The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the Senate section on pages S11628-S11630 on Sept. 28, 1996.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM
Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I am pleased to have this opportunity to come to the floor today to talk about something that I consider to be a very serious responsibility which we in Government are failing to carry forward. I come to the floor today to point out a dismal failure in our culture, a failure that President Clinton has helped to disguise, and perhaps, has even compounded the problem with his own behavior.
Last February, Antoyne Preston White, 17, was arrested in Washington along with several fellow members of a juvenile car theft ring. White pleaded guilty, and was released several days later.
In April, he was arrested again, this time for sexually assaulting a 4-year-old girl. He pleaded guilty a second time. Sentencing in this case was pending when White allegedly shot and killed Mun Hon Kim, a mailman eating his lunch in his truck, on June 11th.
In total, White has been arrested 10 times in the last 3 years. Antoyne White's history is, unfortunately, typical of today's juvenile justice system. Teens with multiple arrests for felonies, sexual assaults, or violent crimes are returned to the streets and repeatedly taught by our system that they can evade and avoid punishment.
In theory, our laws are protecting kids from the stigma of a permanent record. But, in reality, our laws are coddling stone-cold killers who hide behind the fact that they are teenagers.
Juveniles now account for almost 20 percent of all the violent crime arrests and over one-third--one out of every three--property crime arrests. Yet, we continue to treat the majority of these criminals as if they were just good kids gone wrong.
Criminologists predict that the baby boom of the 1980's will bring an explosion of young street criminals as we move into the next century. To deflect this onslaught of violent teens, the President has recommended what he calls a--these are his words --``gentle combination'' of laws and prevention programs. This ``gentle combination,'' in the words of the President, includes more proposals for midnight basketball, school uniforms, and curfews--more mandates from Washington, DC, for social programs that really would be best instituted at the instigation and creation at the local level.
I have to say that I believe this administration's ``gentle combination''--to use the words of the President--will not penetrate the hardened criminal mentality of these criminal prodigies such as Antoyne White. But today's conscienceless, young, violent predators are immune to these ``gentle combinations.'' They are accustomed to them. They have taken advantage of them. They thrive on them. So they are immune to these so-called ``gentle combinations,'' which are designed to teach right and wrong but simply have been distorted to provide authority and license for individuals to conduct very violent, heinous crimes.
President Clinton has done a good job of posing with the police and bragging about misleading statistics. The simple fact of the matter is that the only thing criminal about President Clinton's treatment of juvenile delinquents is his record in treating juvenile delinquents.
This administration is not even enforcing the laws that are on the books--laws that this administration demanded and called for--laws that this administration came to the Congress and asked for in the 1994 crime bill. Those laws which would be available and could be effective to stop the wave of violent predatory juvenile crime are being ignored by this administration.
This administration suggests that if we just have more social programming it can continue to ignore the laws which it asked for, not enforce those laws, and somehow, if we stick our head in the sand of these social programs, that the problem of predatory, juvenile, violent, vicious, random crime will go away.
For example, under the 1994 crime bill, it is a Federal offense for a juvenile to possess a handgun. What have we done about the thousands and thousands and thousands of juveniles committing crimes with handguns in violation of this Federal law that the President called for?
The record is not good. Here is what the record show: We know that handguns were used in the greatest proportion of homicides committed by juveniles from 1976 to 1991. The data is clear. Why isn't President Clinton's Department of Justice prosecuting these Federal offenses associated with these possessions of handguns by juveniles?
Over the last 5 years, only 14--over the last 5 years, only 14--
juveniles have been prosecuted as adults for Federal firearms violations. Meanwhile, in 1994 alone, 63,400 juveniles were arrested for weapons violations nationwide. If you have 60,000 plus per year and over the last 5 years we have only had 14 prosecuted as adults for weapons violations, we have a clear failure on the part of this administration to carry forward seriously against the epidemic wave of juvenile crime that has terrorized citizens across America not only in our urban centers but in our rural areas as well.
In fact, the Clinton administration has prosecuted only 233 juveniles as adults since January 1993. At an average of 63,000 weapons offenses a year over the last 4 years, that would be over a quarter million offenses, and you have 233 prosecutions. We say we need more social programs, and we say we need more laws, and we have a law that makes it a crime for a juvenile to possess a handgun.
The vast majority of these crimes are committed with handguns, and we walk away blandly to the next political rally and talk about the need for more laws and talk about the need for more gentle combinations and social programs into which we can thrust our head like the ostrich in the sand, but we do not do what is possible. We do not do what the Congress has authorized in terms of addressing this problem constructively. We must begin to treat criminals as criminals. The idea that somehow you can have fewer than two prosecutions per State per year when we are overrun with juveniles using handguns in the commission of crimes clearly in offense against the Federal law enacted by the Congress in 1994, and this Justice Department turns its head, I do not understand. I do not understand how the President can go before the public and say, well, we have good data and we are moving in the right direction. We are not moving in the right direction.
