John Conyers

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Hastings].

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, let me point out to the gentleman that a point of order could have lain against this whole amendment. So I am sorry. A point of germaneness could have lain against this amendment itself and was not raised. And so I would ask the gentleman if that is his only problem, that he would use the same comity with us that we used with him.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Let me point out to the gentleman that has just spoken that this is a heck of a way to run a railroad. We legislate $10 billion for prisons and then we say, well, if there is any left over, let us use it for courthouses and other expenses that we need. Those have to stand on their own merit, sir. We cannot start, if we authorize a courthouse or a prison, it has got to have money coming for it to be built. It cannot be money left over in case it is not used. So I am quite unimpressed about why we need the money in that regard. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Hastings].

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, let me pursue the idea raised by my colleague from North Carolina [Mr. Watt]. What about some prevention money or some programs that go to those that will be dealing with it? There is a gang resistance program in Treasury. There are all kinds of prevention programs. Because it does raise a difficult point. We are taking, in your bill, $2.5 billion out of prevention, and now we are taking what may well be, based on my estimates, an even larger amount, and transferring back to very important law enforcement agencies and departments of the Federal Government.

Mr. CONYERS. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I do not know if this will make my colleague from North Carolina more comfortable or less, but it is our prediction that this will be a large amount of money that will be reserved, because I do not believe the States are going to qualify for it. So we are talking about billions, maybe billions and billions of dollars, all the way up to $5 billion. So I just want to make sure that not only the Members on the committee, but all the Members in the House understand that this little document of 10 lines contains quite a bit of change in it. Of course, this will be revisited in conference. So I just want us to all be aware of it. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Watt].

Mr. CONYERS. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, having looked this over, having examined the question between putting this to the deficit balance, I would prefer that it go into the following programs and the following departments included in the amendment. So I would support the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Watt].

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, can I get a copy of the amendment?

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CONYERS. And then run up the bill.

Mr. CONYERS. Reclaiming my time, beyond that I will say to my colleague I think we ought to have immigration laws that prevent people from effectively coming in illegally as opposed to what we do with them after they get in----

Mr. CONYERS. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I am impressed that we want to be as efficient as possible, and I do, too, because it will save money. I want to make a couple of points. The first is that this is probably the fastest growing industry in our economy, building prisons. We now have cities and towns. It is a fast growing industry because we are putting literally billions of dollars in the 1994 crime bill and now billions of dollars additionally, at least two and a half, into this one, and so I rise to join with every efficiency that we can obtain. But I think we want to keep in mind that we want to also ensure that there is an effectiveness coming out of this great new industry that we are building in the United States, namely building prisons which does not make the happiest commentary in the world in what direction we are going since we incarcerate more people than any other industrial country that I know of. So, I would urge all of my colleagues and those who have spoken in favor of this to support the Scott amendment that will be coming up that will ask that we also set aside a fraction of the amount of money merely to determine and study the effectiveness of this enormous new industry that we have spawned at the Federal level. It will be a fraction of an amount of money, be immeasurably tiny. It is so small it is almost beyond calculation. We would urge that we would consider both these amendments as both moving in a very important direction.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself as much time as I may consume. I commend both gentlemen, particularly my colleague from Texas [Mr. Chapman], who, although he is not a member of the committee, had his amendment printed in the Record. We are in accord. I like the idea of revisiting the 1994 crime bill. I think this is a good formula to take out of it and put in here. We have no further requests for time. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Chapman].

Mr. CONYERS. I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I have to reclaim my time because what we are doing again is that we at the Federal level are now telling local government how to treat juveniles. Juveniles are under the State and local criminal law, and so, if we do not create Federal law, we are telling the States and other localities how they have got to operate under this new theory that we have trotted out this afternoon with respect to juveniles.

Mr. CONYERS. Briefly, yes.

Mr. CONYERS. And the other thing that bothers me: The gentleman raised the name of Professor Wilson, who is a great scholar of criminal justice but whose ideas and mine occasionally comport, and just as often they probably do not. So, as my colleagues know, what they are asking us to do is adopt a new philosophy, and I am sure when they say the juvenile system does not work, they mean some parts of it do not work, and there are in many instances for many youngsters that do not keep repeating crimes where the juvenile system has been very successful. But in some instances it has not been, but it is not a total failure, like other systems. So what I am suggesting here respectfully is: Shouldn't this matter be considered in the committee? It's an incredibly important event, but now the gentleman from Oregon is asking me to accept a new philosophy on the floor. He's mentioned a professor's name, and that's supposed to do it. I don't know what that philosophy is. It's not clear to me exactly where we are going here.

Mr. CONYERS. Reclaiming my time, this puts us into the business of creating Federal law for juveniles in every city across America----

Mr. CONYERS. Reclaiming my time----

Mr. CONYERS. I yield to the gentleman from Oregon.