Mike DeWine

Mr. DeWINE

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DeWINE

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, today, I want to continue my discussion on the crime bill that I intend to introduce in the Senate next week. As I have pointed out in previous speeches on this issue, there are really two fundamental issues that we always need to address when we look at the question of a crime bill, when we look at whether it is a good crime bill or whether it is not, when we look at whether it gets the job done or not. The first question is: What is the proper role of the Federal Government in fighting crime in this country, understanding that 90 to 95 percent of all criminal prosecution is not done at the Federal level, but rather done at the local level, the State level, the county level? What is the role of the Federal Government? The second question we always have to ask is, despite all the rhetoric: What really works in the area of law enforcement? What really matters? And, conversely, what does not matter? On Wednesday of this week, I discussed these issues with specific reference to crimefighting technology. The conclusion I reached was that we have an outstanding technological base in this country that will do a great deal to help us catch criminals. Mr. President, technology does, in fact, matter. However, we do need the Federal Government to be more proactive in this area, more proactive in getting the States on line with this technology and giving the States the assets they need to get that job done. Having a terrific national criminal records system or huge DNA data base for convicted sex offenders in Washington, DC, is great--but it will not do much good for the police officer in Lucas County, Hamilton County, and Franklin County, OH, or if other jurisdictions across this country cannot tap into it, cannot get the information out or, conversely, cannot put the information in. Mr. President, crime occurs locally. So we have to make sure the crimefighting resources--such as high-tech data bases--are, in fact, available to local law enforcement. And one of the principal provisions of the bill that I will introduce next week does just that, drives that home to the thousands, tens of thousands of local law enforcement agencies scattered throughout our 50 States. Mr. President, on Thursday of this week, I discussed a second issue-- what we have to do to get armed career criminals off our streets. At that time, I talked specifically about a program called Project Triggerlock that targeted gun criminals for Federal prosecution. Mr. President, Project Triggerlock worked. It got 15,000--15,000-- armed career criminals off the streets in just 18 months. But, incredibly, the Clinton administration abolished this program. My legislation, Mr. President, would bring back Project Triggerlock, and toughen the laws on gun crimes in many other significant ways. It is clear, if we are going to be tough on crime and do things that really matter, we have to get armed career criminals off our streets. Today, I would like to turn to a third provision of my crime bill, a third issue, and it is an issue that is near and dear to my heart as a former county prosecuting attorney, and that is the people that we many times forget in our criminal justice system, the victims of crime. Today, I would like to talk about that component of my crime legislation. I would like to discuss some of the measures I think we ought to take in the area of victims' rights. The late Hubert Humphrey said, in a much admired and much quoted comment: The moral test of Government is how that Government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy, and the handicapped. What the former Vice President and former U.S. Senator said, what he was talking about was the fundamental role of Government to protect the weak, to protect those citizens who could not protect themselves. That is why, I submit, Mr. President, I think victims of crime belong on that list, as well. For too long, victims have been forgotten by our judicial system. From start to finish, the legal system can be a terrible ordeal for the victims--a bureaucratic nightmare that seems to and, in fact, does many times, go on and on and on. In our Constitution, we have all kinds of protections for the rights of defendants, as well we should. We try to make sure that they have every possible chance--and that is good--because we do not know if the defendants are guilty. We want to know if they have justice. That is why we bend over backwards to be fair to anyone accused of crime. Mr. President, in the process, I believe that many times we have forgotten the victims of crime. Over the last few decades, we have made some progress in this area. We have made some progress in recognizing the rights of victims. When I was a county prosecutor in the 1970's, I saw too many crime victims, people who had already been hurt, hurt a second time by a callous legal system. That is why I did everything that I could to protect the rights of those victims. Today, the legal process, in spite of changes, in spite of reforms, in spite of progress that we have made, is still too brutal on the victims. Our bottom line has to be this: To be victimized once by a crime is already once too often. To be victimized yet again by an uncaring judicial system is totally, totally unacceptable. There are some measures we should take as part of this year's crime legislation to continue the process of making the legal system treat crime victims with greater fairness and with greater consideration. Let me talk about a few of these. No. 1, let us make sure that crime does not pay. Today, a Federal trial court may--may--order restitution for crimes. I think that in every case they should order restitution for crimes. I think we should mandate full restitution in all Federal criminal cases. No. 2, let