[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 98 (Tuesday, July 21, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8684-S8685]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           NATIONAL YOUTH CRIME PREVENTION DEMONSTRATION ACT

 Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I am proud to join Senator Coats 
in introducing this important bill. We have become accustomed in the 
past couple of years to hearing a great deal of positive news about 
crime trends in this country. Thanks to many factors, including a 
number of innovative crime-fighting strategies and the return of 
community policing, most of our cities are experiencing a decrease in 
violent crime. But the news on the crime front is far from all good. 
Indeed, as my colleague from Indiana already has noted, there still is 
far too much violence--and desensitization to violence--among our 
nation's youth. And, if what demographers tell us about the future is 
correct, we all should begin now to brace ourselves for what is to come 
as this group grows in both size and age.
  We can attribute much of the problem of youth crime to the 
environment--both local and national--in which many of our children are 
now being reared. For too many children, the things on which previous 
generations relied to support and teach them simply no longer exist. 
From the family unit to the local neighborhood to the surrounding 
community, many children have no where to turn for the support 
structure necessary to help bring them into adulthood with proper 
values, commitment to society and, most importantly of all, hope for 
the future. Without that support, they too often accept a falsely 
appealing invitation to break their bonds with society

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and enter a childhood of crime. If we are to combat all of this, if we 
are to stop youth crime, we must come up with a way to revitalize 
traditional support structures and to reconnect our nation's youth to 
our nation's communities.
  The bill Senator Coats and I are introducing today will, we hope, 
offer one step in that direction. The National Youth Crime Prevention 
Act would authorize $5 million for the National Center for Youth 
Enterprise to establish demonstration projects in eight cities, 
including the city of Hartford in my home state of Connecticut. In 
these projects, the National Center will build on success it already 
has had in doing precisely what I just described: working on a 
grassroots basis within communities to help heal those communities, and 
with them, their children.
  Mr. President, I am hopeful that with the funding provided by this 
bill, the National Center's demonstration projects can create model 
programs that can be replicated across the nation in our war against 
youth crime. I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

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