[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 34, Number 53 (Monday, January 4, 1999)]
[Pages 2535-2536]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks Announcing the Children Exposed to Violence Initiative

December 29, 1998

    Thank you very much, Eric Holder, for your leadership and your 
obvious intense commitment to this issue. Thank you, Chief, for your 
good work. When you were describing the initiatives in New Haven 
involving the Yale Child Study Center, it struck a particularly 
responsive chord because when I met my wife, over 25 years ago at the 
law school, she was also working with the Yale Child Study Center. And 
it's a great institution.
    We're delighted to be joined here by leaders of law enforcement and 
leaders of law enforcement organizations; Montgomery County Council 
member Marilyn Praisner. And I want to say a special word of welcome to 
Congressman Bud Cramer of Alabama who has supported the 100,000 police 
program. We thank you, sir, for your presence here.
    This is an important time for us to be making this announcement 
because the holiday season is always focused on our children, and 
properly so. I want our children to be at the center of our attention 
every day, every week, all year long. Today we come here to talk about 
new actions to help millions of children who are exposed every year to 
violence either as witnesses or victims.
    For many, many of them, it is very difficult to be a child because 
there is too much violence, too much cruelty, too much incivility. 
Children experience these things in our society at younger and younger 
ages. That is why we have worked hard--the Attorney General, the Deputy 
Attorney General, and others in our administration--to strengthen 
families, to bring safety and order to our schools, our communities, our 
streets.
    We passed a crime bill with tougher penalties and more prevention. 
We've enforced zero tolerance for guns in schools expelling more than 
6,000 students in 1997 who brought weapons to schools. We've expanded 
and want to continue to expand after-school programs to keep children 
off the streets during the after-school hours when juvenile crime soars. 
We do have--the chief mentioned the 100,000 police program, the 
community policing program. We've now funded about 91,000 of those 
100,000 police. We're ahead of schedule and under budget, and I hope we 
can keep going.
    With these efforts and with the efforts of countless parents and 
teachers, principals, judges, police officers, and others, real progress 
is being made, as you have heard. New crime statistics released by the 
Justice Department this past weekend show that overall crime has dropped 
to its lowest level in 25 years. Property and violent crime are down 
more than 20 percent since 1993, the murder rate down by nearly 30 
percent. Juvenile crime rates finally have also started to fall. The 
juvenile murder rate has dropped 17 percent in one year, and juvenile 
arrest rates are now down 2 years in a row.
    These are good signs. We should be pleased; we should be thankful. 
But we should not be complacent, for these rates are still very, very 
high--too high for any civilized society to tolerate. And there are 
still far too many children who are victims of violence; too many being 
abused and neglected; too many still witnessing serious violence with 
traumatic effects on them that, as you have already heard, will last a 
lifetime.
    As the First Lady's Zero To Three conference last year showed, 
children's exposure to violence has tremendous negative consequences for 
them and for all the rest of us. A child who experiences serious 
violence is 50 percent--50 percent--more likely to be arrested as a 
juvenile and nearly 40 percent more likely to be arrested as an adult. 
If you want to keep the crime rates going down, you have to do more to 
break the cycle of violence to which children are exposed.

[[Page 2536]]

    Today we launch a new Child Exposed to Violence Initiative, 
sponsored by the Justice Department, directed by Deputy Attorney General 
Holder. The aim of the initiative is to combat violence against 
children, to prevent children who are exposed to violence from being 
victimized a second time by the justice system.
    As part of the initiative, I announce today four specific actions. 
First, I'm asking the Justice Department to send legislation to Congress 
to impose tougher penalties against those who expose children to 
violence. I believe it's time to send a message through the court that 
when a man assaults or kills someone in the presence of a child, he has 
committed not one horrendous act but two; time to ask why a bank robber 
who unintentionally kills an innocent bystander can be charged with 
felony murder, but a repeat child abuser who unintentionally kills a 
child cannot be.
    Second, I'm directing the Justice Department to develop and 
distribute the critical information State and local law enforcement 
agencies need to do a better job of responding to the needs of children 
who have been victimized by a crime. Too often children are victimized 
anew by a criminal justice system that is designed by and for adults. 
With the help of the Justice Department's new training videos and in-
the-field user guides, the first of which we are releasing today, 
criminal justice agencies all over our Nation can begin to provide 
children who have been exposed to violence with the healing they need 
and deserve.
    Third, today we announce $10 million in Federal Safe Start grants to 
12 cities to develop the kinds of comprehensive responses to children 
exposed to violence that New Haven has pioneered and that the chief so 
ably described just a few moments ago. The New Haven experience shows 
that trained law enforcement officers, paired with child psychologists, 
can provide the stability and comfort children need to overcome their 
feelings of fear and chaos that result from exposure to violence.
    Fourth, I asked the Justice Department to hold a national summit on 
children exposed to violence next June, cohosted by the Department of 
Health and Human Services, local law enforcement agencies, media 
organizations, elected officials, the National Network of Children's 
Advocacy Centers, and other groups.
    By working together, we have already made significant progress 
against crime and violence. We have made significant progress to make 
our children's lives safer. But if you look at the numbers of people who 
are still involved, the statistics are staggering and unacceptable. So I 
say, the fact that this progress has been made should give us courage, 
should give us hope, but should steel our determination to do the much, 
much greater work that lies ahead.
    There is no excuse for us to lose any of our children. And if we 
keep working and we keep our children at the center of our concerns, we 
can make the 21st century a much, much safer, better, more wholesome 
place for them than the last three and a half decades of this century 
have been.
    Thank you very much. Happy New Year.

Note: The President spoke at 10 a.m. in the Roosevelt Room at the White 
House. In his remarks, he referred to Melvin H. Wearing, chief of 
police, New Haven, CT; and Marilyn Praisner, president, Montgomery 
County Council.