us stop the brutalization of victims in our courts. Under current law, lawyers are not allowed to present evidence that they know is false. That is a basic tenet of judicial ethics for lawyers. Every law student learns that early on. But what defense lawyers can do under our current system is this: If they have a crime victim on the stand, a crime victim whom they know is telling the truth, defense lawyers are still allowed to make it look like that witness is lying. Defense lawyers can do this even though they know the witness is telling the truth. My legislation would prohibit this practice. No. 3, let us make the trial process more fair to the victims. Under the Constitution, a defendant has the right, if he so chooses, not to testify in his own defense. This is a very important constitutional right. It is imperative that we always protect this. This unintended and, I submit, undesirable. There are cases in which the defense team decides not to put the defendant on the stand, which is fine, and then, though, attacks the victim's character and the victim when that victim, himself or herself, takes the stand and testifies. In effect, the defense lawyers put the victim on trial while at the same time being able to shield the defendant from questions about that defendant's own character. I think it is time to end the free ride for these defendants. Let us simply say to the defendants and let us say to the defendants' lawyers this: If you, the accused or a lawyer, want to attack the character of a victim, then you can expect the prosecutor to call your character into question. It is only fair. It is only right. It is only just. No. 4, let us make people who are accused of sexual assault be tested for HIV. If you, or one of your loved ones, was the victim of a sexual assault today, it is very difficult to find out if the attacker has HIV, and in today's society, is that not something that the victim should know? Is that not something that the court system should help the victim to determine? Last year, the Senate version of the crime bill did have a provision mandating HIV testing of persons arrested for sexual assault. The Clinton administration supported this provision. But in the other body, for some reason, it was dropped. My legislation would change that. My legislation would put that back in. My legislation would force the HIV testing of these defendants and the disclosure of the testing results to the victims of crime. No. 5, a fifth way to make our system more fair and more just to the victims of crime, let us make the jury, the whole jury system, a level playing field. The O.J. Simpson trial has focused America's attention on the process of the selection of a jury. How do we make sure that the jury is a fair panel? Mr. President, under today's Federal laws, prosecutors can challenge six potential jurors without giving cause, what in the courtroom they call ``cause.'' Six jurors can be knocked off without giving any reason. Defense lawyers, however, can challenge 10 without giving a reason. These are called generally peremptory challenges where each side can excuse a juror without giving a reason. I think that we should give victims an impartial trial, jury, and a fair shake. To do that, I think we need to give both the prosecution and the defense simply the same number of peremptory challenges. It only seems right, and it only seems fair. Mr. President, all the provisions I have discussed today to protect victims have a common theme. In our judicial system, we cannot condone the revictimization of crime victims. Our system is and must be impartial. It must be impartial between the prosecution and the defense, all the while recognizing the presumption of innocence on behalf of the defendant. There is no reason that the presumption of the defendant's innocence should be construed in such a way that it condones heartless treatment of crime victims. The criminal law embodies some of the truly fundamental values of our society. One of these values is that we should console those who have been hurt. We should not victimize them further. A number of years ago when I was a county prosecuting attorney, I would see the victims of murder and other violent crimes. I would interview people who had been abused, assaulted, and raped. I learned a lot from talking to these innocent people. I learned that we have to make the crime victim a full participant, not a forgotten person, in the criminal justice system. The proposals I have just outlined would help us make some progress in turning the criminal justice system into a more victim-friendly enterprise. It is long past time that we stop treating the victims like they are criminals and the criminals like they are victims. My legislation is an attempt to move the concerns of crime victims toward center stage in our Federal criminal justice policy. Next week, I will continue my series of speeches on the crime bill that I intend to introduce next week. On Monday, I will explain what I think we ought to do to get more police officers on the streets, particularly to get more police officers on the streets where the crime is the highest, because if there is one thing that we know, it is this: Law enforcement officers who are well trained and who are deployed correctly on our streets will, in fact, reduce crime. That is a fact. That is the truth. I will talk more about this next week. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. CHAFEE addressed the Chair.

Mr. DeWINE

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I further ask unanimous consent that I might proceed now as in morning business.

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DeWINE

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I further ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DeWINE

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed as if in morning business.

