[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 9013-9032]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



VIOLENT AND REPEAT JUVENILE OFFENDER ACCOUNTABILITY AND REHABILITATION 
                              ACT OF 1999

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will now 
proceed to S. 254 with debate only until noon. The clerk will report 
the bill.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (S. 254) to reduce violent juvenile crime, promote 
     accountability by and rejuvenation of juvenile criminals, 
     punish and deter violent gang crime, and for other purposes.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah is recognized.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I am pleased that today the Senate will 
begin consideration of the Violent and Repeat Juvenile Offender 
Accountability and Rehabilitation Act of 1999.
  There are few issues that will come before the Senate this Congress 
that touch the lives of more of our fellow Americans than our national 
response to juvenile crime. Crime and delinquency among our young 
people is a problem that troubles us in our neighborhoods, in our 
schools and in our parks. It is the subject across the dinner table, 
and in those late night, worried conversations all parents have had at 
one time or another. The subject is familiar--how can we prevent our 
children from falling victim--either to crime committed by another 
juvenile, or to the lure of drugs, crime, and gangs?
  Their concerns are shared by all of us. Most of us are parents. Many 
of us are now proud grandparents. We have dealt with the challenges of 
raising children--the joys and the trying times. But for today's 
parents, the challenges they face are more complex. The temptations 
children confront come from many different directions and parents 
seemingly have less and less control over what it is their children are 
exposed to.
  There is a sense among many Americans that we are powerless to 
reverse this trend, that we are powerless to deal with violent juvenile 
crime, that we are powerless to change our culture. It is this feeling 
of powerlessness which may restrain our collective ambition for 
meaningful, penetrating solutions in the wake of the Littleton tragedy. 
As Dr. William Bennett said recently on a national talk show, if the 
two students who committed the murders at Columbine High had ``carried 
Bibles and [said] Hail the Prince of Peace and King of Kings, they 
would have been hauled into the principal's office.'' Instead, these 
young people who committed these crimes saluted Hitler and they were 
ignored. Ironically, it seems the only time we promote morality in 
school these days is when mourners visit on-school memorials in the 
wake of tragedies like Littleton.
  If the murder of twelve innocent students and one teacher cannot give 
us the backbone to shed this defeatism and to do what is right, then we 
are doomed to see more tragedies. I believe that as a nation we must do 
more--and expect more--from our schools, the entertainment industry, 
our juvenile justice systems, and--where appropriate--the Department of 
Justice. We must also do more to empower parents in the

[[Page 9014]]

raising of their children and help the States reform our juvenile 
justice systems.
  True--the tragedy in Littleton was a bizarre and complex crime. For 
that reason, we should resist the temptation to claim we have all of 
the answers. And we should also fight the temptation to play politics 
with the matter. We should examine this and other acts of school 
violence and not single out one politically attractive interest as a 
cause.
  Yet, we must also do more than simply talk about the problem. 
Accordingly, I along with several of my colleagues have developed--and 
will advance this week--a comprehensive legislative plan to respond to 
the problem of violent juvenile crime. Our Youth Violence Plan contains 
four main components:
  No. 1, prevention and enforcement assistance to State and local 
government;
  No. 2, parental empowerment and stemming the influence of cultural 
violence;
  No. 3, getting tough on violent juveniles and those who commit 
violent crimes with a firearm; and
  No. 4, providing for safe and secure schools.
  Allow me to discuss each of these in more detail:
  No. 1, prevention and enforcement assistance to State and local 
government: The first tier of this plan involves passage of the measure 
we are beginning consideration of today--S. 254, the Violent and Repeat 
Juvenile Offender and Accountability Act. We believe we should provide 
a targeted infusion of funds to state and local authorities to combat 
juvenile crime. S. 254 provides $1 billion a year to the States to 
fight juvenile crime and prevent juvenile delinquency. We need to reach 
out to young children early in life, ensure that parents are empowered 
to do what they believe is best for their children, and take meaningful 
steps to give local education and enforcement officials the tools they 
need to hold violent juveniles accountable. I will discuss the 
underlying bill in greater detail shortly.
  No. 2, parental empowerment and stemming the influence of cultural 
violence: The second tier of our plan involves steps Congress should 
take to empower parents, educators and the entertainment industry to do 
more to limit the exposure of America's children to violence in our 
popular culture. We plan to offer several amendments to the underlying 
bill which will further this leg of our plan. For example, parents 
should be given the power to screen undesirable material from entering 
their homes over the Internet. I have an amendment I will offer to this 
bill which does just that. Senator Brownback's hearings on marketing 
violence to children provided powerful evidence of the exposure of 
children to violence in music, movies, and video games. He and I plan 
to offer a measure to give the entertainment industry the tools it 
needs to develop and enforce pre-existing ratings systems so that 
children are not exposed to material that the industry itself has 
deemed unsuitable for children.
  In recent years, the movies our children watch have become 
increasingly violent. The video games they play reward virtual 
killings. The lyrics of popular music have grown more violent and 
depraved. And much of the violence and cruelty in modern music and 
cinema is directed toward women.
  The President of the Motion Picture Association of America, Jack 
Valenti, is a man of great intellect and a man who I admire. He 
recently testified at a hearing that, ``I do earnestly believe that the 
movie/TV industry has a solemn obligation . . . [to engage in] creative 
scrutiny.'' He also notes that the industry has ``a duty to inform 
parents about film content.'' I agree with him and commend the industry 
for some of the steps they have taken. But I believe the entertainment 
industry's ``obligation'' and ``duty'' go a bit further. Indeed, what 
good is a ratings system if it is not enforced? Is the industry 
fulfilling its obligation to parents if, out of one side of its mouth, 
it take steps to inform parents that a particular video game, movie, or 
CD is not suitable for children and then, out of the other side of its 
mouth, advertises, promotes, and sells this same material to children?
  Let me be clear. I am not standing here arguing that this filth 
should be banned or regulated by the government. I simply believe we 
should limit our young people's exposure to it. It is one thing to say 
that Marilyn Manson or Eminem should be prohibited from producing their 
material. It's another thing for Congress to condone the entertainment 
industry's embracing of this garbage and its sale to children.
  Exposure to violent and depraved material is just one part of a 
complex problem. But I do hope that we can encourage the industry to 
work with us to do what is best for our children. Why can't this 
industry, which is a source for so much good in America, do more to 
discourage the production and marketing of filth to children? Why 
shouldn't the industry help fight the marketing of violence to young 
people? This week, I intend to give them the opportunity to do more.
  No. 3, getting tough on violent juveniles and enforcing existing law: 
A third tier of our plan insures that violent juveniles--teenagers who 
commit violent crimes--will be held accountable. Part of the solution 
is to insure that when a teenager brings a gun to school, he or she is 
held accountable by the criminal justice system. The Administration--
and several of my colleagues--have called for more gun control. I plan 
to offer and support many of the proposals that have been discussed. I 
support the extension of the Youth Handgun Safety Act to semi-automatic 
rifles. Indeed, the Republican bill before the Senate contains reforms 
like the juvenile Brady provision--a measure which will prohibit 
firearms possession by violent juvenile offenders. Republicans have 
been fighting for this provision for years, but the Administration has, 
until recently, largely ignored our efforts.
  The test for the Senate over the coming days will be whether we 
choose to play politics with the gun issue or work in a bipartisan 
manner to insure that access to firearms by juveniles is tightly 
controlled and that the laws are fully enforced. You see, we need to 
remember that it seems the Clinton Justice Department has trouble 
prosecuting violations of existing gun laws, especially gun crimes 
committed at school or involving minors. Arguably, we should not simply 
rush to enact more gun control--some of which cannot even be remotely 
associated with the Littleton tragedy--without taking steps to insure 
that existing federal laws are being enforced. So, we plan to propose 
legislation to insure that the Department of Justice will walk the 
walk--not just talk the talk--when it comes to prosecuting violent gun 
offenders and providing needed funding to the States to build detention 
facilities for violent and recidivist juvenile offenders.
  No. 4, safe and secure schools: The fourth tier of our plan revolves 
around the basic right that all students share--the right to receive 
the quality education they deserve. Our teachers and students need to 
know that their schools are safe and that, should they take action to 
deal with a violent student, the teacher will be protected. Our plan 
will also promote safe and secure schools, free of undue disruption and 
violence, so that our teachers can teach and our children can learn.
  The sad reality is that we can no longer sit silently by as children 
kill children, as teenagers commit truly heinous offenses, or as our 
juvenile drug abuse rate continues to climb. In 1997, juveniles 
accounted for nearly one fifth--18.7 percent--of all criminal arrests 
in the United States. Persons under 18 committed 13.5 percent of all 
murders, over 17 percent of all rapes, nearly 30 percent of all 
robberies, and 50 percent of all arsons.
  In 1997, 183 juveniles under 15 were arrested for murder. Juveniles 
under 15 were responsible for 6.5 percent of all rapes, 14 percent of 
all burglaries, and one third of all arsons. And, unbelievably, 
juveniles under 15--who are not old enough to legally drive in any 
state--in 1997 were responsible for 10.3 percent of all auto thefts.
  To put this in some context, consider this: in 1997, youngsters age 
15 to 19,

[[Page 9015]]

who are only 7 percent of the population, committed 22.2 percent of all 
crimes, 21.4 percent of violent crimes, and 32 percent of property 
crimes.
  And although there are endless statistics on our growing juvenile 
crime problem, one particularly sobering fact is that, between 1985 and 
1993, the number of murder cases involving 15-year olds increased 207 
percent. We have kids involved in murder before they can even drive.
  Cold statistics alone cannot tell the whole story. Crime has real 
effects on the lives of real people. Last fall, I read an article in 
the Richmond Times-Dispatch by my good friend, crime novelist Patricia 
Cornwell. It is one of the finest pieces I have read on the effects of 
and solutions to our juvenile crime problem.
  Let me share with my colleagues some of what Ms. Cornwell, who has 
spent the better part of her adult life studying and observing crime 
and its effects, has to say. She says ``when a person is touched by 
violence, the fabric of civility is forever rent, or ripped, or 
breached. . . .'' This is a graphic but accurate description. Countless 
lives can be ruined by a single violent crime. There is, of course, the 
victim, who may be dead, or scarred for life. There are the family and 
friends of the victim, who are traumatized as well, and who must live 
with the loss of a loved one. Society itself is harmed, when each of us 
is a little more frightened to walk on our streets at night, to use an 
ATM, or to jog or bike in our parks. And, yes, there is the offender 
who has chosen to throw his or her life away. Particularly when the 
offender is a juvenile, family, friends, and society are made poorer 
for the waste of potential in every human being. One crime, but 
permanent effects when ``the fabric of civility is rent.''
  This is the reality that has driven me to work for the last three 
years to address this issue. In this effort, I have been joined by a 
bipartisan majority of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which last 
Congress reported comprehensive legislation on bipartisan, two to one 
vote.
  Our legislation from last Congress, which S. 254 is modeled after and 
improved upon in an effort to gain the support of more Democrats, was 
supported by law enforcement organizations such as the Fraternal Order 
of Police, the National Sheriffs Association, and the National Troopers 
Coalition, as well as the support of juvenile justice practitioners 
such as the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, and 
victim's groups including the National Victims Center and the National 
Organization for Victims Assistance. S. 254 is enthusiastically 
supported by law enforcement. It has been endorsed by the Fraternal 
Order of Police, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the 
National Sheriffs Association, and the National Troopers Coalition. 
Victim's groups including the National Center for Victims of Crime and 
the National Organization for Victims Assistance support the bill and 
its pro-victim provisions. The Boys and Girls Clubs of America, 
undeniably experts in what it takes to prevent juvenile crime and 
delinquency, has urged passage of S. 254. And the National 
Collaboration for Youth, which includes a wide array of front-line 
juvenile crime and delenquency prevention providers such as the 
American Red Cross, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, the National 
4-H Council, the National Network for Youth, and the YMCA and YWCA of 
the USA, has called S. 254 a ``strong bill'' and praised ``the 
increasingly balanced emphasis S. 254 places on prevention 
activities''.
  Mr. President, allow me to spell out in greater detail the major 
provisions of this bill--the first tier in our plan to deal with 
violent juvenile crime. And how it will help reform the juvenile 
justice system that is failing the victims of juvenile crime, failing 
too many of our young people, and ultimately, failing to protect the 
public.
  First, this bill reforms and streamlines the federal juvenile code, 
to responsibly address the handful of cases each year involving 
juveniles who commit crimes under federal jurisdiction. Our bill sets a 
uniform age of 14 for the permissive transfer of juvenile defendants to 
adult court, permits prosecutors and the Attorney General to make the 
decision whether to charge a juvenile offender as an adult, and permits 
in certain circumstances juveniles charged as an adult to petition the 
court to be returned to juvenile status.
  It also provides that when prosecuted as adults, juveniles in Federal 
criminal cases will be subject to the same procedures and penalties as 
adults, except for the application of mandatory minimums in most cases. 
Of course, the death penalty would not be available as punishment for 
any offense committed before the juvenile was 18.
  Finally, in reforming the federal system, I believe that we must lead 
by example. So our bill provides that the federal criminal records of 
juveniles tried as adults, and the federal delinquency records of 
juveniles adjudicated delinquent for certain serious offenses such as 
murder, rape, armed robbery, and sexual abuse or assault, will be 
treated for all purposes in the same manner as the records of adults 
for the same offenses. Other federal felony juvenile criminal or 
delinquency records would be treated the same as adult records for 
criminal justice or national security background check purposes.
  The bill also permits juvenile federal felony criminal and 
delinquency records to be provided to schools and colleges under rules 
issued by the Attorney General, provided that recipients of the records 
are held to privacy standards and that the records not be used to 
determine admission.
  Let me assure any who may be concerned that it is not our intent in 
reforming the federal juvenile code to federalize juvenile crime--
indeed, no conduct that is not a federal crime now will be if this 
reform is enacted. I do not intend or expect a substantial increase in 
the number of juvenile cases adjudicated or prosecuted in federal 
court. It is our intent, rather, to ensure that when there is a federal 
crime warranting the federal prosecution of a juvenile, the federal 
government assumes its responsibility to deal with it, rather than 
saddling the states with that burden.
  Second, at the heart of this bill is an historic reform and 
reauthorization of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act 
of 1974, the most comprehensive review of that legislation in 25 years. 
The States--under the leadership of a new breed of young, no-nonsense 
Governors, like Mike Leavitt of Utah, then-Governor George Allen and 
current Governor Jim Gilmore of Virginia, and Frank Keating of 
Oklahoma--have for several years have been far ahead of the Federal 
Government in implementing innovative reforms of their juvenile justice 
systems. For example, between 1992 and 1996, of the 50 States and the 
District of Columbia, 48 made substantive changes to their juvenile 
justice systems. Among the trends in State law changes are the removal 
of more serious and violent offenders from the juvenile justice system, 
in favor of criminal court prosecution; new and innovative disposition/
sentencing options for juveniles; and the revision, in favor of 
openness, of traditional confidentiality provisions relating to 
juvenile proceedings and records.
  While the States have been making fundamental changes in their 
approaches to juvenile justice, the Federal Government has made no 
significant change to its approach and has done little to encourage and 
reward State and local reform. Thus, the juvenile justice terrain has 
shifted beneath the Federal Government, leaving its programs an 
policies out of step and largely irrelevant to the needs of State and 
local governments. This bill corrects this imbalance between State and 
Federal juvenile justice policy, and will help ensure that federal 
programs support the needs of State and local governments.
  First, our bill reforms and strengthens the Office of Juvenile 
Justice and Delinquency Prevention, OJJDP, of the Department of 
Justice. The effectiveness of the OJJDP will be enhanced by requiring 
its Administrator to present to Congress annual plans, with measurable 
goals, to control and prevent youth crime, coordinate all Federal 
programs relating to controlling and