This is not something that I raise as part of the political campaign. I addressed the National Association of Sheriffs several months ago in the presence of the Attorney General of the United States, with whom I was honored to share the podium, and I shared these same statistics at that time. I called upon the administration to begin to be serious about this epidemic which affects the safety, health, the quality of life, the existence, the capacity for life of so many people. Certainly, we cannot settle for the administration's record of two prosecutions per year per State.
I think we have to send an unmistakably clear signal. We have to say to young people who are criminals, ``You are going to be held accountable.'' We cannot say that you are going to be treated as if you did not do what you did because you have been smart enough to realize that you are young enough to get away with it. We have provided a shield so that they could be assaulting others and deflect any return fire. It is time for us to say you cannot use your age as a shield or as part of the weaponry you use for an assault on society. Especially when this Congress has provided that juveniles in possession of handguns are in violation of the law, it is time for us to prosecute them for these violations, tens of thousands, twenties of thousands--
63,000 in 1 year, a typical year. The rate is going up, and we ignore it. We have 14 Federal firearms prosecutions over 5 years. There is more crime than street crime. Sometimes there is the unanswerable question about why we do not enforce the law we have and why we continue to ask for the promulgation of additional programs.
In this Congress, we have made efforts to hold violent juvenile predators such as Antoyne White accountable. We have offered commonsense proposals, proposals that would take the purveyors of random violence and death off our streets. Frankly, in each of the proposals I have made and the modifications that we have tried to make to accommodate those who objected--the Democrats--have blocked us at every avenue, coming up with new objections. They have come up with new reasons to say we want to just persist with the gentle combination of social programming and the like.
We Republicans have proposed making the records of violent and vicious juveniles more available to police, to judges and to school officials. Can you imagine being a schoolteacher and the juvenile records of a student are unavailable from another State, not part of the FBI system? A kid walks into the classroom wearing an electronic shackle, one of these radio transmitter bracelets so the authorities can keep track of him, but the juvenile laws and records are such that you cannot find out what this person did. As you start to go write on the blackboard, the student says, ``You don't know whether I murdered someone or raped someone, do you, Mrs. Jones?''. And Mrs. Jones says,
``No, I don't.'' He says, ``Well, you can't find out. I am protected as a juvenile.''
I have had teachers talk to me about situations just like that, and it is time we address those situations. But when we tried to, when we tried to provide that the records of violent and vicious juveniles be made more available to police, to judges and to school officials, we were blocked. A State trooper should know to be cautious with a 15-
year-old repeat carjacker from a city across the country; the idea that kids just grow up in a single neighborhood now and the constable or the sheriff would know who the kids are in the area no longer holds true.
I talked to a sheriff from the middle of the State of Missouri, from a town called California, Moniteau County. I asked him what his biggest problem was. He said it was a couple of teenagers who had moved in from Cleveland and were developing the dope traffic there. I said, ``What is problematic about that?'' He says, ``I can't get any records. I can't get any information about them.''
It is high time that people who are involved as criminals be labeled as criminals, understood as criminals and treated as criminals. Yet, when we have wanted to do just a fundamental thing like make their records available, we have been stopped. The administration has been silent and congressional Democrats have dismissed this approach.
We have also proposed increasing funds available to States that try more juveniles as adults. Once again, the Democrats impeded this proposal. They said it was not a gentle combination, it was not gentle enough.
We have also intended that Federal Government would begin to carry its fair share of the load in juvenile crime fighting. As I mentioned a moment ago, it is baffling to me that we have a situation with this administration where the Department of Justice is not enforcing the laws that are currently on the books. As this session of Congress closes, the Clinton administration has failed to help us with laws relating to juvenile predators and to reform juvenile justice laws, and it is a shame. The President can pose with police, but this administration's failures surrenders our streets to juvenile predators. I think it is time for us to work together on that. Gentle combinations simply will not get the job done. These teen predators deal drugs, threaten lives, they maim and kill, and in the very near future, all of the experts agree--even President Clinton has conceded in his remarks--
that there will be a veritable explosion of teen predators on the streets.
It comes down to this. We have to ask ourselves in Congress and in our culture, and we need to ask this of the President, do we uphold the principles of law and order or do we cling to the discredited notion that 16-year-old gangsters who shoot their victims over $5 act out of youthful folly?
I yield the floor.
Mr. LEAHY addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, what is the parliamentary situation?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate is now in morning business.
Mr. LEAHY. Is there a time limit on statements?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is a time limit of 5 minutes, unless unanimous consent is obtained for a longer period.
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