Mr. DeWINE

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, yesterday I came to the floor to begin a discussion about the crime bill that within the next several days I will be introducing. I would like today to continue to talk about other provisions of that crime bill. As I indicated yesterday, I believe that there are really two truly fundamental issues that we always need to address when we are looking at the validity or the merits of any particular crime bill. First, what is the proper role of the Federal Government in fighting crime in this country? Second, despite all the rhetoric, what really works in law enforcement; what matters and what does not matter? It has been my experience, Mr. President, as someone who does not pretend to be an expert in this area but someone who has spent the better part of 20 years in different capacities dealing with this, beginning in the early 1970's as a county prosecuting attorney, it has been my experience that many times the rhetoric does not square very closely with the reality, and that really, if we are serious about dealing with crime, the people that we ought to talk to are the men and women who are on the front lines every single day--the police officers, the tens of thousands of police officers around this country who really are the experts and who know what works and what does not work. The bill that I will introduce is based upon my own experience, but it is also based on hundreds and hundreds of discussions that I have had over the years with the people who, literally, are on the front line. Yesterday, I discussed these issues with specific reference to crime- fighting technology. The conclusion I have reached is that we have an outstanding technology base in this country that will do a great deal to catch criminals. Technology does, in fact, matter, and it clearly matters in the area of law enforcement. But we need the Federal Government to be more proactive in this area, more proactive in helping the States get on line with their own technology. Having a terrific national criminal record system or a huge DNA data base for convicted sex offenders in Washington, DC, is great, but it will not really do much good if the police officer in Lucas County, OH, or Greene County or Clark County or Hamilton County cannot tap into it. It will not do any good if we cannot get the information, the primary source of this information, from them and get it into the system. Crimes occur locally. Ninety-five percent of all criminal prosecution, of all national level. Crime occurs locally, so we have to make sure that the crime-fighting resources, like this high-technology data base that I talked about yesterday, are available to local law enforcement. Mr. President, today I would like to continue this discussion, and I would like to discuss another component of my crime legislation: How do we go about protecting America from armed career criminals? I am talking about repeat violent criminals who use a gun in the commission of a felony. In this area, too, we need to be asking what works, what does not work, and what level of Federal Government is most appropriate to do what, what level of Federal Government is most appropriate to get certain help from. Again, experience tells us that we really do know what matters, we really do know what works. In the area of gun crimes, we have a pretty good answer. We all know that there is a great deal of controversy about guns, controversy over whether general restrictions on gun ownership would help reduce crime. But, Mr. President, there is no controversy over whether taking guns away from convicted felons will reduce crime. Let me guarantee you, if we know one thing, it is this: If we take guns out of the hands of convicted felons, we will reduce crime and we will have fewer victims. There is legitimate disagreement over bills such as the Brady bill, whether that will reduce crime. Similarly, reasonable people can disagree concerning the question of whether a ban on assault weapons will reduce crime. I happen to support both of these measures, but I recognize that many people do not and many people think that they are not effective. But what I am talking about today is something on which there is absolutely no controversy, absolutely no dispute. There simply is no question that taking the guns away from armed career criminals will, in fact, reduce crime, and history shows that that works. When it comes to armed career criminals, we need to disarm them, we need to lock them up, we need to get them out of society. Let us disarm the people who are hurting our victims, who are hurting the citizens of this country. As I said, history indicates that this works. We have a historic track record to point to. We actually have tried this and it does, in fact, work. One of the most successful crime-fighting initiatives of recent years in this country was a project that was known as Project Triggerlock. This project was very successful, wildly successful, precisely because it addressed a problem squarely and it placed the resources where they were most needed. Let me tell the Members of the Senate a little bit about the history of this Project Triggerlock. The U.S. Justice Department began Project Triggerlock in May of 1991. The program targeted for prosecution in Federal court armed and violent repeat offenders. Under Triggerlock, U.S. attorneys throughout the country turned to the local prosecuting attorneys in whatever jurisdiction they were located and said: ``If you catch a felon with a gun, if you want us to, we, under existing Federal statute, we the Federal prosecutors, we the U.S. attorneys will take over that prosecution for you. We will prosecute that individual, we will convict that individual, and we will hit that individual with a stiff Federal mandatory sentence, and we will lock this individual up in a Federal prison at no cost to the local community, to the State.'' That is true Federal assistance. That is Federal assistance that matters. That is Federal assistance that makes a difference. That is Federal assistance and Federal action that will save lives by taking these career criminals off our streets. Mr. President, that is what Project Triggerlock did. Triggerlock was an assault on the very worst criminals, the worst of the worst in American society. And it worked. This program took 15,000--15,000-- career criminals off the streets in just an 18-month period of time. Incredibly--at least