[[Page 9016]]

preventing youth crime, and disseminate to States and local governments 
data on the prevention, correction and control of juvenile crime and 
delinquency, and report on successful programs and methods.
  And, most important to state and local governments, in the future, 
OJJDP will serve as a single point of contact for States, localities, 
and private entities to apply for and coordinate all federal assistance 
and programs related to juvenile crime control and delinquency 
prevention. This one-stop-shopping for federal programs and assistance 
will help state and local governments focus on the problem, instead of 
on how to navigate the federal bureaucracy.
  Second, our reform bill consolidates numerous JJDPA programs, 
including Part C Special Emphasis grants, State challenge grants, boot 
camps, and JJDPA Title V incentive grants, under an enhanced $200 
million per year prevention challenge block grant to the States. The 
bill also reauthorizes the JJDPA Title II Part B State formula grants. 
In doing so, it also reforms the current core mandates on the States 
relating to the incarceration of juveniles to ensure the protection of 
juveniles in custody while providing state and local governments with 
needed flexibility.
  This flexibility is particularly important to rural states, where 
immediate access to a juvenile detention facility might be difficult. 
Since many communities cannot afford separate juvenile and adult 
facilities, law enforcement officers must drive hours to transport 
juvenile offenders to the nearest facility, instead of patrolling the 
streets. Another unintended consequence of JJDPA is the release of 
juvenile offenders because no beds are available in juvenile facilities 
or because law enforcement officials cannot afford to transport youths 
to juvenile facilities. Juvenile criminals are released even though 
space is available to detain them in adult facilities. Our reform will 
provide the states with a degree of flexibility which currently does 
not exist.
  However, this flexibility is not provided at the expense of juvenile 
inmate safety. The bill strictly prohibits placing juvenile offenders 
in jail cells with adults. No one supports the placing of children in 
cells with adult offenders. To be clear--nothing in the bill will 
expose juveniles to any physical contact by adult offenders. Indeed, 
the legislation is explicit that, if states are to qualify for federal 
funds, they may not place juvenile delinquents in detention under 
conditions in which the juvenile can have physical contact, much less 
be physically harmed by, an adult inmate.
  These provisions are largely based on H.R. 1818 from the 105th 
Congress, but are improved to ensure that abuse of juvenile delinquent 
inmates is not permitted by incorporating definitions of what 
constitutes unacceptable contact between juvenile delinquents and adult 
inmates.
  Third, and finally, our reform of the JJDPA reauthorizes and 
strengthens those other parts of the JJDPA that have proven effective. 
For example, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and 
the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act are reauthorized and funded. Gang 
prevention programs are reauthorized. And important, successful 
programs to provide mentoring for young people in trouble with the law 
or at risk of getting into trouble with the law are reauthorized and 
expanded. Operating through the Cooperative Extension Service program 
sponsored by the Department of Agriculture, the University of Utah has 
developed a ground-breaking and highly successful program that mentors 
to entire families--pairing college age mentors with juveniles in 
trouble or at risk of getting in trouble with the law, and pairing 
senior citizen couples with the juvenile's parents and siblings. This 
program gets great bang for the buck. So our bill provides 
demonstration funds to expand this program and replicate its success in 
other states.
  Finally, our bill provides an important new program to encourage 
state programs that provide accountability in their juvenile justice 
systems. All or nearly all of our states have taken great strides in 
reforming their systems, and it is time for the federal government's 
programs to catch up and provide needed assistance.
  Despite reforms in recent years, all too often, the juvenile justice 
system ignores the minor crimes that lead to the increasingly frequent 
serious and tragic juvenile crimes capturing headlines. Unfortunately, 
many of these crimes might have been prevented had the warning signs of 
early acts of delinquency or antisocial behavior been heeded. A 
delinquent juvenile's critical first brush with the law is a vital 
aspect of preventing future crimes, because it teaches an important 
lesson --what behavior will be tolerated. Accountability is not just 
about punishment--although punishment is frequently needed. It is about 
teaching consequences and providing rehabilitation to young offenders.
  According to a recent Department of Justice study, juveniles 
adjudicated for so-called index crimes--such as murder, rape, robbery, 
assault, burglary, and auto theft--began their criminal careers at an 
early age. The average age for a juvenile committing an index offense 
is 14.5 years, and typically, by age 7, the future criminal is already 
showing minor behavior problems. If we can intervene early enough, 
however, we might avert future tragedies. Our bill provides a new 
Juvenile Accountability Block Grant to reform federal policy that has 
been complicit in the system's failure, and provide states with much 
needed funding for a system of graduated sanctions, including community 
service for minor crimes, electronically monitored home detention, boot 
camps, and traditional detention for more serious offenses.
  And let there be no mistake--detention is needed as well. Our first 
priority should be to keep our communities safe. We simply have to 
ensure that violent people are removed from our midst, no matter their 
age. When a juvenile commits an act as heinous as the worst adult 
crime, he or she is not a kid anymore, and we shouldn't treat them as 
kids.
  State receipt of the incentive grants would be conditioned on the 
adoption of three core accountability policies: the establishment of 
graduated sanctions to ensure appropriate correction of juvenile 
offenders, drug testing juvenile offenders upon arrest in appropriate 
cases; and recognition of victims rights and needs in the juvenile 
justice system.
  Meaningful reform also requires that a juvenile's criminal record 
ought to be accessible to police, courts, and prosecutors, so that we 
can know who is a repeat or serious offender. Right now, these records 
simply are not generally available in NCIC, the national system that 
tracks adult criminal records. Thus, if a juvenile commits a string of 
felony offenses, and no record is kept, the police, prosecutors, judges 
or juries will never know what he did. Maybe for his next offense, 
he'll get a light sentence or even probation, since it appears he's 
committed only one felony in his life instead 10 or 15. Such a system 
makes no sense, and it doesn't protect the public.
  So the reform we offer in this bill also provides the first federal 
incentives for the integration of serious juvenile criminal records 
into the national criminal history database, together with federal 
funding for the system.
  Finally, we all recognize the value of education in preventing 
juvenile crime and rehabilitating juvenile offenders. When trouble-
causing juveniles remain in regular classrooms, they frequently make it 
difficult for all other students to learn. Yet, removing such juveniles 
from the classroom without addressing their educational needs virtually 
guarantees that they will fall further into the vortex of crime and 
delinquency. The costs are high--to the juvenile, but also to victims 
and to society. These juveniles too frequently become crime committing 
adults, with all the costs that implies--costs to victims, and the cost 
of incarcerating the offenders to protect the public. So our bill tries 
to break this cycle, by providing a three-year $45 million 
demonstration project to provide alternative education to juveniles in 
trouble with or at risk of getting in trouble with the law.

[[Page 9017]]

  The bill we are debating today authorizes significant funding for the 
programs I have described. In all, our bill authorizes a total of $5 
billion in assistance to state and local governments. This breaks down 
to $1 billion per year for five years, in the following categories:
  $450 million per year for Juvenile Accountability Block Grants;
  $435 million per year for prevention programs under the JJDPA, 
including $200 million for Juvenile Delinquency Prevention Block 
Grants, $200 million for Part B Formula grant prevention programs, and 
$35 million for Gangs, Mentoring and Discretionary grant programs;
  $75 million per year for grants to states to upgrade and enhance 
juvenile felony criminal record histories and to make such records 
available within NCIC, the national criminal history database used by 
law enforcement, the courts, and prosecutors; and
  $40 million per year for NIJ research and evaluation of the 
effectiveness of juvenile delinquency prevention programs.
  Additionally, the bill authorizes $100 million per year for joint 
federal-state-local law enforcement task forces to address gang crime 
in areas with high concentrations of gang activity. $75 million per 
year of this funding is authorized for establishment and operation of 
High Intensity Interstate Gang Activity Areas, and the remaining $25 
million per year is authorized for community-based gang prevention and 
intervention for gang members and at-risk youth in gang areas.
  And, finally, as I have already noted, the bill authorizes $45 
million over three years for innovative alternative education programs 
to make our schools safer places of learning while helping ensure that 
the youth most at risk do not get left behind.
  Under the leadership of a crime conscious Republican Congress and the 
leadership of our nation's governors, we as a nation have seen a 
decrease in our overall violent crime rate. Consider that since 1995, 
we have made significant progress against crime--much of it in 
partnership with public officials like Governors Mike Leavitt of Utah, 
Jim Gilmore of Virginia, George Pataki of New York and George W. Bush 
of Texas, and Mayors Rudy Giulianni of New York City and Richard 
Riordan of Los Angeles. Consider that violent crime is down 18 percent 
from 1993 to 1997, murders are down 28 percent from 1993 to 1997, and 
overall crime is down 10 percent from 1993 to 1997.
  These declines have put a serious dent in our crime rates for the 
first time since the 1960's. Congress since 1995 has supported the 
efforts of our state and local officials with legislation that has 
provided real funding and real solutions to crime, rather than feel-
good measures. We cleared out our courts with habeas corpus and 
prisoner litigation reform. We have added thousands of border guards to 
stop criminal aliens from entering the country. We have returned 
billions of the taxpayers' dollars directly to our governors to build 
prisons and equip our police. Now it is time to address the problem of 
juvenile crime in the same way--with real solutions and real support to 
state and local efforts.
  Meaningful reforms like truth-in-sentencing laws, which replaced the 
liberal indeterminate sentencing systems with longer and binding 
sentences for violent, drug, and repeat offenders, zero-tolerance 
policing, which put law enforcement officers back in our neighborhoods, 
and habeas corpus reform, which insured death sentences for heinous 
criminals would be carried out, have all contributed to this improving 
picture.
  Yet, in the face of this improving domestic environment, depraved 
acts of school and related violence by young people are becoming 
increasingly more commonplace and increasingly more depraved. While 
overall, juvenile crime may be headed down slightly, juvenile drug use 
is up and juveniles increasingly account for the violent crime being 
committed.
  Our states are responding to this trend. They recognize, as this 
first chart shows, that the average age of delinquency or problem 
behaviors for tomorrow's adult violent offenders begins very early in 
life--with the average age of a first serious offense occurring before 
the child turns 12 years old. It is this fact--that many of tomorrow's 
violent crime problems are today's juvenile delinquents--which caused 
Senator Sessions and me to take this issue head-on more than three 
years ago.
  This chart shows the average age of the onset of problem behaviors of 
delinquency in male juveniles for minor problem behavior is 7 years 
old; moderately serious problem behavior is 9.5 years old; serious 
delinquency, 11.9 years of age, almost 12; and first court contact for 
index offenses, 14.5 years old.
  This is data based on the statements of the oldest sampling in the 
Pittsburgh Youth Study and on statements made by their mothers. It was 
also in the OJJDP Juvenile Justice Bulletin, ``Serious and Violent 
Juvenile Offenders,'' in May 1998.
  I am concerned that the Clinton Administration has been slow to 
respond and provide assistance. They have failed to enforce the gun 
laws already on the books and they have sat silently by, failing to 
endorse our bill because it was too tough on violent juveniles and 
because it wanted more control over how the monies would be spent. As 
recently as last week, I offered the Attorney General the opportunity 
to endorse S. 254 or provide us with her suggested improvements but we 
have heard nothing. Instead the Administration holds summits which 
produce nothing in terms of assisting the states. Instead of concrete 
proposals, the Administration offers the public poll-driven, 
legislative trinkets. They hold press conferences ``announcing'' as 
their own industry driven reforms aimed at making the Internet more 
safe for children.
  Desperate for something to crticize, I expect the Administration will 
argue that our bill is short on the prevention-side of the equation--a 
claim they have to know just doesn't add up. Consider the fact that, 
under our bill, Justice Department juvenile justice spending will reach 
unprecedented heights. Since 1994, the Republican Congress has steadily 
increase funding for OJJDP--from $107 million in FY 94 to $267 million 
in FY 99. Our bill continues this trend by increasing authorized 
funding levels over existing appropriations from $267 million to $435 
million in FY 2000.
  So, it is left to the Congress--once again--to step forward to 
provide the necessary leadership at the federal level. I hope the 
Administration will see its way clear to do what's right and come out 
in support of our efforts to help fight juvenile crime.
  Mr. President, in the face of a confounding problem like juvenile 
crime and school violence, it is tempting to look for easy answers. It 
is also tempting to play politics and advance poll-driven, legislative 
trinkets in lieu of meaningful reform. I do not believe that we should 
succumb to this temptation. We are faced with a complex problem which 
cannot be solved solely by the enactment of new criminal prohibitions. 
It is at its core a problem of our nation's values. But I believe that 
by parents and communities working together to teach accountability by 
example, by early intervention when the signs clearly point to violent 
and antisocial behavior, and by demanding more of our popular culture 
and industry leaders, we will be taking a postitive step forward.
  Mr. President, that is what our efforts are all about. Our efforts 
are a comprehensive approach to this national problem. I hope we can 
work together to develop a bipartisan solution to these problems as 
well.
  To that degree, I appreciate the work of my colleagues, especially 
Senator Sessions, who worked so long and hard on our side, as well as 
Senator Campbell, who has been very concerned about these juvenile 
crime issues, and my colleagues on the Democratic side, Senator Biden, 
Senator Leahy, and others, who are working with us to try to come up 
with what needs to be done.


