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“COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2013” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E735 on May 8, 2012.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT,
2013
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HON. GERALD E. CONNOLLY
of virginia
in the house of representatives
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
The House in Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union had under consideration the bill (H.R. 5326) making appropriations for the Departments of Commerce and Justice, Science, and Related Agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2013, and for other purposes:
Mr. CONNOLLY of Virginia. Mr. Chair, I rise to express my great disappointment that H.R. 5326, the Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill for Fiscal Year 2013, does not preserve funding for vital community gang prevention, which has enjoyed bipartisan support in the past.
This bill eliminates a $5 million grant program for our state and local law enforcement partners that supported competitive, evidence-
based programs to reduce gun crime and gang violence. It also eliminates a $5 million grant program that supported gang and youth violence education, prevention and intervention in our communities.
These grants are essential for helping our local and state partners contain the growth in gang violence in their communities and educate young people about the perils of joining a gang. In my Northern Virginia district, we used these funds to partner local law enforcement agencies with their state and federal counterparts in a regional gang task force, which is coordinating prevention and enforcement efforts.
A decade ago, gang participation and gang-related crime was on an upswing in our community. Thanks to this federal partnership and other local initiatives--like the expansion of after school programs, which I helped lead at the local level--we were able to stem the growth of gang activity in our community. In fact, we reduced gang participation by 50 percent among our students. It is because of this partnership that Northern Virginia continues to have one of the lowest crime rates in the nation.
I appreciate the Committee acknowledging in the report for this bill the importance of partnering with local and state law enforcement agencies to combat the proliferation of multi-jurisdictional gangs. That is why these two competitive grant programs, which provide critical gang prevention support in our communities, ought to be maintained.
I urge my colleagues to reconsider these unfortunate cuts and revisit this issue when we ultimately go to conference with the Senate to fund the Justice Department for Fiscal Year 2013. We have stood shoulder-to-
shoulder with our local and state partners to prevent gang violence, and we cannot step away from that partnership now when gang violence continues to be a significant threat in so many communities, as the Committee itself acknowledges.
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