incredibly to me as a former prosecutor--the Clinton Justice Department abandoned Project Triggerlock. It was the most effective Federal program in recent history for targeting and removing armed career criminals from our society. But for some reason-- for some reason--the Justice Department stopped Triggerlock dead in its tracks. What I propose in my crime legislation is that we resurrect Project Triggerlock, and we can do it. My legislation includes a provision requiring the U.S. attorneys in every jurisdiction in this country to make a monthly report to the Attorney General in Washington on the number of arrests, the number of prosecutions and convictions they have gotten within that last 30-day period of time on gun-related offenses. The Attorney General then would report semiannually to the U.S. Congress on the success of this program and report on the number of these individuals who have been convicted. Like all prosecutors, U.S. attorneys have limited resources. In fact, with U.S. attorneys, they have more discretion because of the fact that many times we have concurrent jurisdiction between the local prosecutors under State law and Federal prosecutors under Federal law. So the Federal prosecutors have a great deal of discretion about what type cases to pursue. It really is a question of what the priorities are. It is a question of prioritization. Like all prosecutors, U.S. attorneys do have to exercise discretion about whom to prosecute. We all recognize that Congress cannot dictate to U.S. attorneys, cannot dictate to the Attorney General who should be prosecuted. But it is clear that we should go on record with the following basic proposition, and that is this: There is nothing more important than getting armed career criminals off the streets. There is nothing more important that the Justice Department can do than to set this as a priority. Mr. President, I think Project Triggerlock was a very important way to keep the focus on the prosecution of gun crimes. Getting criminals off the streets, criminals who use guns, is a major national priority and we all should behave accordingly. Let me turn now to a second portion of this bill that deals with the problem of criminals using guns in the commission of a felony. The second thing we need to do is to change the law. We need to toughen the law against those who use a gun to commit a crime. My bill would say to career criminals: If you are a convicted felon and you possess a gun, you will get a mandatory sentence. Under current law, a first-time felon gets a 5-year mandatory sentence. A third-time felon gets a mandatory minimum of 15 years. But there is a gap in current law. There is no mandatory minimum for a second-time felon. My legislation, Mr. President, would fix that. It would provide a mandatory minimum of 10 years for a second-time felon with a gun. That would make it a lot easier for police to get that gun criminal off of our streets. Third, bail reform. The third thing we need to do is to reform the bail system. Under current law, the Bail Reform Act, certain dangerous, accused criminals can be denied bail if they have been charged with crimes of violence. But it is unclear under current law whether possession of firearms should be considered a crime of violence or not. Mr. President, let us do a reality check here today. If someone who is a known convicted felon is walking around with a gun in your community in Michigan, or in my community in Ohio, what is the likelihood that that person is carrying the gun for law-abiding purposes? Convicted felon with a gun. I think it is perfectly reasonable to consider that person prima facie dangerous. We should deny bail to keep that convicted felon off the streets while awaiting trial on the new charge. My legislation would eliminate the ambiguity in current law. My bill would define a crime of violence to specifically include possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. If you are a convicted felon and you are walking around with a gun, you are dangerous and you need to be kept off the streets. We need to give the prosecutors the legal right to protect the community from these people while they are awaiting trial. Mr. President, a fourth way we can crack down on gun crimes is to go after felons. Under current law, you can be prosecuted by providing a gun only if you knew for certain that it would be used in a crime. The revision I propose would make it illegal to provide a firearm if you have reasonable cause to believe that it is going to be used in the commission of a crime. This is the best way, I believe, to go after the illegal gun trade, those who provide guns to those people who are predators in our society. We will no longer, under this provision, allow these gun providers to feign ignorance. They are helping felons and they need to be stopped. Mr. President, all of these proposals are motivated by a single purpose. I, along with the police officers of this country, believe that we have to get the guns away from the gun criminals. Project Triggerlock was one major initiative that we can pursue at the Federal level to help make this happen. Imposing stiff mandatory minimums, cracking down on illegal gun providers, are also good, important measures. All of the gun proposals contained in my crime legislation, Mr. President, really have the same goal. They are designed to assure American families who are living in crime-threatened communities that we are going to do what it takes to get guns off of their streets. We are going to go after the armed career criminals. We are going to prosecute them, convict them, and we are going to keep them off of our streets. That is why we have a Government in the first place, to protect the innocent, to keep ordinary citizens safe from violent, predatory crimes. Mr. President, I believe that Government needs to do a much better job with this fundamental task. That is why targeting the armed career criminals is such a major component of the crime bill that I will be introducing. Mr. President, tomorrow I intend to talk briefly about a third major component of my bill, and that is how we help the victims of crime, those who are victimized by the criminals, those who we, many times, forget. It has been my experience that, unfortunately, many times society treats the criminals as if they are victims and the victims as if they are criminals. Provisions in the bill that I will be discussing tomorrow deal with that. We will reach out to the victims of crime to help them and to make the playing field more level. Mr. President, at this point, I will yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DeWINE