                         Privilege Of The Floor

  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent floor privileges be granted to 
the

[[Page 9018]]

following staff for the duration of the Senate's consideration of S. 
254: Sharon Prost, Rhett DeHart, Michael Kennedy, Craig Wolf, Ed 
Harden, Leah Belaire, and David Muhlhausen.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Crapo) Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that floor 
privileges be granted to Beryl Howell, Bruce Cohen and Edward Pagano 
for the duration of both the debate and all votes on this legislation.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Emilia 
Beskind, an intern, be permitted floor privileges during the duration 
of the debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, we have had a series of shocking schoolyard 
shootings. I cannot imagine any Senator, as a human being or as a 
parent or citizen, who would not be shocked, just as have most people 
around the world. The Senate is now finally turning its attention to 
doing something about youth violence in this country. Two weeks ago, 
the distinguished majority leader promised the American people that 
this week he would permit full and open debate on this issue. I commend 
him for that, because for 3 years we have not been given the 
opportunity to discuss this critical issue on the floor of the Senate 
without some kinds of procedural gimmicks or artificial limits on 
debate or amendments. I think the American people do not want to see 
that. They want to see a full and real debate.
  Over that same 3-year period when we tried to have this debate, this 
country has witnessed schoolyard shootings by children in Arkansas and 
Washington, Oregon, Tennessee, California, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, 
Mississippi, and most recently in Littleton, CO. I say to the 
distinguished Presiding Officer and all Members on the floor, none of 
us can look at our States and say with certitude that we are immune to 
such a tragedy.
  Finally, after the deaths and injury of 41 children just in the 
incidents to which I have referred, the Senate is turning its attention 
to this matter. Violence in our Nation's schools, committed by or 
against children, devastates all of us--as parents or as grandparents, 
as educators, as civic leaders or whatever. But devastating as it is to 
us, most importantly these incidents scar and upset our children. 
Obviously, it takes them away from the learning, which should be the 
focus at this important time in their lives, a time that should be a 
time of joy, a time of growth, a time of learning--a time that will set 
their path, really, for the rest of their lives. They should not be 
distracted by these terrible things.
  This is a complex issue. Frankly, no one party has all the right 
answers. It is time we as Democrats and Republicans discuss all of our 
ideas and proposals for actions and then choose the best among them. A 
good proposal that works should get the support of all of us.
  Our first question really should be whether a program or proposal 
will help our children effectively, not whether it is a Democrat or 
Republican proposal. I have learned through the years that good 
legislators coming together can make good proposals. I have been 
honored to see passed into law numerous law enforcement proposals I 
have sponsored and co-sponsored with like-minded Members on the other 
side of the aisle. But we also have to recognize that legislation alone 
is not enough to stop youth violence. We can pass a law saying we don't 
want violence. We can also pass a law saying we would like the Sun to 
rise in the west and set in the east. Either one would be about as 
effective as the other. We have to do a lot more than that.
  We can pass an assortment of new laws and still turn on the news and 
find out some child in the country has turned violent and turned on 
other teachers or children with a weapon, with terrible results. So 
this is not just about Littleton. Littleton is the most recent, it is 
the most bloody, but it is the seventh incident of schoolyard killings 
in the past years and no area of the country has escaped the bomb 
threats or fears these incidents have generated. Each incident of 
school violence leaves us with more questions than answers. It is easy 
to say each is related to the next, but together they all point to 
problems we must do something about. There is not one major catalyst 
that touches off an eruption of violence in a school; there are a whole 
lot of contributing causes.
  We can certainly point to inadequate parental involvement. Frankly, 
that is an area about which I worry--very, very busy parents and very, 
very little time for their children. In an increasingly affluent 
society, we have to ask whether we are paying a terrible price for our 
affluence.
  We can talk about overcrowded classrooms and oversized schools that 
add to students' alienation. When we have high schools with 1,200, 
1,500, 1,600 people, how can they possibly have a sense of community 
within that high school?
  We can talk about the easy accessibility of guns. We can speak of the 
violence depicted on television and movies and video games. We can talk 
about the inappropriate--more than inappropriate--disgusting content 
now available on the Internet. There is no single cause, and because 
there is no single cause, there is no single legislative solution that 
will cure the ill of youth violence in our schools and in our streets.
  Just as those who look at a fire know if you remove enough kindling, 
you can prevent the fire, so there are things we can do right now, and 
there is no excuse for not trying. Everybody has a role to play in the 
solution. While we cannot legislate the problems away, we all have a 
role, and that means parents, teachers, lawmakers, Hollywood, Internet 
providers and gun manufacturers and sellers. But we should also 
recognize that despite the recent and shocking school shootings, we 
have been doing some things right.
  By any measure you want to use--victimizations reported by police or 
crimes reported by police or arrests--the serious violent crime rate is 
going down. Let me show this chart. This is something of which we ought 
to be proud. Since 1973, the total violent crime rate has gone down. In 
fact, it has gone down the most in the last 6 years, certainly more 
than I have seen it go down at any time.
  According to the most recent statistics from the Bureau of Justice, 
the overall crime rate has fallen more than 18 percent since 1993.
  This next chart is remarkable. It is something in which we should 
take pride. After seeing for decades, during my adult life, the crime 
rate go up, up, up and up, to see it these last 6 years go down is very 
significant.
  The rate of serious violent crime being committed by juveniles is 
also on the way down. Following a period of going up in the late 1980s 
and early 1990s, they peaked in 1993. That also is something in which 
we should take some pride and we should take comfort as Americans and 
as citizens.
  The reduction in the murder rate alone is truly good news. In 1997, 
the murder rate was 28 percent lower than 1993. And in 1998, this rate 
had fallen to its lowest level in three decades. That, again, is 
something in which we should take some comfort, even though any murder 
is one murder too many.
  In the years I have been here, in 30 years--this goes back to the 
time when I was a prosecutor and throughout all this--I have seen 
through each administration, Republican or Democrat, the murder rate go 
up. Finally, we have seen in the last 6 years the murder rate come down 
to where it is now, the lowest level in three decades.
  Over the past few months, we have begun hearing criticism that this 
administration is not focusing sufficient resources on enforcing our 
gun laws. Of course, there is always room for improvement, as there is 
with anybody. But let's not let political name-calling detract from the 
indisputable fact that the murder rate for teenagers and young adults 
rose sharply in the late eighties and early nineties due to a rise in 
gun violence that is now on the decline. In fact, juvenile murder and 
non-negligent manslaughter arrests declined almost 40 percent between 
1993

[[Page 9019]]

and 1997. To use real numbers, there were 3,800 juvenile arrests for 
murder at the peak in 1993. By 1997, that number was down to 2,500 out 
of a population of 30 million children between the ages of 10 and 17.
  As we talk about juvenile crime legislation, it is important to keep 
in mind these statistics show some successes and we should be promoting 
and expanding those programs that are helping to produce these 
successes.
  We have some complex, sweeping legislation before us. S. 254 was 
never referred to the Judiciary Committee for consideration, which is 
extraordinarily unusual. I look forward to discussing this.
  It was introduced by the chairman of the Judiciary Committee and 
cosponsored by the distinguished Senator from Alabama, who is on the 
floor. I wait to hear from the distinguished chairman as to what will 
be accomplished with it.
  While we did not examine the bill in the Judiciary Committee because 
the majority chose, as they have a right to, to place the bill directly 
on the Senate Calendar, instead the Judiciary Committee has been busy 
on a bankruptcy bill protecting creditors and a proposed constitutional 
amendment to protect the flag. Protecting the flag and protecting 
creditors may be important issues, but frankly, as a parent, I am far 
more interested in protecting children from violence, both in the 
schoolyard and outside school.
  Last Congress, we had an earlier version of this bill, S. 10. We 
tried to improve it, and I think we did. I will describe in more detail 
S. 254. The juvenile crime bill we turn to today reflects that 
progress, and I commend Senator Hatch for his leadership in continuing 
to push forward and building a consensus of Republicans and Democrats. 
I thought we missed opportunities in the last Congress to come together 
on legislative efforts to deal with youth violence. I hope we will not 
miss that opportunity in this Congress and we can come together.
  In fact, many of the improvements we tried to make to the juvenile 
crime bill, S. 10, were rejected mostly along party-line votes in the 
Judiciary Committee, and by nearly a party-line vote we saw it passed 
out of committee. Not surprising, because it was a partisan bill, and 
crime should not be a partisan issue, it was hard to find anybody who 
liked it when it came to the floor. I made, as did others, a number of 
criticisms of the bill, and those criticisms were echoed by virtually 
every major newspaper in the United States, as well as by national 
leaders, and ranged across the spectrum from Chief Justice William 
Rehnquist to Marian Wright Edelman, the president of the Children's 
Defense Fund.
  The Philadelphia Inquirer called the bill ``fatally flawed.'' The Los 
Angeles Times described the bill ``peppered with ridiculous poses and 
penalties'' and as taking a ``rigid, counterproductive approach'' to 
juvenile crime prevention. The St. Petersburg Times called the bill 
``an amalgam of bad and dangerous ideas.''
  Chief Justice Rehnquist criticized S. 10 because it would, as he 
said, ``eviscerate [the] traditional deference to state prosecutions, 
thereby increasing substantially the potential workload of the federal 
judiciary.''
  He was concerned that federalizing juvenile crimes meant that 
``federal prosecution should be limited to those offenses that cannot 
and should not be prosecuted in state courts.''
  The National District Attorneys Association, having been the vice 
president of that association, I listened to them. They expressed 
concern that ``S. 10 goes too far'' in changing the ``core mandates'' 
which have kept juveniles safer and away from adults while in jail for 
over 25 years, and that S. 10's new juvenile record-keeping 
requirements were ``burdensome and contrary to most state laws.''
  Similarly, the National Governors' Association, the Council of State 
Governments, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National Association of 
Counties, the National Conference of State Legislatures expressed 
concerns about the restrictions S. 10 would place on their ability to 
combat and prevent juvenile crime effectively.
  So with all this criticism, when the Republican leadership said we 
could not have real debate in the last Congress, that became an 
unacceptable situation and one, frankly, which created a lot of concern 
among a number of Republican legislators.
  Despite the wellspring of concern by the Federal judiciary and by 
State and local law enforcement and public officials over significant 
parts of S. 10 as reported by the Judiciary Committee, we were not 
going to be allowed to debate it.
  In September 1998, the majority propounded a unanimous consent 
request to permit the Republicans to offer a substitute that contained 
changes to over 160 separate paragraphs of the bill, but not allow 
Democrats the same opportunity. That did not allow full and fair 
debate.
  I suggested a plan that would have ensured debate on the more 
controversial aspects of last year's bill by placing in the Record on 
September 25, 1998, a proposal for a limited number of Democratic 
amendments. My proposal was never responded to.
  I say that because that was in the past. And I accept the majority 
leader's representation that this will not happen this year, that we 
will not allow narrow procedural devices to limit debate on S. 254. And 
I think we will have a better bill because of that.
  There are very good ideas on both the Republican and Democratic side 
of the aisle here in the Senate to improve this legislation. After all, 
keeping children safe, both in school and out of school is not a 
Republican or Democratic idea; that is a basic, automatic feeling that 
every parent, every family and every person in this Chamber of either 
party feels strongly.
  The concerns I outlined about S. 10 are shared by many others, as 
well as by child advocates, judges, law enforcement and State and local 
officials, and were shared here on November 13, 1997; January 29, 1998; 
April 1, 1998; June 23, 1998; September 8, 1998, and October 15, 1998. 
I said the bill skimped on effective prevention efforts to stop 
children from getting into trouble in the first place.
  Second, I said the bill would have gutted the core protections which 
have been in place for over 20 years to protect children who come into 
contact with the criminal justice system and keep them out of harm's 
way from adult inmates, to keep status and nonoffenders out of jail 
altogether, and to address disproportionate minority confinement.
  Thirdly, I expressed concern about the federalization of juvenile 
crime resulting from S. 10's elimination of the requirement that 
Federal courts only get involved in prosecutions of juveniles if the 
State cannot or declines to prosecute the juveniles.
  Finally, I was concerned that the new accountability block grant in 
S. 10 contained onerous eligibility requirements which would end up 
imposing on the States a one-size-fits-all uniform sewn up in 
Washington for dealing with juvenile crime. The States simply did not 
want this straitjacket. In fact, at one stage, the way it was written 
in the bill, no State would have qualified for the block grant; no 
State of the 50 would have.
  So I say this, and I say this as a compliment to Senators on both 
sides of the aisle who worked on S. 254: It is a much more improved 
bill than S. 10 in the last Congress. It incorporates many of the 
improvements we suggested last Congress. I am delighted to see that 
proposals that the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee specifically 
voted down in 1997 have now been put back in the bill. These are 
changes that we have been pushing for a number of years. It is the 
right approach now to put them back in the bill.
  So let's make progress together. I hope through an open floor debate 
and an open amendment process, without procedural games, we will be 
able to make sufficient progress to be able to support a Senate bill 
that can make a difference.
  We tried in July 1997 to amend S. 10 to protect the States' 
traditional prerogative in handling juvenile offenders. And my 
amendment would have limited the Federal trial as an adult of juveniles 
charged with nonviolent felonies to circumstances when the State

[[Page 9020]]

is unwilling or unable to exercise jurisdiction. That was defeated. 
Whereas, the language in S. 254 contains a new provision analogous to 
my previously rejected amendment that would direct Federal prosecutors 
to ``exercise a presumption in favor of referral'' of juvenile cases to 
the appropriate State or tribal authorities.
  While the language used in this S. 254 section may need some 
clarification, particularly since it appears to contradict other 
language in the bill requiring Federal trial of juveniles who commit 
any Federal offense, it is a provision in the right direction.
  In July 1997, we tried to amend S. 10 before the Judiciary Committee 
to permit limited judicial review of a Federal prosecutor's decision to 
try certain juveniles as adults. S. 10 granted sole, nonreviewable 
authority to Federal prosecutors to try juveniles as adults for any 
Federal felony, removing Federal judges from that decision altogether.
  I am a little bit hesitant to give authority to any Federal 
prosecutor--special prosecutors or regular Federal prosecutors--that 
cannot be reviewed. And my amendment would have granted Federal judges 
authority in appropriate cases to review a prosecutor's decision. Only 
three States in the country granted prosecutors the extraordinary 
authority over juvenile cases that S. 10 proposed, including Florida.
  I mention that because sometimes we get the impression that here in 
Washington we always know better than the States. In criminal 
procedures, criminal process, we should look at the States and their 
experience in determining whether we should step in and change things. 
And when you find that only three States have done what we were asking 
to do, you ask why. And I mentioned Florida as being one of the States 
that granted this extraordinary authority.
  Earlier this year, we saw the consequences of that kind of authority, 
when a local prosecutor in that State charged, as an adult, a 15-year-
old mildly retarded boy with no prior record, who stole $2 from a 
school classmate to buy lunch. The local prosecutor locked up this 
retarded boy in an adult jail for weeks. You can imagine what that was 
like, for this $2 theft, before national press coverage forced a review 
of the charging decision in this case. We do not want to see that kind 
of incident on the Federal level.
  Unfortunately, my proposal for a ``reverse waiver'' procedure 
providing judicial review of a prosecutor's decision was voted down, 
with no Republican on the committee voting for it.
  S. 254 contains a virtually identical ``reverse waiver'' provision to 
the one proposed that was rejected almost 2 years ago. So that is a 
welcome change in the bill.
  S. 254 also contains a provision to increase penalties for witness 
tampering that I first suggested and included in the Youth Violence, 
Crime and Drug Abuse Control Act of 1997, S. 15, which was introduced 
in the first weeks of the 105th Congress, at the end of the last 
Congress in the Safe Schools, Safe Streets and Secure Borders Act of 
1998, S. 2484, and again in S. 9, the Comprehensive package crime 
proposals introduced with the Senator Daschle at the beginning of this 
Congress.
  This provision would increase the penalty for using or threatening 
physical force against any person with intent to tamper with a witness, 
victim or informant from a maximum of 10 to 20 years imprisonment. In 
addition, the provision adds a conspiracy penalty for obstruction of 
justice offenses involving witnesses, victims and informants.
  I have long been concerned about the undermining of our criminal 
justice system by criminal efforts to threaten or harm witnesses, 
victims and informants, to stop them from cooperating with and 
providing assistance to law enforcement. I tried to include this 
provision, along with other law enforcement initiatives, by amendment 
to S. 10. It was voted down in the committee. I am now pleased to see 
it is included in S. 254. I think that is an improvement.
  S. 254 substantially relaxes the eligibility requirements for the new 
juvenile accountability block grant. That is a positive step. S. 10 in 
the last Congress would have required States to comply with a host of 
new Federal mandates to qualify for the first cent of grant money, an 
awful lot of recordkeeping mandates, and make all juvenile delinquency 
records available to law enforcement agencies and to schools, including 
colleges and universities. We could not find any State that would have 
qualified for this grant money. We tried to get the Judiciary Committee 
to revise this. My amendment was then voted down, but I am glad to see 
that 2 years later S. 254 reflects the criticism that I and other 
Democrats on the Judiciary Committee leveled at the recordkeeping 
requirements.
  The current bill removes the recordkeeping requirements altogether 
from the juvenile accountability block grant, as we had requested. In 
fact, it sets up an entirely new juvenile criminal history block grant 
funded at $75 million per year. To qualify for a criminal history 
grant, States would have to promise within 3 years to keep fingerprint-
supported records of delinquency adjudications of juveniles who 
committed a felony act. No more photographs required; no more records 
of mere arrests required. No more dissemination of petty juvenile 
offense records to schools required. Only juvenile delinquency 
adjudications for murder, armed robbery, rape, or sexual molestation 
must be disseminated in the same manner as records.
  So the eligibility requirements for the juvenile accountability block 
grant now number only three, including that the State have in place a 
policy of drug testing for appropriate categories. This reflects an 
amendment that we offered to S. 10 in July of 1997.
  One problem I do have is that S. 254 does not allow substance abuse 
counseling or treatment as an allowable use of grant funds. I hope that 
is something we can rectify as the bill goes forward.
  Now, we have children in custody provisions that were enacted in the 
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974. This was done 
to address the horrific conditions in which children were being 
detained by State authorities in close proximity to adult inmates. 
These were conditions that often resulted in tragic assaults, rapes, 
and suicides of those children.
  As it has evolved, we have four core protections that have been 
adopted and, frankly, are working: separation of juvenile offenders 
from adult inmates in custody, so-called sight and sound separation; 
removal of juveniles from adult jails or lockups with exceptions for 
rural areas, travel, weather-related conditions; deinstitutionalization 
of status offenders; to study and direct prevention efforts toward 
reducing the disproportionate confinement of minority youth by the 
juvenile justice system.
  S. 254 is an improvement over S. 10, which tried to take out three of 
the four core protections. S. 254 includes the sight and sound standard 
for juveniles in Federal custody. The same standard is used to apply to 
juvenile delinquents in State custody.
  S. 254 incorporates changes I recommended to S. 10 in the last 
Congress to ensure the continued existence and role of State advisory 
groups. That, I think, is going to be very important. The bill 
authorizes the use of grant funds to support the SAGs, but it doesn't 
require States to commit funds. I hope that is an omission that we may 
be able to work out.
  Now, there are a lot of improvements, but there are still some 
problems. S. 254 does not provide adequate assurance of funding for 
primary prevention programs. I understand that Senator Hatch may agree 
to an amendment to earmark 25 percent of the funds appropriated from 
the juvenile accountability block grant for primary prevention. That is 
good news. It is less than we had hoped for, but it is certainly 
progress. I commend him for that.
  When Senator Specter tried to earmark funds from this grant program 
for prevention during committee markup in 1997, his amendment failed. I 
hope we can do better than that.
  Secondly, the bill weakens the core protections under the Juvenile 
Justice

