understand that, with violent crime increasing among
15-year-olds, 16-year-olds, 17-year-olds, even 13- and 14-year-olds, it
makes absolutely no sense and is very counterproductive and dangerous
for us to continue that old mindset that says we are going to protect
the record of this juvenile, even if this juvenile has committed
murder, even if this juvenile has committed rape, or a whole series of

[[Page S5899]]

what would be felonies if committed by an adult.

What this bill does is it says enough is enough. We have to change
the policy in this country that says we protect these records, and we
have to make these records available to law enforcement for legitimate
law enforcement purposes--which means prosecutors, police, sheriff
departments--so that when a 16-year-old commits a crime in Greene
County, OH, and they show up a year later in New Mexico and commit
another crime, there is a national database, and that there has been
information put in that database so the officials in New Mexico know
that this is not a first-time offender, that this person has a bad
track record, and they have committed whatever they have committed in
the State of Ohio.
We live in a very mobile society. We live in a society where families
are broken down, which means, tragically, young children move from
community to community. For our own self-protection, it is vitally
important that this information follow that individual. This is what
this bill addresses. We will have the opportunity on the floor later to
talk in much greater detail about what this does.
I want to use a real life example, if I could, which I think
illustrates the need for this type of tracking and for the money that
this bill provides for the local communities to have this kind of
tracking.
Let me tell the story about ``Jack.'' That is not his real name. What
he did was very, very real. When Jack was 12 years old, he was arrested
for vandalizing a neighbor's house, wrecking the furniture and drowning
the neighbor's pet bird in the bathtub. When Jack was 14, he was
burglarizing another apartment. The elderly man who owned the apartment
came home and found Jack there and confronted him. Jack and the elderly
man struggled, as a result of which the elderly man broke his hip, and,
tragically, this man then died a few days later of pneumonia. Jack was
convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
Let's go forward, Mr. President, 5 more years. Jack is now 19. He
breaks into a house and severely beats a 45-year-old woman who lives
there. Jack is arrested for this. It is his first adult crime because
now he is 19. A Cleveland judge has to sentence Jack, and because all
his juvenile offenses aren't available to the court, the judge is
dealing with a person who he thinks is a first-time offender. Jack got
probation. This is a true story. Two months later, he burglarized
another home and killed the 81-year-old man who lived there. The judge
had to make a crucial decision in this particular case where we are
talking about Jack, a decision vitally affecting the public safety of
the judge's community. But he had to make that decision, which turned
out to be a decision which cost someone their life; he had to make it
in a state of legally enforced mandatory ignorance. It wasn't the
judge's fault, it was the system's fault.
What we intend to do by this legislation is to help change that
culture, change that system, so that a judge who is faced with making a
life-or-death decision will know whether or not this person is a first
offender or whether, as in the case of Jack, he had a long record of
not just scrapes with the law but a long record of violence. If a judge
knew that, the judge's decision would be very different than if he did
not know that fact.
I see that my time is about up. Again, I thank the Chair. I thank my
colleague from Alabama for the great work he has done on this piece of
legislation. I have taken a few minutes to talk about just one of the
aspects of the legislation. There are many other parts that have been
discussed. I look forward to working with him and the other Members of
the Senate as we bring this bill to the floor this year, as we pass it,
as we send it on to the President.
Mr. SESSIONS. If the Senator will yield a moment, I think it would be
instructive if he would share, from his personal experience as
Lieutenant Governor and working in this area, the importance of
records. He, more than any Member of this body, has firsthand
experience in that area.
Mr. DeWINE. I will do this very briefly in the time we have. When I
was Lieutenant Governor of Ohio, I was in charge of the seven different
agencies in our administration that had anything to do with law
enforcement. One of the things that we tried to do is to improve our
criminal records. This was, as I said, a longstanding interest of mine
that went back to the time when I was a county prosecutor. When I first
started looking at this as Lieutenant Governor, I was shocked by what I
found. What I found is that the accuracy of the adult criminal records
system in Ohio left a lot to be desired, and that is a nice way of
saying it.
I was even further shocked when I found that Ohio was pretty typical.
It is pretty much the same as we find in most other States.
When I first started looking at it, I asked the question to our State
employees: How accurate are criminal records? I got something back
like, ``Well, we think they are about 40 percent accurate.'' Six months
later, after they really look into this, they found they were about 12
percent totally accurate.
What happens is, as people are arrested it goes into the system but
you don't get the final disposition going in. You don't get the
information, if the person is convicted, or, in some cases, if the
person is acquitted. So you try to determine how totally accurate the
records are.
What we find in most States is that clearly less than 50 percent of
the criminal records are accurate. That is the adult system. But what
we are dealing with here is the juvenile system. And in most States we
are just barely beginning to establish the juvenile recordkeeping
system.
The money in this bill will help the States establish that system,
help put it online, and help make it accurate.
Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Senator from Ohio very much.
Mr. President, I believe our time has about expired. I ask unanimous
consent for 2 minutes to wrap up.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Hutchinson). The Chair observes that the
Senator from Alabama still has approximately 4 minutes remaining.
Mr. SESSIONS. Very good.
Mr. President, first I would again like to thank the Senator from
Ohio for his support and for his insight, certainly shared by the
Director of the FBI, on the importance of having a national crime
information center for the criminal history of violent young offenders.
Mr. President, Senator Hatch, the chairman of the Judiciary
Committee, is today in the Finance Committee markup--a very, very
important meeting. He could not be with us. But we are both proud of
this bill. The Hatch-Sessions bill has the potential to really reduce
crime.
One of the things that has been talked about and that we have heard a
lot about is prevention money. I will assert with absolute confidence
that the certainty of swift punishment is a necessary tool in the
prevention of crime.
As other Senators have said, our juvenile justice system in this
Nation is broken. Ask your local police officer anywhere in this
Nation, and they will tell you that it is not working effectively. We
cannot allow that to continue.
This legislation will mandate certain reforms. It will help fund
other reforms. And it will do one thing that we have to do, and that is
to increase bed space and detention space for violent juvenile
offenders. We have not spent that kind of money in the past. We have
increased adult detention space three and fourfold, but we have not
acted accordingly for young offenders.
This bill will provide matching money, which acts as the biggest
source of our money in this bill. And we will have a lot of money in
the bill that will help go towards prevention in a lot of different
ways.
But I want to make this point for all of America to understand.
Clearly this Congress and this Nation is involved already in
prevention. This bill is designed to fix a broken juvenile justice
system. We have to do that. And we cannot allow people to have 7, 8, 15
different arrests and not be held accountable for that.
Let me show you this chart. The title of it is across the top:
``Federal Programs for At-Risk or Delinquent Youth.''
These are juvenile prevention programs. There are 131 of these
programs