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, a few weeks ago on this Senate floor I discussed the problem of school bus safety. In February of this year a young girl by the name of Brandie Browder, an eighth grader in Beaver Creek, OH, was killed when the drawstring around the waist of her coat got caught in the handrail of her school bus. Just 4 days later, in Cincinnati, a seventh grader suffered a broken foot in a very similar accident. As I pointed out when I spoke previously about this matter, while school buses are certainly among the very safest modes of transportation, the sad fact remains that an average of 30 schoolchildren are killed every single year in America either getting off or getting back on their own school buses--30 children. Each child, Mr. President, with parents, grandparents, brothers, and sisters, and because of that child's death their life will never be the same; 30 children who will never have the opportunity to grow up, 30 children who will never have the opportunity to live out their potential. The sad fact is, Mr. President, that almost without exception these are preventable deaths. When I last spoke on this issue, I discussed three specific safety issues, three problems that cause these deaths. One was a handrail problem. The second was the problem of the child getting on and off the bus and how we can make that area safer so the school bus driver will know what is going on in that area. And finally, I talked about the possibility of better training for school bus drivers. Today, I would like to concentrate on the issue of handrails on these school buses because between the time that I last spoke to the Senate about this issue myself and my staff have spent a great deal of time looking at this issue and finding out additional facts. And the sad fact is that we lose many children because of this handrail problem. This is a problem, Members of the Senate, that can be corrected very easily for less than $20 per school bus. So it is not something that is going to cost a great deal of money. It is something though that will not be fixed unless parents, teachers, administrators, and members of the public demand that this problem be fixed in each school bus in the country. As I previously mentioned, an alarming number of these accidents are occurring when a strap from a backpack on a child or the drawstring of a little girl's or little boy's coat gets snagged in the handrail while that child is exiting the bus. We all know I think from our own experience from our own children how many kids today have backpacks or have a poncho or something that has a string that can in fact get caught as that child is getting off the bus. Mr. President, with many of these handrails there is a small space between the handrail and the wall of the bus where something like the drawstring around the waist of a coat can get snagged. The child is getting off the bus. The child begins to get off that bus but the child's clothing is stuck and is still attached when the bus driver mistakenly begins to pull away thinking the child has exited the school bus. As I pointed out, a number of children have been killed in this exact manner since 1991. Let me give a little background on the analysis of this problem. Beginning in early 1993, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration [NHTSA] initiated a series of investigations to find out if the handrails on school buses were actually designed in an unsafe manner. As a result of these investigations, nine distinct models of school buses were recalled because of potentially unsafe handrails. However, tens of thousands of these unsafe buses were not recalled. They are still on the road. The bus that killed little Brandie was not recalled, not because the bus was safe--just the contrary--but it was not recalled because the company that made the bus had already gone out of business. Mr. President, we clearly must track down these buses. We must make sure that every single bus in this country is inspected. We have to fix them or get them off the road. Let me again repeat. We are not talking about a very expensive repair. It is not a cost question. It is a question of locating the buses. It is a question of public awareness, which is why I am on the floor today. We as parents need to make sure our children are not getting on an unsafe bus this afternoon, tomorrow morning, or ever. We can all look for ourselves. When our child gets on the bus tomorrow morning, or gets off the bus this afternoon, look at the handrail to see if that gap does in fact exist. We must not rest until every one of these buses is identified and fixed. Let me advise my colleagues what we are doing in the State of Ohio with regard to this. I had the opportunity this morning to talk to highway patrol officials who are in charge in the State of Ohio of school bus inspections. As I have indicated, there really is a simple solution to this particular handrail problem. Every year the Ohio State Highway Patrol during the summer months when school is not in session conduct inspections of every single school bus in the State of Ohio. I suspect that there are other law enforcement agencies that perform the same function in all the other States of the Union as well. The Ohio State Highway Patrol, when they begin these inspections in the next several weeks, are going to in addition to what they normally do look for this specific problem. When they find the problem, if they do, they are going to take the bus off the road until the problem is corrected because as I indicated it is a very relatively simple problem to solve at a cost of probably no more than $20. They use an inspection device, a tool. If I describe it, I think it will give our listeners and Members of the Senate a good idea how simple it is. It is a tool made with a long string with a nut attached to the end. From outside the school bus door, you drop the nut end of the device into the crevice where lower area of the stepped wall. When you pull the device toward the outside of the school bus through the crevice, if the tool gets caught the bus is rejected and then not allowed onto the road until this is fixed. As I point out, fixing these buses is relatively easy. For around $20 you can put a safe new