[[Page 9021]]

and Delinquency Prevention Act. This would reverse progress made over 
the past 25 years, and I do not think we should do it. It also includes 
a sense-of-the-Senate resolution urging States to try juveniles 10 to 
14 years old as adults for crimes, such as murder, that would carry the 
death penalty if committed by an adult. The resolution does not urge 
the death penalty for such children, but asks for adult prosecution. 
This is really something the States should make up their minds. We 
shouldn't be telling them what to do on that.
  I say this as a representative of one of the very, very few States in 
the country that allows the prosecution of juveniles 10 years and older 
as an adult for certain crimes. We really have in Vermont the toughest 
law of any State on that, but it is something that the Vermont 
Legislature decided. It probably shouldn't be opined on by the Senate.
  Lastly, the bill is completely silent on how we should address the 
problem of the easy accessibility of guns to children.
  Mr. President, one of the reasons for this debate, one of the best 
things about this debate, if it is allowed, is a full and open debate, 
something we were not allowed before. We can address all of these 
issues.
  Again, I urge Senators to come together as Senators, not as 
Republicans or Democrats, about what would be best. Is there too much 
violence in the media today? Of course there is. I find it very, very 
difficult to have any enthusiasm for going to a very violent movie or 
watching a violent television show. I have been to too many murder 
scenes. It seems they are always at 2 or 3 in the morning.
  If anybody thinks a murder scene is somehow glamorous, talk to people 
who have been there. I have had a murder victim dying while he was 
telling me the name of the person who killed him. You can imagine the 
shock when the person he was telling me had killed him was his own son.
  There is nothing exciting or glamorous about this. There is nothing 
exciting or glamorous about the stench, the sight, the view of a murder 
scene. Anybody who has visited them knows that. Anybody who has visited 
as many as I have knows it very, very well. We should talk about that--
are there too many violent scenes in an antiseptic way given to our 
juveniles--but at the same time let us be honest enough to say that 
guns do kill people and there are too many guns available to young 
people. I say this, coming from a State that is probably the only State 
in the Union that has no gun laws and also has an extremely low crime 
rate, a State where parents still teach their youngsters a safe and 
responsible way to use guns. But there is no reason why a teenager 
should be allowed to walk in to a gun show anywhere they want and buy 
any kind of high-powered weaponry they want, with no parental 
responsibility, no parental supervision.
  We should also know that simply saying let's increase penalties does 
not stop crime. You stop crime by stopping crime, and that means we 
have to address prevention programs that work and have to understand 
that a prevention program that may work very well in Alabama may not 
work in Vermont or vice versa.
  The prevention programs, such as the one that stopped youth murders 
in Boston, is something which should be looked at, and it can be 
funded, if people want to. We should accept that.
  As I said in the opening part of my statement, Mr. President, we also 
have to accept the fact that parents are not spending enough time with 
their children and that we ought to get back off this hurly-burly world 
and understand that nothing we will ever do in life--career, money 
making, or anything else--is as important as how we raise our children. 
A lot of parents are going to have to accept that fact. We are going to 
have to look at the size of our schools and say that you can't have a 
sense of community in a high school of 1,200 or 1,500 people.
  There are a lot of things we can do, and, working together, we can 
make it better. The murder rate has come down. We have done some very 
good things in the Congress. The administration deserves credit for it. 
Law enforcement deserves credit for it. But there is still more to do. 
Working together, we can do it.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado is recognized.
  (The remarks of Mr. Campbell and Mr. Leahy pertaining to the 
introduction of S. 996 are located in today's record under ``Statements 
on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama is recognized.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Thank you, Mr. President.
  Mr. President, I would like to say that Senator Leahy has been a 
prosecutor, has been interested in these issues, and has spent a lot of 
time and effort on it.
  We indeed attempted to respond, as you know, to a number of the 
concerns he has had. Some of the suggestions and concerns he has raised 
I believe are worthy. We made a number of corrections which I think 
would be helpful to that. I know Senator Hatch has also worked hard on 
it.
  Let me say first that juvenile crime is in fact a serious national 
problem. We have had some very real progress in the crime situation in 
America. We had some reductions in the 1980s. Then, in the mid-1980s, 
we had a crack epidemic which I think drove the number up some. But it 
has been declining among adult criminals steadfastly for quite a number 
of years.
  I have watched those numbers carefully--not as a Senator but as an 
attorney general of Alabama and as a U.S. attorney and Federal 
prosecutor in Alabama. I have observed the numbers and what has been 
happening. There are some good trends. We need to keep those trends 
going.
  A lot of people may not realize that from about 1980 until today we 
have quadrupled--four times--the number of people in prison as there 
were before.
  During a time when many people thought the crime rate was going to 
continue to go up, this Nation--mostly at the State level--has begun to 
step forward and identify repeat, dangerous offenders, and not just act 
as a revolving door but to incarcerate them for longer periods of time, 
keeping them off the streets, keeping them from being gang leaders and 
involving other, more impressionable young people in their criminal 
activity.
  We have had some nice reductions in violent crimes and, in crimes 
generally, some reduction among adults. We have not had the same kind 
of success in juvenile crime. There are a lot of reasons for that. I 
would like to suggest the fundamental reason, in my opinion; that is, 
we have not responded as a nation to juvenile crime as we have to adult 
crime. Most people may not know that 99.9999 percent of all juvenile 
cases are tried in State court. There are almost no juvenile cases 
tried in Federal court.
  I was a Federal prosecutor, U.S. attorney, for 12 years. I think I 
prosecuted one juvenile case in 12 years. There are so many impediments 
to it, so many difficulties, that it kept those prosecutions from going 
forward even when they should have gone forward. We need to improve 
that and make it a little bit better and easier in appropriate cases 
for U.S. attorneys, Federal prosecutors, to prosecute juvenile cases.
  But the thrust of our reform and the thrust of S. 254 is to encourage 
and strengthen the ability of State and local governments to prosecute 
and handle and deal with young people who are committing crimes, are 
about to commit crimes, and who are running afoul of the law.
  We know that in the last several years there has been a reduction in 
juvenile violent murders and the rates have gone down--not 
dramatically, but it has been a good number. Overall, from 1993 through 
1997, however, there has been an increase of 14 percent in arrests of 
juveniles for criminal activities; we are not seeing a decline. This is 
after an incredible period of explosive growth in the last 15 or 20 
years in juvenile crime--maybe even 25 or 30 years in juvenile crime. 
We have an extraordinarily high, unprecedented level of juvenile crime. 
Unfortunately, we have not responded to that.

[[Page 9022]]

  Mr. President, I have seen it in my State. And my State is typical. 
We have increased adult prisoners, but we have not done anything to 
deal with what happens when a youngster is arrested for a serious 
crime. Judges don't have options. They don't have the ability to deal 
with them in an effective way, and they are coming back time and time 
and time again.
  There was a murder in Montgomery, AL, when I was attorney general, by 
three young people. They were 16 and 15. I asked the police chief what 
kind of criminal history those three young people had. They were out on 
the streets. They were free, running loose. One had 5 prior arrests; 
another one had 5 prior arrests; and the third one had 15 prior 
arrests.
  A New York Times writer, Mr. Butterfield, within the last year did an 
analysis of what is happening in juvenile courts. He went to Chicago 
IL, a major city. What he found there is too typical of what is going 
on in juvenile justice. What he found was that judges were spending 5 
minutes per case--5 minutes per case--because of the crush of these 
cases.
  That is unacceptable. It is our responsibility, if we care about 
those young people coming before that judge, standing in court having 
been apprehended for a serious crime--if we care about them, if we 
really love them--to do something with them. We will not spend 5 
minutes on their case; we will confront youngsters of 13, 14, or 15 
years of age and find out what has been troubling them, find out what 
their problems are, and intervene effectively.
  Some say, Well, Senator Sessions, you just want to spend money on 
courts and lock kids up.
  I don't want to lock kids up. But what we are doing today is not 
doing anything to help them. Some kids have to be locked up, 
unfortunately. I wish it weren't so. Some do. Some have been back 3, 4, 
6, 8, 10 times.
  Finally, if a judge at some point does not have the capacity to 
validate the integrity of his order of probation which prohibits them 
from committing further crimes, and he just ignores it time and time 
again, the whole law becomes a mockery. It becomes a joke. It 
undermines respect for law. It undermines respect for the police 
officer who is out doing his duty.
  Some of these youngsters will kill you. A police officer goes out and 
makes arrest after arrest, and one of them is liable to pull a gun. One 
of them is liable to pull a knife. This is a dangerous world. Why 
should he go out and do his best to apprehend and commit himself to 
those cases if the judges and prosecutors are unable to proceed with 
effective punishment?
  I want to say, first of all, that if we care about what is happening 
in America, I suggest we look at what is happening in our communities, 
talk to our police officers, juvenile probation officers, juvenile 
judges, and ask them: What is happening? Are you sufficiently funded 
and do you have the resources to intervene effectively at the earliest 
possible stage of criminality by a young person?
  If we do that, we can perhaps avoid more serious consequences down 
the road.
  I know a lot of people have talked about Littleton, Jonesboro, 
Paducah, and other mass shootings that have occurred in school. I don't 
know if those could have been prevented. In my own personal survey, 
reading the newspapers, I have found that in every one of those cases 
those young people had been before a judge previously for a serious 
offense. Had that judge had the time and the resources--an alternative 
school, a boot camp, a detention facility, mental health treatment, 
drug treatment, a drug testing program to determine whether or not 
these kids were in serious trouble--perhaps these crimes could have 
been prevented.
  I know people say what we really need is prevention. I think the 
phrase is ``primary prevention.'' I am not against prevention. This 
bill has an awful lot of money in it for prevention. I will show you in 
a moment some of the prevention programs that already exist.
  Based on my experience and what I know with a virtual certainty in my 
own mind, if we want to prevent serious criminal behavior and we have a 
limited amount of money--and we do; for every project that comes before 
this body, our money is limited--then we ought to focus on that group 
of people who can be best served by the application of that money. Who 
is it? It is the ones who are already getting in trouble with the law, 
the ones who are already being arrested. They are the ones on whom we 
ought to focus.
  I assure Members, all over this country we are not able to do that 
effectively. Call the juvenile judge in your community, if you know 
him, call your police officer or your prosecutors, and talk to them and 
see if they don't think we could do better.
  I have visited with Judge Grossman in Ohio. He has a magnificent 
court system that Senator DeWine and I visited. When those kids are 
arrested, they are interviewed by probation officers. Backgrounds are 
done. The judge studies it. He promptly analyzes their case. He has a 
school there, a drug treatment program, mental health treatment, family 
counseling--all these things--when that child comes before him and his 
team of judges; they have a program to deal with it effectively.
  That is what I want to see happen all over America. In fact, I 
believe local communities are considering that all over America. I know 
in Alabama they are. Cities are sending people up to Boston, which has 
some terrific innovative programs that have dramatically reduced their 
murder rate by young people. They are thinking about what to do.
  How can we help this? We are a Federal Government. How can we help 
our local county juvenile judge, local county probation officer, do 
that job? We ought to encourage them to study programs that are 
working. I think we ought to encourage them to visit programs such as 
the one in Boston and to develop their own programs.
  The problem is they need, oftentimes, more money to accomplish that 
than they have in the immediate short term. What we have is a block 
grant program that will allow them to receive partial funding from the 
Federal Government as an encouragement, as an inducement, to create the 
kind of programs that take place in Ohio and Boston and in my hometown 
of Mobile, AL. Judge John Butler, who serves on the board of the 
Juvenile Judges Association, is a long-time friend. He has probably the 
finest boot camp in the United States. It has an education program. I 
have been there. I have visited that boot camp. I helped start it years 
ago. I supported it for years.
  We have a drug court in Mobile where young people--and adults, too, 
for that matter--are examined for drug problems. Those are the kind of 
things that ought to be done. The school is so good that a lot of the 
young people who have been arrested and put into that detention boot 
camp facility with an education component want to continue their 
education there. They don't want to go back to their regular school. 
They want to stay in that school. That is what we need. That is the 
absolute best application of limited dollars to reduce serious violent 
crime, in my opinion.
  We can find out if there is a serious problem at home. Maybe it is 
child abuse. Maybe one of the parents is a drug addict or an alcoholic. 
Maybe the child is totally neglected and there is psychological abuse 
going on in the home. Maybe they are running around with very bad 
friends and gang members. If the family is brought in, if the probation 
officers are brought in, if they are drug tested, if they are analyzed 
carefully, then progress can be made to turn around some of those young 
people. Some of them will continue a life of crime.
  We care about our young people. Most of the victims of crimes by 
young people are other young people. We simply have to remove some of 
them from the community because they are not safe. Innocent kids who 
have done nothing wrong can be shot, killed, or abused by violent 
youngsters who are not able to be changed by the court system.
  That is basically the philosophy. We call it ``graduated sanctions.'' 
That is

