[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 157 (Sunday, November 9, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12225-S12227]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             JUVENILE CRIME

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I am, as you know, concluding my first 
year in the U.S. Senate. Within a few days, we may be able to go home, 
and the sooner the better.
  As I reflect on my first year, I think back on one particular issue, 
which I didn't anticipate being of great importance and now has turned 
out to be of major importance on my legislative agenda. I was appointed 
to the Senate Judiciary Committee and, as a result of that appointment, 
I decided to really focus on the issue of crime, particularly juvenile 
crime, in the United States.
  This past year, I made my visits back to Illinois coincide with an 
effort to study the problem of juvenile crime. During the course of 
1997, I visited jails and prisons, detention centers, have met with 
judges and law enforcement officials, have been to drug rehab 
facilities, have been to many, many schools in the State of Illinois, 
have met with young people and their parents, and I have tried as best 
I could to come to grips with some of the problems that we have in this 
Nation as it relates to crime.
  I find it very curious to consider the following: The United States 
has one of the strongest economies in the world. I daresay that you 
could not travel across the world and find another country so widely 
admired as the United States. No matter where you go, people talk about 
us--the way we live, our music, our art, our culture, our economy. We 
should take great pride in that. We also know for a fact that, if we 
were to lift all restrictions on immigration and say the borders of the 
United States are wide open, we would be inundated with people from all 
over the world who would walk away from their cultures, their families, 
and their traditions, many of them just hoping they would have a chance 
to come to America and be part of this great democratic experiment.
  Having said that, though, the one thing that is curious to me, 
despite all of these positive things, is, why is it that the United 
States of America has the largest percentage of its population 
imprisoned, incarcerated, of any country in the world except one--
Russia? Why is it, over the last 10 years, we have seen such a dramatic 
increase in incarceration and imprisonment in America? Is there 
something genetic about living in America that leads more people to 
commit crime? I question that. I don't think that's true. But what is 
it about our country that is engendering more imprisonment and more 
incarceration?
  Now, let's be fair and look at both sides of the ledger. We have 
found that, as incarceration rates have gone up and the State and 
Federal prisons have grown in size, the crime rate has gone down.
  So there is a positive side to this. If people who are committing 
crimes are being taken off the streets to make those streets safer for 
our families, our communities, and our neighborhoods, that is a 
positive development. I do not want to suggest at all that we should 
step back from that commitment. If someone is guilty of crime, they 
should do the time. It is not just the slogan; it is a fact. And in 
America, more and more people are doing time.
  But is there an answer to this dilemma, or challenge, which goes 
beyond the obvious, the enforcement of crime, the imprisonment of 
criminals? Can we as a nation aspire to a goal where we see a continued 
reduction in crime and a reduction in incarceration? Because 
imprisonment is a very expensive undertaking for a society. First, we 
measure it in dollar terms. In the Federal prison system it is probably 
$20,000 a year to keep a prisoner there. Roughly the equivalent of what 
it takes to go to some of the best colleges and universities we spend 
each year to put men and women in prison and keep them there at the 
State level. It goes as high as $30,000 in my own State of Illinois. It 
is an expensive commitment.
  Don't forget this important fact. There is not a person in prison 
today who didn't get there because he or she created a victim. So in 
order for that process to work its way through, someone was victimized. 
Someone may have been killed, assaulted, raped, or burglarized--
whatever it might be.
  So when we talk about reducing prison populations, it is more than 
saving money. It is also a question of sparing victims, but doing it in 
a way that still reduces crime.
  I have taken a look in my State at some of the things that are being 
discussed. I have talked to some of the leaders across the Nation. I 
have come up with some things that I hope this Congress can address on 
a bipartisan basis. Let's start at the very beginning.
  We now know through research, which has been proven time and again, 
that one of the most critical areas in the life of an individual is the 
very first few months of life. We used to think that those gurgling, 
babbling little kids were so cute. We would diaper them, feed them, 
laugh at them, try to guess who they looked like in the family, and we 
didn't realize that while we were doing that, this child's brain was 
developing at a rapid pace. In fact, in the first 18 months of life, 
some 75 percent of a child's brain has developed.