handrail on the bus, a whole new handrail, or for even less money than that you can modify the handrail by inserting a special wood or rubber spacer between the bottom attachment point of the handrail and the bus wall itself. The process is cheap, simple and will save lives. Mr. President, I urge that all States that are not currently following this inspection policy and are not looking for this problem start doing this as soon as possible. Ohio certainly does not have a monopoly on these potentially unsafe buses. These unsafe buses can probably and I am sure can be found in any State in the Union. Mr. President, this week just happens to be National Safe Kids Week. There is no better time than the present during this week to focus our attention on the real dangers to schoolchildren who travel by schoolbus. The goals of National Safe Kids Week are fourfold, but they are quite simple. First, raise awareness of the problem of childhood injuries. Second, build grassroots coalitions to implement prevention strategies. Third, stimulate changes in behavior and products to reduce the occurrence of injuries. Fourth, make childhood injuries a public policy priority. Mr. President, these four goals should set our agenda for safety for children and specifically should set our agenda for school bus safety. I will in the weeks ahead again return to the floor to revisit this entire issue, but at this time I think it is important that we get about the business of dealing with this handrail problem. In conclusion, I should like to alert my colleagues and other concerned Americans to an important satellite feed about this issue of school bus safety. Later today and tomorrow, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will be showing a TV program on this very issue. This program will be available by satellite, and I would urge those who are interested in this vital issue to contact NHTSA about the details. Again, Mr. President, I thank all the concerned parents and the educators and others who are contributing to the success of National Safe Kids Week. To them I simply say thank you, thank you for caring, and, believe me, you are in fact making a difference. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I do suggest at this time the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DeWINE

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, in the coming weeks the Senate will once again turn to the very important issue of crime. Within the next few days I will be introducing on this floor a crime bill of my own. Over the next 4 days I intend to discuss on each one of those 4 days a different aspect of the crime bill that I will be introducing. Today, I would like to start by talking about two truly fundamental and basic issues and questions. First, what is the proper role of the Federal Government in fighting crime in this country? Second, despite all of the rhetoric, what really works in law enforcement? What matters? What does not matter? What is rhetoric and what is reality? What can the Federal Government do to help local law enforcement? Because, Mr. President, the fact is that over 90 percent of all criminal investigations, prosecutions, and trials do not occur at the Federal level. Rather, they take place at the local and State level. This means that one of the criteria for any crime bill has to be the impact that bill will have on the ability of local communities themselves to fight crime. Of any crime bill, we have to ask this question: Does it help or does it hurt the local crimefighters, the men and women who are on the front line every single day? Mr. President, if it does help, does the help it gives help permanently or just over the short run? In other words, are we going to get any lasting impact in our battle against crime for the billions of dollars that we are talking of spending at the Federal level? Mr. President, the role of the Federal Government first and foremost is to do those things that the local community cannot do for itself. I believe the Federal Government has to provide the tools to a local community to fight crime, tools that they could not have but for the help of the Federal Government. One major Federal responsibility that I would like to discuss today is the creation and maintenance of a national criminal records system. The idea is really very basic and very simple. We need to make it possible for any police officer anywhere in the country to access a national data base, a fully automated data base, data bank, which includes information on fingerprints, DNA, ballistics, outstanding warrants, and complete criminal record history of suspects and of those who have previously been convicted of crimes. I believe that this system will be an absolutely essential component of local law enforcement in the 21st century. We already have much of this technology in place today, but, quite frankly, it will only become more important in the years ahead. That is why we need to focus on it today, this year, this crime bill. We have to build this system correctly from the beginning. Mr. President, we will soon be considering the single largest crime fighting bill in the history of this country. If we do not focus on this technology issue now as part of this crime bill, we never will again have the opportunity to do it and to do it correctly. I think that would be tragic, because if we do not do this it will be much more difficult later on for police to fight crime. Conversely, if we do do it, we will solve crimes. We will save people from becoming victims. Yes, we will save lives. I think that really is what is at stake. Mr. President, if we do not do this now, it will be more difficult for the police to solve crimes committed by the same individual in different cities--to catch, for example, a criminal who used the same gun to commit crimes in both Washington, DC, and Baltimore, MD. It will be more difficult to keep track of sex offenders and to prevent them from repeating their offenses. Mr. President, when a felon is fleeing from justice and inadvertently falls into the hands of law enforcers in some other jurisdiction, those arresting officers will not know through fingerprints that that person is wanted, let us say, for kidnapping or a terrorist act--kidnapping a child. Mr. President, when a brave police officer pulls someone over on a deserted highway in the middle of the night, that police officer will not know the kind of person he is pulling over, will