[[Page 9023]]

the phrase we are using in this bill, S. 254. It says if you receive 
money under this grant program, develop a system that is consistent 
with your own philosophy, your own local community, that increases 
punishment for repeat offenders. This idea a lot of people have that we 
are putting young people in jail for light or transient crimes is not 
true. It is not true. They know it. Minor kids don't get sent to jail.
  I recently talked to a judge who had a serious case, a repeat of two 
or three household burglaries. He said he had one bed in the State 
juvenile system. If it is not an approved juvenile facility, according 
to the Federal Government, they can't even spend one night in it. He 
said he had one minor there for assault with intent to murder and he 
was not going to let him out to put the burglar in jail, so he had to 
let him go.
  That is what is happening in the America. If we are not serious about 
it and don't invest in it and allow our judges, in a humane, 
disciplined, and effective way, to validate the rule of law, to 
validate decency and morality, to establish a system that disciplines 
wrongdoing instead of accommodating to it, we will continue to have 
more juvenile crime. I believe that is a significant way to prevent 
crime.
  I know, regarding general prevention programs, it is the politically 
correct thing for people to say we need to spend more money. I am not 
opposed to it, if they work. I will say this: Our program had $40 
million spent for the National Institute of Justice to research and 
evaluate the effectiveness of the various juvenile prevention programs. 
I know Senator Fred Thompson, from Tennessee, who worked on this 
committee, used to say: We don't know what works. We need to study more 
effectively what we are doing. We have had a commitment in this bill to 
research, to analyze, what really does work to reduce crime.
  Mr. President, I have no pride of authorship. I want to spend the 
resources we are prepared to spend as a Congress as wisely as we 
possibly can so we can get an effective reduction of crime. School 
programs probably ought to be funded through the school and not through 
a crime bill.
  The general philosophy of most experts in dealing with juvenile crime 
is to make that young person's first brush with the law their last. 
That does not mean they have to be locked up for weeks on end, but it 
means a meaningful confrontation about their wrongdoing must occur.
  Families need to be involved. A probation officer needs to be 
involved, one who has the time to analyze the problem--perhaps in the 
family or perhaps that child's own problem. Sometimes it is not a 
family problem; sometimes the child has the problem-- to confront it 
and take the steps necessary to improve that circumstance.
  Police officers all over America tell me this is what is happening. 
They are out patrolling. They catch a young person who is burglarizing 
a house or business. The child is arrested and taken down to the police 
station. I would say the overwhelming majority of communities in 
America do not have a juvenile jail facility in their community, so 
that means the nearest jail is some hours away. They are not able to 
keep that child for 1 hour in an adult prison, even if it is on a 
separate floor or separate wing, totally apart from adults. They cannot 
keep that child 1 hour. They leave the child sitting in the police 
station lobby waiting for mother and daddy to come and take them home.
  Some say, oh, that is not true.
  It is true. That is what is happening all over America, and a lot of 
it is because the Federal regulations on detaining young people are too 
severe, in my opinion.
  I know some think, oh, you want to put young people in jail with 
adults. I don't want to put them in jail with adults. But I don't want 
every local community in America to have to build a separate juvenile 
jail when they may have no more than two or three people. They have new 
facilities and they can carve our wings or sections of those jails for 
short-term detention of young people, because if they are arrested, 
bail has to be set. If they are not able to make it right away, they 
have to have a hearing within 72 hours. So if they have to take them to 
a distant facility at night--maybe there is only one police officer 
still on duty. I know the Senator from New York has more police 
officers on duty than one, but there are a lot of communities in New 
York State and Alabama that may only have one officer on duty. So it is 
just not a practical thing.
  I believe we ought to be more realistic because juvenile judges do 
not want children to be harmed. Police chiefs do not want children to 
be harmed. They are not going to put them in these places so they can 
be abused. That is ``Easy Rider'' myth, that stuff. That is myth. 
People get sued if you allow somebody in prison to be abused while in 
prison. We ought not allow that to happen.
  I just say that first of all. That is my general view of where we 
are.
  We did make a commitment--and Senator Leahy referred to it --not to 
federalize juvenile justice. I really do not believe that is an 
appropriate thing for us to do. As I said, virtually all juvenile cases 
are handled in State courts. They have procedures for it. They have 
detention systems that ought to be expanded, but they have them 
already. They have their own laws that have been set up. They have 
juvenile judges. They have, many times, prosecutors who specialize in 
juvenile cases. They have probation officers who specialize in it. They 
have boot camps, halfway houses, mental health treatment, drug 
treatment--systems already set up around these systems, and we ought to 
encourage that and encourage them to invest more and not create a new 
Federal system for it. There has been some concern. I think anyone who 
reads this bill will realize we have not made any move to federalize 
juvenile justice.
  Let me mention a few things now. There is some question about what 
does it require to get a grant out of this bill if you are going to 
improve your juvenile justice system, if you want to help your judge in 
your town have an expanded capacity to confront youngsters and deal 
with them.
  You need to have a graduated sanctions. We just do not believe we 
ought to give money where there is business as usual and a revolving 
door. You ought to have some plan--it doesn't tell you how--of 
graduated punishments so when they come back the second and third time, 
there is an ability for the judge to impose more serious punishments.
  You need to have a policy of drug testing upon arrest. If we care 
about young people who are committing crime and we want to improve them 
and see they do not continue a life of crime, we ought to test them for 
illegal drugs.
  We have known for the last 20 years--there was a survey by, I 
believe, the National Institute of Justice, of major cities around the 
country that showed that almost 70 percent--everywhere it usually runs 
67 to 70 percent--of the people arrested in those cities when drug 
tested upon arrest test positive for an illegal drug. That drugs are an 
accelerator to crime cannot be denied. There is no doubt about it. What 
I believe is every court system--this doesn't mandate exactly the way I 
would like to see it--but it does encourage every court system to have 
a program to drug test young people when they are arrested. Because if 
they are on drugs, we need to start treating them. We need to start 
dealing with it effectively.
  You say, even for small crimes like theft? Yes. Because oftentimes 
the thief, the person who is stealing, is stealing to get money for 
drugs. Frequently those people who show up with drug use, who are more 
likely to have a drug problem, are more likely to shoot somebody than 
someone who gets mad at a football game. So you just don't know. In 
Washington, DC, it has been done for years. I met with the director 
here 15 years ago and I have studied this problem. I really believe we 
need to do a better job. So it says you should have a plan.
  Then we need to recognize the rights of victims. We continually have 
the complaint, if you are burglarized or robbed by a young person, 
oftentimes

[[Page 9024]]

you do not even know when they are tried or what the prosecutor and 
judge decide to do about it. Your opinion is not asked. It gets 
settled. There is never a court hearing and you are not told anything 
about it. Victims have rights in juvenile court, too. So we are asking 
them to address that and establish some policy that will improve the 
victims' right to participate. Some States do, some do not.
  These are some of the things we try to do in funding this bill. It is 
one thing to say you ought to do these things; it is another thing for 
the Federal Government to ante up and help pay for it. So our block 
grant proposal deals with that. It provides money that can be used for 
graduated sanctions. It helps them build detention facilities. There 
are a lot of them that are modern, are first rate, that have a lot of 
good things about them. We need to encourage every community in America 
to analyze its detention facilities and see if it can do a better job. 
I think we ought to provide matching funds for it, which this bill 
does. We have been doing some of that for the last 2 years in our 
budget, but I would like to make it permanent with this.
  We have money for drug testing. If you set up a drug testing program, 
you can have the Federal Government, basically, pay for it--because we 
believe it is important.
  Recordkeeping--there is a famous case about a youngster in New York 
who committed an assault with intent to murder; went to New Jersey, 
committed another violent crime and was released on bail and then 
murdered a police officer. A judge in New Jersey did not know about the 
serious violent crime in New York.
  We were not putting those records in the National Crime Information 
Center. I know some will say this is juvenile, but I say this is 
serious. People who are committing serious violent crimes need to have 
their records in the National Crime Information Center, because when 
they are arrested again--that is the pattern; they will be arrested 
again--the judges will not know their prior history.
  We have a good bit of money for that in this legislation which I 
believe will help States set up a first-class program; Mr. President, 
$75 million, in fact, for them to update their criminal records. We 
need to encourage the States to start putting their records in the 
National Crime Information Center. Director Louis Freeh said they will 
accept those records, they want those records, and they do not need any 
money from the Federal Government to receive them. They can receive 
them without additional cost.
  We want to promote restitution programs. That is what this grant 
money can be spent for.
  We want to promote programs requiring juveniles to attend and 
complete school programs and vocational programs.
  We want to require parents to work and pay for some of these 
programs.
  We want antitruancy programs. Truancy is a serious problem. It is an 
indicator of an oftentimes deeper problem. If we can create a better 
truancy program in America, we can improve and reduce crime.
  We want identification and treatment of serious juvenile offenders, 
those who have real problems, and prevention and disruption of gangs, 
technology and training programs for juvenile crime control, and moneys 
for programs that punish adults who knowingly and intentionally use a 
juvenile during the commission of a crime.
  There are, in fact, in America today cold-blooded drug dealers and 
other criminals who actually use juvenile offenders to commit crimes 
because not much will be done to them if they are caught. We believe 
that is a horrible thing and we ought to have a program to end it.
  I am going to talk about prevention now. Again, I have no objection 
to good prevention programs, but since 1974, we have put no money--and 
in my hometown of Mobile, AL, the juvenile detention center there was 
built in 1974 or 1975, partly with Federal funds. It encouraged them to 
create what, at the time, was a first-rate, state-of-the-art facility. 
But that all ended many, many years ago. We have no money dedicated 
today to help juvenile law enforcement, detention or otherwise. There 
are no dedicated moneys for that, except what we have as part of our 
effort last year, which is not enough.
  We are spending $4.4 billion per year on juvenile prevention 
programs. GAO has found there are 117 of these programs--117 juvenile 
programs, spending $4.4 billion a year. We are asking for $450 million 
only for juvenile accountability in a block grant and only a portion of 
that so we can improve our detention facilities.
  Look at this chart. I think we ought to understand this. There is a 
lot of money being spent now on prevention programs, and some of it is 
not being spent wisely. That is why we have money in this bill, to 
review the effectiveness of these programs.
  Listen to this: There are 62 programs that provide training and 
technical assistance for young people who may be in trouble; 62 for 
counseling; 55 for research and evaluation; violence prevention, 53 
programs; parental and family intervention, 52; support service, 51; 
substance abuse prevention, 47; self-sufficiency skills--I don't know 
what that means, but I guess it is a good program--46; mentoring, 46; 
job assistance training--people say we need to get these young people 
jobs. All right, we have 45 programs doing that; substance abuse 
treatment, 26, and there are others.
  That is some of the money we are already spending. I am not sure we 
are spending it well. What we probably should do is have a total 
analysis of all that is being spent in the different agencies and 
departments.
  I used to be in the 4-H Club. I had the best hog in Wilcox County. I 
received a little pin for it from the 4-H Club. I was able to go to 
Auburn. It was a big deal to go to Auburn University. My friend almost 
won the tractor driving contest in Auburn. That was a big deal for me, 
but they have a 4-H Club program now for the inner city. That sounds 
like a good idea, I guess. Maybe it is a good idea. I don't know 
whether it is working or not. Maybe we ought to see if money we are 
spending on inner-city 4-H Clubs as prevention projects is well spent 
and whether those programs are working. I would like to look at that.
  There is also a strong feeling that after we have a tragic shooting, 
as we did in Littleton, CO, we ought to do something about guns; we 
ought to do more about guns. We have quite a number of Federal gun laws 
on the books today.
  I served as a prosecutor for 12 years. President Bush sent out a 
message that he wanted a crackdown on illegal guns in America. He 
wanted us as prosecutors--there were three districts in Alabama and 92 
Federal districts, 92 U.S. attorneys in America. He said: I want you to 
crack down on these gun cases and prosecute criminals who are using 
guns.
  We started a project called Triggerlock. In 1992, when I left office, 
there were 7,048 prosecutions under existing Federal gun laws. After 
President Clinton took office, he said we have to have more gun laws.
  Since he has been in office, he has pushed for more, more, more, 
more, shoving the second-amendment right to bear arms as far as it can 
be shoved. Those of us who believe in the second amendment and the 
right of people individually to bear arms find that troubling. It is 
always more, more, more, but at the same time, the prosecutors he 
appoints, the U.S. attorneys who are Presidential appointments, are 
allowing the cases to drop. It dropped, in 1998, to 3,807. That comes 
right out of the U.S. attorneys' statistical report.
  You say, ``Jeff, I don't know what that proves.'' I say to you, if 
Attorney General Reno tomorrow made a commitment and sent a message to 
all U.S. attorneys that she wanted these cases prosecuted, those 
numbers would be up to the rate of 7,000 within a month or two.
  These are not complicated questions. It is a question of the priority 
of the Department of Justice. A good prosecutor can prosecute 100 gun 
cases in the time he can spend on one complex tax case, for example. I 
am telling you, they can prosecute 100 of them for one