  The reason I raise that is because I think there is a link between 
the development of our children, how well they develop, and what they 
turn out to be. My parents believed that. I believe that. My wife and I 
did, as do our children. I think it is a fact.
  When I visited the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center about 6 
months ago and saw the hallways filled with teenage kids, mainly boys, 
walking back and forth, it looked like a high school with 14- to 15-
year-olds filing back and forth in uniform. But, of course, these 
weren't just high-school-age kids; these kids had been convicted of a 
crime.
  I asked the prison psychologist. I said, ``Who are these children?'' 
He said, ``Senator, these children I could describe in about four or 
five characteristics.'' First, they come from broken homes, almost 
invariably. Second, they have a learning disability. They were falling 
behind in school. They weren't learning as well, either because of poor 
nutrition before they were born in their mother's womb, or poor 
nutrition after they were born, exposure to narcotics, exposure to 
abuse. These children are basically ``unattached.'' That is a term that 
is used in psychology about which many people would just shake their 
heads and say, ``How could this be?'' But it basically means a child 
coming into this world does not receive the most fundamental and basic 
emotional bonding with a parent or a loved one.
  How many parents automatically, instinctively grab that baby, pull 
the

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baby up to their arms and cradle it while they are feeding the baby, 
nursing the baby, feeding it with the bottle, with the warmth of the 
mother, or even the father, and a little communication going on there 
as part of this bonding attachment? These kids missed that. These kids 
didn't go through this emotional maturation that leads to a normal 
functioning adult, and, as a sequence of this, they are missing a piece 
of that.
  He said there is something else about these kids, too. He said these 
kids ``don't know how to resolve conflicts.'' You ``Dis me, I kill you. 
I've got a gun to do it.'' In America everybody has a gun to do it, 
unfortunately.
  So when I started looking into these ``problem children,'' as we 
might call them, and then back to the beginning, I started thinking 
about what we can do as a society to address it. Clearly, we have to 
start at the beginning.
  Now, with more than half of the mothers in America working and 
relying more and more on custodial care, whether it is day care or 
babysitters, shouldn't we be asking a very fundamental question as to 
what kind of care our kids are receiving when they are in custodial 
care?
  I don't think it is any accident that this au pair case 
in Massachusetts attracted so much national attention. It is a sad 
reality that we lose children in America every day to abuse and 
neglect. Yet, this case, which was so prominent in the headlines, 
captured America's attention for weeks, I think, because more and more 
people instinctively are worried about their own children in custodial 
care. You leave them there 8 or 10 hours a day. What is happening to 
them? Are they safe? Are they being treated right?

  So, when the President calls a national conference on child care, I 
hope that we will look beyond the fact that it is a political setting 
to the fact that this is a very real family challenge. It is 
interesting in this Nation that we decided that public education was so 
important to the future of this country that we are going to make a 
public commitment to it. We understood that some wealthy parents could 
afford to educate their own children, but most parents could not. So we 
said, if we are going to have well-educated children who become good 
citizens, we as a nation will commit to them. We will commit at every 
level--local, State, and Federal level--to make sure we have a system 
of public education.
  We have a new challenge, my friends. What about the years before 
kindergarten? What about these developmental years? What commitment are 
we prepared to make as a nation to make certain that those 
developmental years are right?
  Some children are blessed to have a parent who can stay home and 
raise them. I count myself as one of the fortunate parents. My wife was 
able to do that. I don't think we could have given our children a 
better gift than to have her there every day while they were growing 
up, reading to them, living experiences with them, teaching them. But 
in some homes that can't happen for economic reasons and other reasons 
that a parent can't stay home.