not know that the person he has pulled over is a convicted criminal, maybe a fugitive from justice. Local police work hard and do a great job. They deserve much better than this. They deserve to have the best technology that we can give them. To do that they need national help. They need the technological backup that only a fully functioning national--national--system can provide. For local law enforcement to get the maximum benefit from a national system, we have to grow this national system locally. The unique thing about law enforcement in the United States, a country with a Federal system, not a top-down system, of government, is that you can only have a national system if the local law enforcement people build it up themselves. To attempt to create a national system from the top down is like trying to create a TV network if nobody has a television. in Washington, DC, but if a police officer in Tennessee or in Ohio or in Massachusetts cannot pull it up in his or her squad car or at the police station, what in the world use is it? To make a national system, we really need two things. We need the local people to collect data and put it into the national system. And then we need to make sure the men and women scattered throughout this country, tens of thousands of them, who need this information have the ability to get the data back and to use it and to solve crimes and to convict criminals. Unless we invest in local technology, the local data collection, and retrieval, this just will not happen. When I was in Cleveland recently, I saw the future of law enforcement. I saw police officers punch a name into a laptop computer, no bigger than this. The computer then gave them a picture of the individual and a lot of other information, including outstanding warrants and a complete criminal record. We have the technology today to give this ability to every law enforcement officer in the country. For a system like this to work, Mr. President, we need local police all over America to be putting in this information. It is the kind of system we have to grow locally so that it can work nationally. Only the Federal Government can do the national coordination that is necessary for this kind of a system. There is an important and legitimate Federal role in crime technology, and my bill reflects this fact. My bill gives direct assistance to local authorities so that they can contribute their knowledge, their information to a national crime fighting system. Anyone who visits the laboratories of the FBI, as I have, here in Washington cannot help being impressed by the tremendous capabilities and capacity that they have. Our challenge, though, is to ensure that the hub, the FBI's data base, is both expanded by and is useful to local authorities. While I was at the FBI headquarters recently, the agents looked me directly in the eye and told me that the awesome technology we have really will not be fully utilized, will not live up to the great potential it has unless the local authorities can collect the information and put it into the system. They expressed to me quite bluntly a skepticism as to whether or not there are the funds available today in jurisdictions across this country to achieve this type of a national system. They have it here in Washington. The FBI has it. But local law enforcement does not today have the resources. Talk to the police officers of Lucas County, OH. They will tell you how crucially important access to this technology really is. Let me take one example, something we have heard a lot about in the law the last few months on television-- DNA. Let us take DNA in a rape case. The police in Lucas County have the technology to collect blood and semen in a rape scene. Today, however, the Lucas County police, sheriff's office, Toledo Police Department, if they have no suspect, there is no quick way to match the DNA samples from the crime scene against the DNA samples of past offenders because Lucas County is not on line with an existing national DNA data base that might help them determine who the predator really was. And even if they already have a suspect in Lucas County, proving that the DNA matches that of the suspect is a very slow process. It is slow because of the great backlog that exists today in getting these samples fully analyzed by a competent individual, an expert who later on can come into court and testify. If we give Lucas County or the Toledo Police Department immediate access to a national DNA data base, they could know pretty swiftly who committed that crime. The same problem exists in regard to fingerprints. Now, when a suspect is booked, generally, his fingers get rolled in ink onto three or four separate cards which then get headings like name, address, et cetera, which are typed by the county sheriff's department onto the cards. These fingerprints are then mailed--mailed, Mr. President--in 1995, still mailed--to the FBI and into BCI in Ohio, which is our Bureau of Criminal Identification. The technology, though, Mr. President, already exists for the computerized fingerprinting of suspects. All they have to do now is place their hands onto a computer imager--the technology is available today--and the fingerprints go then directly into a data base, what could be a national data base. That would be a tremendous improvement. But, you know, the folks in Lucas County tell me that what they and other police officers nationwide really need is a national computer linkup for fingerprints. I think that is absolutely correct. If you look at the technology they are trying, let us say, in Cleveland Heights, laptop computers in a squad car, and if you look at the incredible technology already available for fingerprinting, for matching bullet fragments and other physical evidence, the conclusion is really inescapable. We need to make technology a truly national priority. This is something that we in the U.S. Senate can do and, frankly, something that we must do. The time is now. This is our opportunity. The situation today is almost like a system of stereo components. We have a great receiver; we have a great set of speakers; we even have a world-class selection of CD's. But we have not hooked the system up and we have not plugged it in. Mr. President, make no mistake: America's police men and women are already the best in the world. If we give them this equipment, they will solve the crimes; they will get the job done. The U.S. Senate needs to give these local