[[Page 9025]]

complex tax case, one corruption case. We ought not to abandon tax 
cases and corruption cases, but just a little emphasis on this will 
help.
  Since the President took office, he said we have to have a lot of new 
gun laws because this will reduce violence. We want new laws. The 
Congress responded and gave him new laws.
  One of them is possession of firearms on school grounds. The First 
Lady said the other day there were 6,000 incidents of guns being 
brought onto school grounds last year--6,000. Look at how many this 
Department of Justice, President Clinton's personally appointed 
prosecutors, prosecuted. In 1997, they prosecuted five defendants for 
that violation. They had to have this law. In 1998, they prosecuted 
eight. That is not going to affect the crime rate in America. That is 
all I am saying. I am not saying how many cases ought to be prosecuted.
  What I am saying is we need to get away from symbolism and we need to 
strengthen our juvenile justice system in America.
  Look at this one: Unlawful transfer of firearms to juveniles. It is 
not a bad law. If you transfer a gun to a juvenile, it is against the 
law. It ought to be a crime. It was not a crime until it was passed, 
922 (x)(1). Five were prosecuted in 1997 and six in 1998.
  Look at this one: Possession or transfer of semiautomatic weapons, 
assault weapons. That was the assault weapons bill that was so 
controversial. An assault weapon looks horrible, but it is, in effect, 
a semiautomatic rifle. It fires one time when you pull the trigger. It 
is not fully automatic, which is already illegal and has been illegal 
for years.
  There was debate on it, and Congress voted to make it illegal. It was 
the first time that a semiautomatic was made illegal. In 1997, four 
cases were prosecuted; in 1998, four cases.
  My view is that if we have a good gun law that needs to be passed 
that can make our communities safer, I am willing to support it as long 
as it does not violate the second amendment of the Constitution. But I 
took an oath to uphold the Constitution.
  This legislation has a good provision called the Juvenile Brady 
provision which says if a youngster is convicted of a crime of 
violence, that record has to be maintained, and they cannot get a 
weapon when they get older. Adults who have been convicted of a felony 
cannot possess a firearm in America. That is against the law. But if 
you were convicted of a serious crime as a juvenile, it did not count 
against you and you could possess a gun as an adult when you became an 
adult. So we are going to close that loophole.
  Finally, this legislation has gained great support throughout 
America. The Fraternal Order of Police, the International Association 
of Chiefs of Police, and the Boys and Girls Clubs of America have 
endorsed this legislation. The National Troopers Association, the 
National Sheriffs' Association, and the National Collaboration for 
Youth have commented extremely favorably on the bill, as has the 
National Juvenile Judges Association, which has been much involved in 
helping us draft it. They are very positive about this.
  I strongly believe that we have responded to the concerns of the 
Democratic Members and have tried to craft a bill that would be 
acceptable to them. I know Senator Leahy has worked on it, and Senator 
Biden. I see he would like the floor. He has sponsored many crime bills 
over the years and has been active in his interest in this legislation. 
As ranking member on our subcommittee, he will be talking about the 
legislation in a minute.
  I believe we have a good bill. I think it is time for America to 
respond to juvenile crime in an effective way. This bill will do many 
of the things that are necessary--not all, but it will do many of the 
things necessary for us to create an effective response to juvenile 
violence in America.
  I have a unanimous consent request. I ask unanimous consent that 
until 2:15 today debate only be in order on the pending legislation.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Enzi). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. SESSIONS. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from 
Delaware.
  Mr. BIDEN. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. President, this bill has been a long time in coming. We have been 
debating this bill in the Judiciary Committee for some time. We have 
attempted to come up with a compromise that made sense. Later in the 
day--if not today, tomorrow--the distinguished chairman of the 
committee and I are going to offer an amendment that is essentially a 
substitute, but we will not probably offer it in the form of a 
substitute; it will be offered in the form of an amendment. At that 
time, I will speak to the distinctions of the bill before us and the 
provisions Senator Hatch and I will be amending.
  Let me speak to the general proposition of juvenile crime in America.
  I listened to my friend from Alabama and others who have spoken 
today, and I sometimes get confused. I get confused because the 
assertions that are made do not always comport with what the 
legislation says.
  For example, there is a general assertion made, and a general 
consensus, that we should not be federalizing juvenile crimes; we 
federalize too much already, yet we do that in this bill in terms of 
attempts to deal with preemptive jurisdiction, imposing upon the States 
judgments about how and under what circumstances they should try 
adults, and children as adults, and so on.
  The second thing that we do is we go through episodic periods in this 
body. I have been around long enough that I have been in more than one 
episode. I remember when I first came here, I say to my friend from 
Minnesota. We all kind of forget the consensus, the academic consensus, 
the criminal justice consensus, the political consensus we reached in 
the early 1970s. That was that we had horrible cases--and legions of 
them--where we put juveniles in adult prisons, we put juveniles in 
adult holding tanks, we put juveniles in circumstances where they were 
exposed to adult-convicted criminals.
  There were legions of reports about their being raped, their being 
beaten, their being sodomized, their being dealt with in the most 
horrendous way. The Nation rose up in the late 1960s and early 1970s, 
led by the academics of this Nation, led by the criminologists, who 
said this has to stop, this has to stop.
  I was here when Birch Bayh, the distinguished father of the Senator 
from Indiana, led the fight on the Judiciary Committee and the 
bipartisan consensus to change the rules. We ended up with things 
called sight and sound requirements. We ended up with things that dealt 
with recordkeeping. We ended up with changes in the law that dealt with 
the ability to try juveniles as adults and under what circumstances. 
And they worked. They worked. They worked very well, because you are 
not reading in our press about 13-year-old boys being sodomized in a 
jail, while they are held in a holding tank to be arraigned. You are 
not reading about that now.
  For those of you who have not done this as long as I have, I suggest 
you go back and look at the Record and what we read about in the 1960s. 
It happened all the time. It does not happen anymore.
  A little bit of power given to anybody is almost always abused. The 
bureaucrats got a little bit too much power, and over a long period of 
time we came up with some stupid rules, stupid applications of the 
sight and sound restrictions.
  For example, if you in fact are in a rural community, in your State, 
I say to my friend from Minnesota, and you arrest a kid, a 16-year-old 
at 2 o'clock in the morning for a violent crime and there is no 
facility in town except one that has two adults in it, and the nearest 
juvenile facility is 4 hours away, we have been in some cases 
insisting--it is rare--that that kid be driven 4 hours all the way to 
that other facility when you have a one-cop town. It doesn't make 
sense. There should be accommodations made for 6 or 8 hours until the 
next shift comes on so you can work this out. Well, what we do is we 
make accommodations for that.
  Let's not blow this out of proportion. I remind people, you are not 
reading in

[[Page 9026]]

the press, as you did in the 1950s and 1960s and early 1970s, about 
juveniles being abused in adult prisons. In my own State, it doesn't 
take much. Let me remind everybody: You put a young kid, maybe even a 
status offender, not a violent criminal, in a cell next to somebody who 
is a hardened criminal. You lock the door. The hardened criminal starts 
telling the kid about what he is going to do to him and how he is going 
to enjoy doing it to him. The records are replete with jailers coming 
back and finding the kid hanging himself in a jail, committing suicide. 
They are not happening now. So let's not get trigger happy here, no pun 
intended, and decide that we are going to overcorrect.
  Back in the bad old days, when I was chairman of this committee, a 
ranking member for about 18 years, we had scores of hearings. We 
brought everybody in. The cops who come in want to solve the problem--
the example I gave in Minnesota or Vermont or Montana or Delaware. We 
can do that. But let us not go into this routine where somehow this 
sight-and-sound provision has taken on some bureaucratic hubris where 
what happens is that we have people going awry with power and 
preventing us from trying violent juvenile children or young adults and 
they are on the rampage in the countryside because of this stupid 
Federal rule. Not true. Not true.
  Let's get some facts straight. Remember when I introduced the Biden 
crime bill back in 1984. It took 6 years to get it passed finally, the 
one with the 100,000 cops in it. I used to say all the time, Why can't 
we learn to walk and chew gum at the same time? When the crime bill, 
which everyone has stood up here and is giving great credit to for the 
significant reduction in violent crime among adults in particular, was 
written, I might point out, a number of people giving it credit here 
voted against it, thought it was a bad idea, for 2 years tried to amend 
it.
  Well, there have been a couple altar calls. I welcome everybody to 
the party. What is that old expression: Success has 1,000 fathers; 
defeat, none. I am delighted there are so many strong supporters for 
the crime bill now. I am delighted. But let them remember why it 
worked.
  We finally got liberals and conservatives to agree that they were 
both wrong and both right. I don't know how many times my colleagues 
had to listen to me on the floor during the 1980s and 1990s saying: 
Look, liberals have been harping on the following point: It is the 
society that makes these young criminals, and all we have to do is give 
them love and affection. All we have to do is intervene with the right 
programs. All we have to do is deal with prevention. All we have to do 
is deal with treatment.
  My conservative friends would come in and say: The answer is tougher 
penalties, hang them higher, put them in jail longer.
  The facts were sitting before us just as they are now. Let's get some 
of the statistics straight, lest we be confused. I know facts sometimes 
bother us in this debate. Our friend Alan Simpson, the former Senator, 
as you know well, used to say--I loved him, still do--he used to stand 
on the floor and say--I will never get it as well as Alan said it and 
never get it quite as right, but I think this was how his phrase went--
he would stand up, when someone was spouting off about something they 
didn't know, and say: Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but 
they are not entitled to their own facts.
  Crime is the only issue on which everyone thinks they are entitled to 
their own facts. Everybody has an opinion on crime. Everybody has an 
answer, whether they know anything about it or not. I am not talking 
about my colleagues now. I mean the whole world. If you ask the public 
what caused the increase in the value of the dollar, they won't pretend 
to have an answer. If you ask them what will stop murder, they have an 
answer. If you ask them why is there violent crime, they have an 
answer. It is one of the areas that affects us all, and we are entitled 
to our opinion. But let us look at some of the facts.
  Since 1993 the national rate of juvenile crime is down. Juvenile 
arrests for murder and manslaughter have decreased almost 40 percent, 
from 1993 to 1997, the last time we have the numbers. Juvenile arrests 
for forcible rape are down almost a quarter, 22.8 percent. Juvenile 
violent crime arrests are down by 4 percent from 1996, from the 
previous year. There was no decline in adult crime then.
  Now, let's look at what we are talking about--again, the facts: There 
are basically three categories of kids. When I introduced the Biden 
crime bill for adults years ago, which became the crime law, I used to 
stand on the floor and say there are basically three types of criminals 
we have to deal with, and we need different solutions for each 
category. If I am not mistaken, I am the first one to write a report 
that about 6 percent, only 6 percent of the violent criminals in 
America back in the 1980s and 1990s, and even now, committed over 60 
percent of all the violent crimes in America. If you went out and you 
could gather up all 6 percent of the career criminals, gather them all 
up, put them in jail and throw the key away, violent crime would drop 
by over half. That is No. 1. So we need a specific program for career 
criminals. The Senator from Pennsylvania, Mr. Specter, had a career 
criminal bill that became law, a gigantic help.
  The second category is people who have committed a violent offense 
but are not career criminals. The third category is people who had 
crimes of property and status offender crimes, victimless crimes.
  They all required different solutions. So that is why in the Biden 
crime bill we did three things: We took about $10 billion and hired 
more cops, about $10 billion and built more prisons, and about $10 
billion to deal with drug treatment, prevention, and other programs. 
Guess what. It works.
  The conservatives were right, that you have to get tougher, but with 
one segment. The liberals were right, you have to pay more attention to 
what brings people into the crime stream, for one section. One size 
doesn't fit all. So we finally got it right, and crime has dropped 
dramatically.
  Now guess what. For juvenile crime, we have decided we are going to 
reinvent the wheel.
  What is the formula here? The formula is simple. It is simple but 
hard. G.K. Chesterton once said about Christianity: It is not that 
Christianity has been tried and found wanting; it has been found 
difficult and left untried.
  Well, it is not that this is so complicated, but boy is it political.
  In all of America, in that first category of kids, career criminals 
for adults, there are 115,000 kids who were arrested for murder or 
arrested for a violent crime; 2,000 of the 115,000 were arrested for 
murder; 113,000 were arrested for violent crime. They are clearly in 
one category. They are the bad actors. Everybody wonders why they have 
all these floppy clothes. Walk through the train station down here, 
walk in any city. Those floppy clothes allow you to conceal a gun. 
Guess what. These kids are bad. They are bad seeds.
  I want to tell you something that the liberals do not like hearing 
said: Some of these 16-year-olds are beyond redemption. They are beyond 
redemption for all practical purposes. And if and when they are 
redeemed, we don't know why they were. They may have seen the Lord in a 
blinding light. They may have come to their senses. But when it occurs, 
we don't know why. And it doesn't occur that often.
  But think about it, all the children in America we are talking 
about--115,000.
  There is a second category.
  There are 685,000 kids who are arrested for nonviolent property 
crimes ranging from stealing your car to mutilating your property, or, 
as we say in my section of the country, ``turfing your lawn.'' 
Nonviolent property crimes, 685,000. They require a different solution.
  Mr. President, locking them up in juvenile detention facilities as 
they are only getting into the crime stream usually only makes them 
better criminals. That is where the graduated offenses come in.
  If I am not mistaken, I think I am the first guy who had James Q. 
Wilson

[[Page 9027]]

testifying before a committee up here. Everybody now talks about the 
``broken window theory.'' Most don't understand it. It is a simple 
proposition. It is not complicated. If, in fact, you have a sanction 
the first time a young person is brought before the courts, no matter 
how small the sanction is, it has a greater impact than waiting three 
or four times and throwing the book at them. It is not rocket science. 
It is not a big deal. It is pretty easy to figure out.
  Then there is a third category of kids. There are at least a few 
million of them. They are in the at-risk category. Biden, what is that 
fancy term, ``at-risk?''
  From 8 to 5, walk into any schoolyard in America. Take two or three 
teachers. Say to them: Point out the kids out there who are the ones on 
the edge and haven't done anything wrong, but the ones you are most 
worried about. They can identify the at-risk kids for you.
  Again, a second time using the phrase ``not rocket science.'' They 
can identify them for us. We have civil liberties and civil rights that 
do not allow that to occur, and shouldn't. But, as Barry Goldwater used 
to say, ``In your heart you know I am right.'' You know that we know 
that you can identify them.
  What are we going to do about those kids? Are we going to build jails 
for them? Are we not going to take the time and effort to use 
prevention programs that work?
  That is a third category.
  I wrote a report a couple of years ago referring to the ``baby 
boomlettes,'' pointing out that the largest cadre of young people since 
the baby boom is about to reach their crime-committing years--39 
million kids under the age of 10.
  If not one single thing happens in terms of the crime rates going up 
with juveniles, every single category of crime will increase 
significantly--every one of them--because, guess what. There is just a 
heck of a lot more kids.
  If we do ``as well as we have been doing,'' and there is not a one 
one-hundredth of 1 percent increase in crime among juveniles that 
occurs, we are going to have several thousand more murders; we are 
going to have a 20-percent increase in the juvenile murders by the year 
2005, and the overall murder rate will go up 5 percent. Violent crime 
will increase by the same percentage if we do not allow one single 
percentage increase, because there are so many kids coming.
  Mr. President, the interesting thing about crime--only a few things 
we know perhaps even with certainty--is that if we have a cop on this 
corner and no cop on that corner, and there is a crime going to be 
committed, it will be committed on the corner where there is no cop. 
That is one thing we know. Another thing we know is that violent crime 
decreases when you get older.
  Do you know why? It is harder to jump that chain-link fence. It is a 
little harder. It is harder to jump that chain-link fence. That is why 
it decreases.
  You don't need a degree in criminology to figure this stuff out.
  So why do we keep trying to reinvent the wheel?
  I remember when I introduced the first crime bill; there was a New 
York Times editorial saying: But we have tried this before.
  More cops, we never tried that before. For the previous 20 years, the 
top 20 cities in America had less than a 1-percent increase in the 
total number of police on their forces, yet their population increased 
by about 18 percent. We used to have three cops for every one violent 
crime committed in America. We have gotten to the point where we have 
one cop for every three violent crimes.
  So we did it. We hired more cops. And it is working.
  The same principles work with regard to juveniles.
  Look, a couple of my friends said: You know what we ought to really 
do is, this Clinton administration ought to get in gear. Get in gear? 
This Clinton administration has done better than any administration in 
history in reducing crime.
  By the way, that ``truth in sentencing,'' I am the guy that wrote 
that law. It is called ``The Federal Sentencing Commission.''
  I might add that a lot of people who are speaking about it now were 
against it then. As a matter of fact, a colleague who used to be on the 
floor, Mac Mathias, called the Biden law ``the same-time-for-the-same-
crime law.''
  So what are we doing now? We are changing the game. This 
administration that came along and supported ``truth in sentencing'' is 
the administration that pushed community policing; is the 
administration that has targeted the most violent criminals; is the 
administration that has provided more money and effort from the Federal 
level for fighting crime than any in the history of the United States 
of America, and has succeeded. Let's get off this poppycock about 
whether or not this is a Democrat or Republican deal. The hope was that 
once we passed the Violent Crime Control Act of 1994--by the way, it is 
not coincidental. If you notice when all the charts go up, violent 
crime starts to drop in 1993. Guess what. That is when we introduced 
the bill, and it passed in early 1994.
  Mr. President, juvenile justice requires our attention. It requires 
us to be honest with one another and honest with the American people.
  There are three categories of kids we have to focus on. The 115,000, 
2,000 of whom have been charged with murder, but 115,000 who are the 
violent offenders, we should be building prisons for them. We should 
put them in juvenile facilities. And we should treat them in some cases 
as adults.
  I might add, all my States rights guys, guess what. Most States have 
a surplus.
  I love these Governors. They come and tell us about how to run the 
Federal Government. And then they come to us and tell us if we want to 
deal with building a juvenile facility, we had better send Federal 
money. But it is a local issue, it is a local problem, and it is a 
local crime. Local law enforcement does it, but you send the money, 
Federal Government, to build the prisons.
  They can build the prisons. There is money in here to allow help for 
that. But they should get responsible, I would respectfully suggest, in 
the State legislature in Dover, DE; in Springfield, IL; and every other 
capital in America to acknowledge what their responsibility is.
  There is a second category, Mr. President--those that committed 
crimes against property.
  We can save these kids. We can intervene. A lot of them we can keep 
from being violent criminals. But it doesn't mean building more jails 
for them.
  The third category of 3 million-plus is those at-risk kids. We don't 
have to reinvent the wheel. Just look at what we have done.
  Mr. President, at some point I will be joining my friend, the Senator 
from Utah, the chairman of the committee, to introduce an amendment in 
the nature of a substitute that makes the necessary corrections in a 
bill which has already made some progress.
  My colleagues have heard me say this over and over again for the last 
15 years. A trial lawyer with whom I used to practice used to always 
say to a jury: Keep your eye on the ball. The prosecution will tell you 
this, this, this, and this about the defendant. The question is, Did 
the defendant pull the trigger? Keep your eye on the ball.
  I respectfully suggest that in this debate we keep our eye on the 
ball. What are we going to do about the 115,000 very violent kids in 
America? What are we going to do about the 680,000 in the crime stream 
who have not committed crimes of violence but are on the edge? What are 
we going to do about the 3 million kids who are on the edge, who are 
ready to slip into the crime stream?
  The problem that still exists beyond what we have to deal with here 
and beyond guns and beyond prevention--and the Hatch-Biden substitute 
puts in more money for prevention--what we really have to do is deal 
with the drug problem in America.
  I said before that we learned in the early 1980s that if we could 
take the 6 percent of career criminals in America