  So, that parent wants to make sure that his or her child also gets 
good care. You look at day care in America today, and it is a very 
mixed bag. There are some extraordinarily good day care centers--some 
private, some public. But let's be honest. There are some that aren't 
very good at all. There are some that are mere babysitters--diapers, 
bottles, and little more.
  You look at the training requirement. In Illinois, for example, a day 
care worker needs 2 years of college--an associates degree. That is 
good, but it could be a lot better. We could be making sure that the 
men and women in day care really understand what is going on in that 
young mind and bring these children along as they should be. But it 
will cost money. You can't bring people in for that kind of 
professional training and professional care without paying. Working 
families say, ``That is great, Senator; a great idea. Who is going to 
pay for it? Who will pay? What is the bottom line?'' Honestly, we 
expect the families to contribute, and they do--many of them making 
great sacrifices for day care. But clearly there must be more. We as a 
nation must make a contribution to this, too, to make certain that 
these children have a fighting chance.
  There is another element that I think is important, too. As I 
traveled around Illinois, I visited a program called Lincoln's 
Challenge. It is in 15 different States now. The National Guard in 
Illinois runs this program and invites in 400 students who are high 
school dropouts in the State of Illinois. They must come voluntarily. 
They must be between the ages of 14 and 18. They must be drug free and 
not pregnant. If they then come into the program, they are in for 10 
weeks of military style training. They are in uniforms. They shine 
their shoes every morning, make their beds. It is ``yes, sir''; ``no, 
sir'' and they go to class. These high school dropouts that other 
people have given up on are brought into classrooms. In the course of 
10 weeks, 71 percent of these kids, high school dropouts, earn the GED 
degree--in 10 weeks. All of a sudden, they are out of the neighborhood. 
They are focused. They are in a disciplined environment. And they have 
people who care around them. It works.
  Kids who would have been casualties on the streets of Chicago, or 
Springfield, now have a chance because of one other factor. One of the 
important features of this program is one that I have come to believe 
is essential if we are going to deal with reducing crime and saving our 
kids. When those young men and women finish this program, they go back 
to their hometowns, but with one important difference. Each one has an 
adult mentor. Each one has an adult outside their family that they can 
call on for advice or encouragement or support, for counsel. ``How am I 
going to get a job? Can I get into the Army? What should I do next if I 
want to go to the community college?'' So there is somebody who cares. 
Of all of the programs I have seen, the most successful I have run into 
time and again--whether government programs or private sector--are 
mentoring programs.
  We had a juvenile court judge from the State of Georgia, from the 
city of Atlanta. I am sure Senator Wellstone remembers when she spoke 
to our conference of Senate Democrats. She told the story of coming out 
of private law practice and becoming a juvenile court judge and going 
back to the big law firm in Atlanta and saying, ``I want you lawyers, 
whether you are corporate or criminal lawyers, to volunteer to come to 
my courtroom and represent these kids.'' She knew the kids would get 
better representation. She also knew something else. Relationships 
would begin. Attorneys meeting young men and women would start to care. 
Those young men and women, sensing that caring, would finally have a 
voice that they could listen to, someone they could talk to.

  So, I have come to believe that, as we talk about reducing crime and 
helping kids, it is not just early childhood development, but making 
certain that kids, particularly those facing problems, have an 
opportunity for mentoring.
  We also need to think about some basics. Why in God's name do schools 
quit at 3 in the afternoon? This might have made sense 50 years ago 
when kids went back to Ozzie and Harriet settings, and mother was home 
with milk and cookies. But, boy, that is the exception, not the rule. 
Most kids who are turned loose at 3 in the afternoon have two options: 
television or trouble. We have to start thinking about school days that 
reflect the reality of America's families.
  Most American families come in at probably 5 o'clock or 6 o'clock, if 
they are lucky, weary from a day of work. That is the time when they 
can finally give their children a little bit of attention and, 
hopefully, have some good time with them. But what happens between 3 
and 6? What is happening with these kids? In more communities, more and 
more that I visit, schools are doing things after the regular school 
hours: some recreation, some arts and crafts, and music, and some, of 
course, regular school activities, but a safe environment. Shouldn't 
that be the first rule that we as a nation adopt? Our kids are going to 
be safe all day long?