[[Page S5900]]

that have been funded by this Government. We spend $170 million on
juvenile crime. We already spend $4 billion on prevention programs
through virtually every agency and department of Government.
Look at these things. The Department of Interior: Indian child
welfare groups; Department of Housing and Urban Development: The 4-H
groups, youth apprenticeships, youth sports programs: Department of
Labor: Job training for homeless demonstration projects, summer youth
employment training, school to work opportunities, Youth Fair Chance;
Department of Transportation: Youth-impaired driving techniques
projects; gang resistant education and training in the Department of
the Treasury.
So it is just on and on. One of the things Senator Thompson talks
about a lot is his belief that we have no idea about what works in
terms of prevention. He is very frustrated by all of these programs
with no real belief in whether or not we know that they work.
So, in consultation with him--and Senator Hatch has agreed--we have
added to this bill a substantial sum of money for research to analyze
these programs to see which ones work.
We want to prevent crime, and we care about young offenders. But the
most crucial thing we are facing today is a situation like that of the
young lady who Senator Domenici mentioned who was stabbed in the throat
by a young violent offender, in which the juvenile justice system did
not work. Those offenders are not being properly processed, and when
apprehended are not properly punished.
This bill will mandate a series of graduated sanctions. We want to
make sure that the first brush of a young offender with the law is his
last. I believe we can do that. This bill is a major step forward in
that regard.
I appreciate the opportunity, Mr. President, to share these thoughts
and ideas with my colleagues.
I yield the floor.
Several Senators addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, what is the regular order?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts has an order to
speak for up to 15 minutes.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I thank the Chair.
Mr. President, I will not use that full amount of time because other
colleagues are waiting.
(The remarks of Mr. Kerry pertaining to the introduction of S. 929
are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills
and Joint Resolutions.'')
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I yield whatever time remains, and I thank
my colleague.
Mr. ALLARD addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
Mr. ALLARD. I ask unanimous consent to address the Senate for 7
minutes under morning business, and following that, extend 10 minutes
to my colleague from Arizona, Senator Kyl, under morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

____________________