[[Page 9028]]

and remove them from the scene by an act of God, violent crime in 
America would drop over 50 percent. Nobody disputes that now. I 
respectfully suggest, if any Member can have one wish that would 
fundamentally alter youth violence in America, ask God to come down and 
take alcohol and drug abuse out of the system. If we did that one thing 
and nothing else, we would affect the course of juvenile justice in 
America more than anything we can do.
  Obviously, we can't do that. As I said years ago when I introduced 
the first bill, there are three things we have to do: One, deal with 
adult crime, particularly focusing on violence against women; two, we 
have to fix the juvenile justice system; and three, we have to deal 
with the drug problem. They are the three pieces. It hasn't changed.
  I urge my colleagues, as the debate gets underway, keep your eye on 
the ball. Don't try to reinvent the wheel. Look at what is working. 
Stick with what is working. I am not suggesting we don't try new ideas, 
but stick with what is working.
  By the way, I point out that the very people who now are all for 
juvenile Brady--what was in the original juvenile justice bill I 
introduced--are the very people who were against the Brady bill before. 
So there is progress. There is hope.
  Brady made a difference.
  Mrs. BOXER. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. BIDEN. I am happy to yield to the Senator.
  Mrs. BOXER. I want to ask a question. The Senator and I have talked 
for a very long time about afterschool programs. We had a conversation 
abut the Hatch-Biden amendment. I am very glad the two Senators were 
able to work something out with a bipartisan thrust.
  Could the Senator clarify for me the language the Senators have both 
agreed to regarding block grants and setting aside 25 percent for 
prevention, and what afterschool programs fit into that definition in 
the bill?
  Mr. BIDEN. I will be brief because we will discuss this when the 
amendment comes up, but I am happy to answer the question.
  There are four block grants in the bill. The one in which the 
distinguished Senator from Utah has agreed to make an alteration is the 
provision for $450 million that is available for up to 25 percent; $113 
million of that will now be able to be used for afterschool programs, 
for drug treatment programs, and for any program which is designed to 
deal with the cadre of kids who, from the time the school bill rings at 
2:30 until they go to a supervised situation at 6 or 7 o'clock at 
dinner, commit the majority of crimes committed by young people.
  However, there are two other provisions in the bill. There are two 
other block grants of $200 million apiece. Those two allow money to be 
used for prevention and afterschool programs.
  As I told the Senator, I happen to think in the original bill which I 
introduced 2 years ago--that was the juvenile justice bill--that had a 
number of cosponsors.
  I think we should be spending closer to $1 billion on this prevention 
notion. From the time I was a kid, I went to a Catholic grade school. I 
don't know whether the nuns got this from my mother, or my mother got 
this from the nuns, but as my Mother would say, an idle mind is the 
Devil's workshop.
  Give a kid no supervision from 2:30 in the afternoon until 
dinnertime, and I promise--I promise--good kids are going to get in 
trouble and bad kids are going to do very bad things. This is not 
rocket science. We should be doing much more.
  The Senator from California has focused very much as a Congresswoman 
and now as a Senator on dealing with afterschool programs. Again, if 
you could wave a wand, and all the school boards and school districts 
that say they care so much about their children--and they do--if they 
could have baseball, basketball, cheerleading, chess, girls' field 
hockey, lacrosse, I would have those programs for every junior high in 
America. Almost no junior high in America has the programs. Do you want 
to keep kids out of trouble? This is not hard. This is not hard. The 
people in the gallery know it; they understand it. The American people 
understand it. Why don't we understand it? Why don't the local 
authorities understand it? It is hard to tell people you will raise 
your taxes in order to do this.
  The other thing this bill does, with the help of Senators Phil Gramm 
and Robert Byrd: When the Biden crime bill passed in 1994, we set up a 
violent crime trust fund. We let go 300,000 Federal workers. Under this 
administration, we have the smallest federal workforce since John 
Kennedy was President. I know the Senator knows this, but what we did 
with that money is take the paycheck that used to go to the person 
working at the IRS or the Department of Energy or wherever, and when 
they left their job, we didn't rehire people. We reduced the workforce. 
We put their paycheck in a trust fund, like the highway trust fund. 
This extends the trust fund until the year 2005.
  I say to my friend that there are a lot of programs worth spending 
money on--education and defense--but I can't think of anything more 
fundamental than taking the streets back and giving our kids a safe 
environment in which to live.
  There are two things we do. We add prevention money as a permissible 
use. We earmark it. It adds up only to $113 million. It has part of the 
other $400 million in this bill that can be used for prevention, but it 
is short of what we should be doing.
  I am looking forward to supporting the Senator from California when 
she tries to do more for afterschool programs.
  Mrs. BOXER. I thank my friend from Delaware. I am very happy he is 
going to support the amendment. We have $200 million in here for after 
school--and this administration deserves a lot of credit--up from $40 
million.
  Guess how many applications came in. Another $500 to $600 million on 
top of the $200 million. We have a very big void to fill.
  As my friend said, crime happens after school. The FBI has shown 
that. I think for this bill to be balanced it needs to go to tougher 
penalties for certain crimes but also to prevention and modest gun 
control measures. I am looking forward to working with my friend on all 
these matters.
  Mr. BIDEN. As I said, at some point when it is appropriate, when the 
distinguished chairman of the committee decides we should introduce our 
amendment, we will. I thank him for reaching out, because it has not 
been easy for him to be able to do this, and I look forward at the end 
of the day to this entire bill being a bipartisan consensus when it 
leaves the floor.
  I yield the floor.
  Several Senators addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. HATCH. I thank the distinguished Senator and I understand the 
distinguished Senator from Minnesota is about to take the floor.
  Does the distinguished Senator from California wish to speak before 
lunch?
  Mrs. BOXER. No, I can wait until after lunch.
  Mr. HATCH. Then I suggest after the Senator from Minnesota completes 
his remarks we recess for the policy meeting. Is there any objection?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Reserving the right to object, I could not hear the 
first part of what the Senator from Utah said.
  Mr. HATCH. The Senator would be the last speaker before the policy 
meetings of both parties.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mrs. BOXER. Reserving the right to object, I wonder if my friend 
could expand that to include a list, with Senator Schumer and Senator 
Boxer on our side? Is it possible to make this a little broader so we 
know for certain, when we come back here after lunch, we can talk on 
this bill?
  Mr. HATCH. I am hoping after lunch we will be able to start on the 
first amendment. But we will certainly accommodate the Senators as they 
come to the floor.
  Mrs. BOXER. What my friend is saying is we could speak in favor or 
opposition to an amendment. Is it possible to line it up in that way?

[[Page 9029]]


  Mr. HATCH. Sure. Of course it is. We will try to go back and forth, 
if we can, on the floor.
  Mrs. BOXER. I ask unanimous consent----
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is a unanimous consent request pending.
  Mrs. BOXER. I will add to that and see if my friend will accept this: 
That the speakers to be decided on his side of the aisle, that of 
Senator Hatch, and from our side of the aisle it will be Senators 
Schumer and Boxer, in that order, after lunch? And we would add that to 
this.
  Mr. HATCH. Will the Senator withhold until after we have offered an 
amendment?
  Mrs. BOXER. Absolutely.
  Mr. HATCH. After we have offered an amendment, then we will work it 
out.
  Mrs. BOXER. I will withdraw it.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the original request?
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. HATCH. I thank the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from 
Minnesota.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, this will just be an opening statement. 
I presume we are going to have a lot of time to debate this legislation 
and all of us will have the opportunity to have amendments we think are 
relevant and important. Then we will have substantive debate. That is 
what the Senate is all about.
  Once upon a time this bill was S. 10. Now it is S. 254. I am not 
exactly sure about all the provisions in this legislation. I am not 
exactly sure as to what the Biden-Hatch, or Hatch-Biden, amendment will 
say, as well. But let me just say at the beginning, what I am quite 
sure of is that, as I look at this, I do not see a lot of balance. I 
see a whole lot of emphasis on punitive measures, locking up more 
children. I do not see a whole lot by way of efforts to keep children 
from getting into trouble in the first place. I am actually surprised 
that we have not learned some of the lessons which I think the people 
who are down in the trenches, working with at-risk kids, have learned.
  I heard my colleague from Alabama talk, and I like what he did. He 
talked to people back home. I think if you talk to cops on the beat and 
you talk to judges and you talk to sheriffs and you talk to counselors 
and you talk to youth workers, they will tell you we should be doing a 
whole lot more by way of prevention. As I heard Senator Biden talk 
about the substitute amendment, it sounds like a pittance we are really 
putting into prevention.
  Let me also just say I am not a lawyer, I am trying to wade my way 
through this argument, but I want to make sure this legislation does 
not weaken certain core protections we have had for children. There is 
no doubt in my mind that when certain kids commit violent crimes they 
may very well be tried as adults and they may be faced with stiff 
sentences. But we have had certain protections for kids which make sure 
we do not have too many kids in adult facilities.
  I do not really know exactly whether or not we have a judicial review 
process of what prosecutors might want to do. I do not know what kind 
of protections are there. But to me it is really important, because 
even if you call some of these facilities ``colocated facilities,'' 
that may just be a fancy word for adult facilities with juvenile wings. 
As Senator Biden was saying, with a considerable amount of power and 
eloquence, there is disturbing evidence that a whole lot of children--
many more children--commit suicide in adult facilities; eight times 
more often than children held in juvenile detention facilities. I do 
not think we can take these kinds of risks with young people's lives. 
Again, I want to really understand whether or not we have the 
protection we need for kids.
  I will tell you what is a huge flaw in this legislation, not fixed at 
all by the substitute amendment or the amendment to the bill or the 
legislation that is before us right now. This legislation undermines 
our efforts--and I hope every Senator will feel strongly about this--to 
deal with the disproportionate confinement of ``minority youth'' in our 
Nation's jails.
  In practically every State, children of color are overrepresented at 
every stage of the juvenile justice system, especially when it comes to 
secure confinement. Furthermore, they receive unequal treatment by the 
system.
  A study in California showed that minority children consistently 
receive more severe punishments and were more likely to receive jail 
time than white children for the same crime. Black males are four times 
more likely to be admitted to State juvenile jails for property crimes 
than their white counterparts and 30 times more likely to be detained 
in State juvenile jails for drug offenses than white males. The source 
is the Youth Law Center study called ``Juvenile Offenders Taken Into 
Custody.''
  Also, let me say at the very beginning of my remarks that it is 
incredible that here we are at the end of the century--working with 
kids up to adults--it is my understanding that, roughly speaking, one-
third of all African American males ages 18 to 26 or 18 to 30 are 
either in prison, awaiting to be sentenced, or on probation--one-third 
of African American males in this country.
  We ought to think seriously about what that means. In the State of 
California, I read and, again, I think it is ages 18 to 26--it may be 
18 to 30--there are five times as many African American men serving 
sentences, incarcerated in prison, than in college. We ought to think 
about what this means.
  Last month, along with Senator Dorgan, I visited the Oakhill Juvenile 
Detention Center in Maryland. We were joined by Judge George Mitchell 
who sits on the D.C. Superior Court. He made an astonishing statement, 
if anybody wants to pay close attention to this. In talking about the 
disparity of the treatment of minority children, in his 15 years, as a 
juvenile judge, having had thousands of juveniles in his courtroom, he 
has had only two white youths appear before him. That is unbelievable. 
By the way, this is not due to a dearth of white youth in the District 
of Columbia, nor is it that they never run afoul of the law.
  We have a current law that says: States, you need to address this 
problem and States are directed to identify the extent to which 
disproportionate minority confinement exist in their State and try to 
identify the problem, the causes, and what can be done about it.
  This requirement has never resulted in the release of juveniles who 
have broken the law, nor any kind of quota system on arrest or release 
of youth based on race. As a result of the current legal requirement, 
40 States to date are implementing intervention plans to address this 
problem.
  It seems to me we would want to do this as a nation. S. 254 is a 
piece of legislation that does not want to mention race and has removed 
this current DMC requirement. Efforts to remedy the disparate treatment 
of minority youth that are underway in States is going to be seriously 
undermined as a consequence of this legislation. As a result of this, 
our juvenile justice system will fail, as it is now failing, to treat 
every youth fairly and equitably, regardless of race.
  I oppose this legislation, given the way it is now framed, and I 
think other Senators should oppose this legislation for this reason 
alone.
  Another issue that is going to come up in our debate--and the 
legislation does not really address this in any major way--has to do 
with the issue of gun violence. Please do not misunderstand me. I have 
been very careful in talking about Littleton and what happened at 
Columbine High School to simply not make a one-to-one correlation of 
any particular agenda that I am for because sometimes events in human 
experience are so dark, so evil that they cannot be flippantly 
explained. I do not know why those kids did what they did, why they 
committed murder. It is hard for me to know what really happened.
  I will tell you this--and by the way, I have been so impressed with 
discussions with students in Minnesota. Just yesterday at Harding High 
School, we had a great discussion about education, violence in schools, 
violence in communities, and those students had so many