  One of the last points I want to make is about prisons themselves. I 
visit a lot of them. In fact, I went down to the Marion Prison in 
southern Illinois. It is rather infamous--or famous, depending on your 
point of view--as having been in a lockdown for almost 5 years now. Two 
prison guards were killed, and, as

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a result, most of the prisoners who are brought there spend most of 
their time in their cells. In fact, the only prisoners there have, 
first, committed a violent crime to get into prison, and, second, 
broken a law once they were in prison. So these are a pretty tough 
bunch of characters.
  Listen to what they do when they come to the Marion Federal Prison. 
The first year of their life there is very predictable. The first year 
of their life, out of a 24-hour day they will spend 23 hours of that 
day in a cell alone. They get 1 hour to come out of their cell, but 
with no socialization. They don't speak to anyone. The guard watches 
them as they walk around the yard. If they get through that year and 
they have not broken the rules, then they start bringing them out and 
giving them a chance to take a little course here on this, or go to a 
prison industry, or maybe eat in a room with some other prisoners.
  They have a dramatic success rate. You can imagine this is pretty 
tough. It is one of our toughest Federal prisons.
  As I talked to the warden and the officers there--and I want to give 
high praise to them because I think they run a very good operation--and 
talked to people in other prisons about who these prisoners are and 
whether they are likely to come back, there is one factor that just 
comes roaring through at you. That factor is this: If you invest in 
educating these prisoners while they are in prison, the likelihood that 
they will return to prison is cut dramatically. There is one in four 
chances that they will be recidivists, commit another crime and come 
back, if you educate them.
  Unfortunately, we as a nation for whatever reason, budgetary or 
otherwise, have not made this commitment to education. We somehow think 
that we are punishing the prisoners by not making education classes 
available so that they can become literate, so that they can develop a 
skill. I am not so sure we are punishing the prisoners as much as we 
are punishing ourselves. These prisoners, most of them, will be back on 
the street and without an education and without basic skills, I am 
afraid they are destined to commit crimes. In fact, statistically we 
know they are, by a rate of 4 to 1, from those prisoners who pick up 
education and skills. We have not made that commitment in our prison 
system and we should. It is absolutely essential that we do it.
  I went to the juvenile maximum prison in Illinois and met with the 
principal of the high school there. And I looked at all of the young 
men who were in the classrooms at this prison, and I said, ``How is 
this working out?'' He said, ``Well, amazingly well. Most of these 
young men''--all men at this prison--``missed something in their basic 
education and became so frustrated that they basically dropped out; 
they stopped paying attention and fell behind.'' He said, ``We test 
them to find out what they missed. We go back,'' he said, ``and fill in 
that gap and they come roaring forward toward a GED.'' To many of them, 
it is sad that it took this track for them to reach this fulfillment, 
but it is a fact and one that we should reflect on, how time spent in 
prison, if it is done constructively, can start to turn a life around, 
can make this a safer America and reduce the number of victims that we 
might see.
  People think that in an age where all we talk about is balancing the 
budget many of us in Washington really don't reflect enough on some of 
the important social goals we should have in this country. I don't 
think there is anything more important than our children, and if it 
means making certain that we have quality day care for childhood 
development, if it means making certain that we are committed to a 
school day that reflects the reality of our families, if it means 
making certain that the kids who need someone to talk to have an 
opportunity, whether it is through Big Brother, Big Sister, the Boys 
and Girls Clubs, whatever it happens to be, if it means making certain 
that our prison system now starts to be more responsive to real human 
needs, I think those are things we as a Senate and a House should 
address.
  I hope that next year, even in a busy election year, we have the time 
to do just that.
  I want to address two other topics very quickly. I see my friend from 
Minnesota is here. I just want to address them very quickly because 
they are important and I hope somewhat timely.

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