[[Page 9030]]

poignant and important things to say. This I do know: A Washington Post 
editorial pointed out that 13 children a day in this country are killed 
by guns. That is, in effect, one Littleton massacre each and every day 
in the United States. Of the 13 children killed by guns, 8 are 
murdered, 4 commit suicide--there is a lot of youth suicide in this 
country; it is hard for me to accept as a father and grandfather--and 1 
is killed accidentally by a firearm.
  I will leave it up to other colleagues to go over the legislation we 
will have on the floor that is going to be much tougher in terms of how 
to keep guns out of the hands of kids, much tougher on adults who 
peddle guns to kids, et cetera. I am saying we have to get a whole lot 
more courageous and tougher when it comes to this gun legislation.
  What I want to focus on is the whole question of the criminalization 
of mental illness. We are talking about a juvenile justice bill. I 
point out--and I will talk about a piece of legislation that I have 
introduced, the Juvenile Justice Mental Health Act which has 40 
sponsors, including the American Bar Association--a lot of people are 
talking about juvenile justice and a lot of people are talking about 
mental health services. I want to make sure we are of substance. I want 
to make sure we do not engage in symbolic politics. I want to make sure 
this debate is real.
  That may sound self-righteous. Sometimes I worry about everybody 
carrying on about this legislation and the legislation then going 
nowhere, or people staking out a lot of positions, maybe not even based 
upon having had any experience for this. I hope we remain very, very 
focused.
  One of the things that is going on right now is we have criminalized 
mental illness. There are a whole lot of people--I am going to talk 
about kids today--who should not be incarcerated in the first place. 
There are many children in their very short lives who have been through 
what children should not go through.
  When we look at the statistics on kids who are incarcerated, roughly 
speaking, 1 out of every 5 is struggling with some kind of mental 
disorder, struggling with mental illness. Moreover--and Senator Biden 
talked about this--many of them struggle with substance abuse, many of 
them have learning disabilities, many of them come from troubled homes, 
many of them come from homes where they have seen violence every day.
  The question becomes whether or not we are going to make some changes 
in this juvenile justice legislation that responds to these kids' 
lives. In setting the context, I will say that, despite popular 
opinion, most of the kids we lock up are not violent. The Justice 
Department study shows that 1 in 20 youth in the juvenile justice 
system have committed violent offenses--1 in 20. What has happened is 
that, No. 1, a lot of kids who could be in community-based treatment 
who have not committed a violent act instead wind up in these so-called 
correctional facilities which are not very correctional. And, No. 2, 
once there--and I am talking about 20 percent of the kids, probably 
more, kids who struggle with mental illness--the law enforcement 
community, the guards, the police at these facilities do not know how 
to treat these kids. Quite often, they do not know with what these kids 
are dealing. As a result, many kids end up being disciplined within 
these facilities and put in solitary confinement.
  As the juvenile justice system casts a wider and wider net, which is 
the direction of this legislation, and as we have more fear and more 
intolerance of kids who misbehave or commit nonviolent crimes, we are 
pushing more and more children into the juvenile system who would not 
have ended up there in earlier times. In particular, what bothers me to 
no end is a lot of these kids should not be there. A lot of these kids 
are struggling with mental illness and should be treated in a community 
setting, and that is not happening.
  The warnings are there. There is the school failure. There is the 
drug and alcohol abuse. There is the family violence. There is the 
poverty at home. Yet, we do not put the emphasis on community 
prevention. We do not put the emphasis on early intervention services 
for these kids. We do not put the emphasis on mental health treatment. 
As a result, we make the same mistake over and over.
  There are two amendments--or several amendments--that I am going to 
offer to this bill. But two of the amendments that I am going to offer 
are based upon the Mental Health Juvenile Justice Act. It is a 
comprehensive strategy. We get the money to State and local communities 
and we provide the mental health services. There is strong support from 
40 organizations. When we introduced it with Congressman Miller about a 
month ago, I guess, there was strong support from 40 organizations--
every organization, from the American Bar Association to the American 
Psychiatric Association, the Children's Defense Fund, you name it. And 
what we are basically saying is, as opposed to warehousing children 
with mental illness, we provide moneys to State and local communities 
to identify kids with these problems on the front end of the system, 
look to alternatives to incarceration, provide mental health services 
for these kids.
  Mr. BAUCUS addressed the Chair.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I yield for a question.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator from Minnesota yield the 
floor?
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I am not yielding the floor.
  Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator 
be able to continue his statement and that I be allowed to speak as in 
morning business at the conclusion of his statement.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is 
so ordered.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I say to my colleague from Montana, I am going to 
hurry right up. I waited about 3 hours. I am just trying to go through 
this. I do not plan on going on a long time, but I just want you to 
understand. I appreciate it.
  The Mental Health Juvenile Justice Act, which I will basically offer 
as an amendment, says, A, let's do careful assessments on the front 
end. Let's not incarcerate kids who do not need to be incarcerated; 
and, B, let's provide the funding for these facilities to provide 
mental health services for kids; and let's make sure that the law 
enforcement community, whether it be on the front end or whether it be 
in these facilities, is trained to recognize kids who are struggling 
with mental illness. That is the direction to go in.
  Right now the situation is absolutely brutal--absolutely brutal. I 
have spoken on the floor of the Senate before--and I could go on for 
hours on this, and I will not--about some trips I have taken to some of 
these facilities. One trip to Tallulah, LA, was enough, although there 
are other Justice Department reports on Georgia and Kentucky as well, 
and it is the tip of the iceberg.
  It is really just unbelievable to read about kids who spend as much 
as 7 weeks, 23 hours a day, in solitary confinement, to go to these 
facilities where these kids do not get any treatment whatsoever, kids 
who are brutalized. To go to the Tallulah ``correction'' facility with 
all of it privatized out to a private company--TransAmerica 
Corporation, I think, is the name of the company--and to have kids just 
blow the whistle on the whole facility, I say to my colleague from 
Montana, is just absolutely unbelievable. There have been lawsuits 
filed.
  It really is, frankly, unconscionable that we put so many of these 
kids in this situation. And 95 percent of the kids in Tallulah have not 
committed a violent crime. We are talking about racial disparity. There 
was a sea of African American faces. There were up to 650 kids, and I 
bet you 80 percent of the kids were African American children. That is 
my first point.
  What I want to do is really put a very strong emphasis on mental 
health in juvenile justice. I want us to do a much better job as a 
Nation, and we need to get the resources to the State and local 
communities to do the assessment, to do the alternatives to 
incarceration, to make sure kids who are in these facilities get the 
treatment they need. And right now we are not doing it.

[[Page 9031]]

  We have criminalized mental illness among kids and adults. Many of 
them should not be in these facilities. And when they are in these 
facilities, they receive no treatment whatsoever. I want to make sure 
that with the debate on this legislation and the amendments that are 
offered we have a very strong focus on juvenile justice and the mental 
health of kids. That is my first point.
  My second point is, I think that--well, no. In deference to my 
colleague from Montana, I will just sort of say it in 1 minute, and 
make my final two arguments. We are getting to the point now where we 
have six States, led by California, that are spending more money on 
prisons than on State colleges and universities. In the State of New 
York, keeping a juvenile in New York's Division of Youth now costs 
$75,000 a year. You can send three kids to Harvard for the same amount 
of money.
  And I think we have to come to terms with some basic facts. There is 
a higher correlation between high school dropouts and incarceration 
than cigarette smoking and lung cancer. It would seem to me, again, we 
would be doing a whole lot more by way of prevention--I certainly do 
not think it is in this legislation, albeit there is some minor 
improvement with the Hatch-Biden amendment which is helpful, but I 
think it does not give the legislation the balance that it should have.
  I do not see us doing very much when it comes to the early years. I 
do not see us doing very much at all. Frankly, if we really want to 
make a difference, we are going to have to pay some attention to all of 
these reports that have come out about childhood development.
  Where is the focus on early childhood development? I thought we were 
going to do a whole lot to make sure that we do well for children from 
right after birth to age 3, much less before kindergarten. Why are we 
not doing that? Kids who come to school behind fall further behind, 
drop out, and then wind up in jail. When are we going to begin to get 
real about responding to these children in America? It is not in this 
legislation. I have not seen it in any legislation that has come out on 
the floor.
  The second amendment that I am going to offer has to do with domestic 
violence. I hope there will be overwhelming support for this. Let me 
just tell you that above and beyond the focus on women, I am sorry to 
say that still about every 13 seconds or 15 seconds--what difference 
does it make; it is just outrageous--a woman is battered in her home. A 
home should be a safe place.
  I have been working with a number of people and staff--Charlotte 
Oldham-Moore, my wife Sheila--and now we find out that we have not done 
a very good job of really providing support for kids. They may not be 
battered, but the effect of seeing this in their home over and over and 
over again, and then going to school, and not doing well, is that they 
wind up in trouble.
  So one of the amendments we are going to have is to provide, again, 
the funding to be able to recognize this and to be able to bring 
together all of the actors in the community to provide support for 
these kids. In other words, we can have the greatest teachers, the 
smallest class sizes, the greatest technology, and a lot of these 
children are not going to learn unless we get the support services to 
them early.
  We are also going to have an amendment, a third amendment, which 
really does a good job of having much more focus on school-based mental 
health services. Again, I will have a chance to speak on this, but I 
think we have to develop a whole infrastructure that focuses on mental 
health services. And I think it has to be before these kids get into 
trouble rather than afterwards.
  Finally, let me just say that there were some comments here which 
were made that I wish we would have more debate on. I hope when I have 
amendments I can get people out here debating. But my colleague from 
Alabama, Senator Sessions, over and over and over again was talking 
about drug testing and the rest. What I do not understand is, if you 
are going to do the drug testing, how about the treatment as well? We 
do not do the treatment programs. We do not do the treatment programs. 
So much of what we see is tied into substance abuse problems.
  I am going to be working on legislation--we have the bill with 
Senator Domenici to try and end this discrimination in terms of 
covering mental health services for people. We are not doing that. That 
is one piece of legislation--including any number of childhood 
illnesses, autism, or post-traumatic stress syndrome, which, 
unfortunately, also is something that affects children, or anorexia, or 
attention deficit disorder. We do not provide any treatment or any 
coverage for treatment.
  We act as if these illnesses are not illnesses. There is all this 
stigma. When are we going to get this right? If we are going to talk 
about prevention in a juvenile justice bill, we have to have that 
component. And in the substance abuse, it is the same issue.
  Where is the parity? Where is there a way of making sure we get the 
treatment to these kids? It is crazy. So much of this prison 
construction industry, so many of the people who we are now 
incarcerating--so many of these kids who are in trouble are in trouble 
because of addiction. I would love it if my colleagues would just look 
at the Moyers documentary. Many are viewing brain diseases. We are now 
talking about the biochemical and neurological connection, and we do 
not provide the funding. We do not provide the treatment.
  Mr. President, let me conclude by saying I think we are going to have 
to do a whole lot better. I will talk a lot about some of my travel 
around the country and what I have seen with my own eyes, but I bring 
to the attention of my colleagues, to give this a little bit of 
context, a report by Amnesty International. It is called ``The United 
States of America, Rights for All, Betraying the Young.'' Just a few 
quotes. I am not picking on any particular States, but it is important.

       ``Judge Zintner, I have an important question to ask you! 
     Would you please move me out of here? Please don't leave me 
     here with all these adults. I can't relate to any of them. 
     They pick on me because I am just a kid. They tease me and 
     taunt me. They talk to me sexually. They make moves on me. 
     I've had people tell me I'm pretty and that they'll rape me . 
     . . I'm even too scared to go eat . . . It's too much for 
     anyone my age to handle . . . Please help me with this.'' 
     Letter from 15-year-old Paul Jensen, imprisoned in South 
     Dakota State Penitentiary, to his sentencing judge, 1997. In 
     September 1998, his mother told Amnesty International that he 
     had not been moved from the prison.
       ``There are 2.5 psychologists to see the 300 juveniles in 
     general population. This is despite the fact that 40 percent 
     of the juveniles received will be identified . . . as having 
     mental health or suicide watch needs. Because of the number 
     of juveniles that need to be seen, the supervisor has told 
     his staff that they cannot see a juvenile more than three 
     times a month unless they indicate that the juvenile will die 
     if he is not seen more often.'' Official audit of facilities, 
     Virginia 1996.
       ``. . . girls as young as twelve years old were subjected 
     to sexual abuse, received no counselling, no vocational 
     treatment, no case treatment plans or inadequate or 
     inappropriate medical care, were placed in a `levels' program 
     in which the length of time of the juveniles detention could 
     be unilaterally changed, lengthened or shortened depending on 
     the whims of Wackenhut's untrained staff members, and were 
     made to live in an environment in which offensive sexual 
     contact, deviate sexual intercourse and rape were rampant and 
     where residents were physically injured to the point of being 
     hospitalized with broken bones.'' Texas 1998--extract from a 
     complaint filed in court alleging abuses at a juvenile 
     correctional facility operated by the Wackenhut Corporation, 
     a private for-profit company.
       On a Sunday morning Paul Doramus, recently appointed 
     director of the state agency that is responsible for juvenile 
     justice----

  Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, might I inquire of the Senator how long he 
is going to proceed? We are going past 12:30. In great deference to the 
Presiding Officer, we were supposed to finish at 12 o'clock.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I will be done in a moment. I started at 20 after. I 
will be done in about 2 minutes.
  Mr. BAUCUS. The Presiding Officer has let us proceed with great 
generosity.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I say to my colleague that I waited for 3 hours and I

[[Page 9032]]

also deferred to others. Senator Mack needed to speak, and others. I 
understand that. I will finish up. I said that several times, I think, 
to my colleague.

       On a Sunday morning Paul Doramus, recently appointed 
     director of the state agency that is responsible for juvenile 
     justice institutions, visited the Central Arkansas 
     Observation and Assessment Center. He heard a boy sobbing: 
     ``Mister, get me out of here, I want my mother.'' Doramus 
     discovered a 13-year-old boy in an isolation cell, ``sobbing 
     so hard he could hardly speak.'' The boy had been caught in a 
     stolen car and was arrested for theft of property. At the 
     institution he had been disruptive, and staff placed him in 
     isolation. ``As I attempted to talk with him, his calls for 
     help just grew louder,'' Doramus said. The boy's next words 
     jarred Doramus even more. ``Jesus doesn't love me anymore for 
     what I did.'' Doramus held the boy's hands through the cell 
     bars. ``That's not true, partner,'' he assured him. ``He 
     does.''
       ``All I could think of was my two kids who were at home, 
     who got the hugs and got the love and got the support,'' 
     Doramus said. ``I thought, God forgive us all. How could we 
     allow kids to live in an environment like this?'' Little 
     Rock, Arkansas, June 1998.

  This is from an Amnesty International report that came out this past 
year, November 1998.
  Mr. President, I have seen these conditions in these facilities. I 
will have a number of amendments dealing with domestic violence, 
dealing with mental health and juvenile justice that I have been 
working on for the past year, dealing with the whole question of how we 
can get more support for kids before they get into trouble.
  I look forward to this debate, and I hope before it is all over we 
will have a balanced piece of legislation. I am sorry for being so 
sharp in my response to my colleague from Montana, but when I read from 
such a report--and these are children's lives--I just don't like to be 
interrupted.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from Montana.
  (The remarks of Mr. Baucus pertaining to the introduction of 
legislation are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on 
Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

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