police officers the tools they really need. The bill that I will introduce in the next several days will accelerate the process of setting up this system of 21st century technology. We really will be going from 19th century technology, which is how many police carry out their functions today, to 21st century technology. Only if we do this can the State and local authorities make their crime information readily available to the FBI, the national data base, the Federal Bureau of Investigation here in Washington and, frankly, more importantly, vice versa. My bill makes it possible for States without technology to come on line. And if a State is already on line with the FBI, that State can use the funds to make further improvements to its data collection system. Let me give you another example. The combined DNA index system, called CODIS, a data base, includes DNA information on criminals convicted of rape, murder, and other violent crimes. Under my legislation, participation in CODIS will be truly national for the first time, and it will be supported by Federal dollars. In another area that I think is very important, my bill would require convicted sex offenders and other violent criminals to give blood samples as they enter or as they leave prison so that we can develop a truly national sex offender DNA data base. Mr. President, there exists in this country a class of individuals who I will call, for want of a better term, sexual predators. A predator, as we know, is an animal that preys on other animals, and typically on the weak--sexual predators. A recent study, Mr. President, found that 28 percent--28 percent--of convicted sex offenders were later convicted of a second sex offense. I will say, Mr. President, based upon my own experience when I was a county prosecutor in Greene County, that that percentage probably is even higher than 28 percent. That is a very high recidivism rate and it shows how serious a problem we are really up against. And so it makes eminent sense to develop a nationwide system where we can collect systematically the blood, then the DNA, and develop this national DNA data base for sexual predators. If we do this, we will solve crimes; we will prevent crimes; we will prevent tragedies. I think, Mr. President, we clearly need to do everything in our power to stop these predators. That is why we need to give police access to this national data base. Mr. President, fingerprints and criminal histories would also be included in this integrated Federal data base. the crime money to fund the FBI's DRUGFIRE program. This is an existing program that, quite frankly, needs to be expanded. We need to help the FBI develop and install computer equipment that would match bullet evidence to information in the FBI's bullet data base. Today, for example, law enforcement officers in my home county of Greene County, OH, have a filing cabinet full of bullets. These bullets are arranged by caliber--9 mm, .38 slugs, and so on. Every gun, of course, as we know from watching TV shows, leaves a tell-tale print on a bullet, so police officers in Greene County or any county can take a bullet from the crime scene and compare it to the bullets they have in their bullet file. They take the bullets that look similar and put them under a microscope, quite frankly, in the very distant hope they might get a match. Tragically, there is absolutely no hope of matching the bullet with bullets from other police departments. That is one reason there are a lot of unsolved gun crimes in this country today. DRUGFIRE changes this dramatically. DRUGFIRE connects each bullet microscope to a computer, which takes a picture of the bullet and stores an image in its memory. It can then be matched with millions of other bullets from all around the country. Today, about eight jurisdictions between Baltimore and Washington, DC, are linked up through DRUGFIRE. They have already connected Baltimore crimes to D.C. crimes--the same gun, the same criminals. Thanks to DRUGFIRE, a search through 10,000 bullets takes about a minute. Without DRUGFIRE, no one knows how long it will take because no one, of course, would even try to do that. Mr. President, if everyone in local law enforcement were hooked up to each other nationwide, and to the FBI, through DRUGFIRE, they would have a huge new advantage in the fight against criminals with guns. Gun criminals do not respect State borders--very obvious. Mr. President, a key criterion on which any crime bill should be judged is: Does it do any permanent good? Not just immediately, but does it do permanent good? Does it just spend money, or does it invest in something that has consistent, long-term benefits? Mr. President, I maintain that the criminal justice records we are talking about--indeed, all the technology we are talking about--are a crucial long-term investment for this country. We are not really just talking about the next 5 years. We are talking about a cumulative effect, building, building far out into the future. The efficiency of this system will continue to increase each year. It will have truly a cumulative effect. We want to do for law enforcement, if I could use this analogy, what the interstate highway system did for U.S. transportation back in the 1950's. Now, I must admit to my colleagues that this is not a glitzy nor a glamorous issue. The first thing I learned, now almost 20 years ago, as a young assistant county prosecuting attorney, was that law enforcement is very seldom glamorous. It is hard work. What we generally see on TV is not an accurate depiction of police investigations. It is not an accurate depiction of criminal prosecutions. In fact, Mr. President, what we are seeing or we are hearing about, day after day after day, as the FBI and other law enforcement agencies investigate the horrible tragedy in Oklahoma, what we are seeing unfold is typical law enforcement work, just magnified as they go about their business--their hard, tough, sometimes very boring business--of looking for the lead that will take them to the next lead, the piece of evidence, the shred of evidence that will take them to something else, and on and on until the crime is solved. Good police work is, if I could use this term, Mr. President, largely grunt work. It can be downright boring hitting the pavement day after day to track down leads. The police in Lucas County, OH, spent a good 8 years trying to track down a grandfather who abducted his granddaughter. They followed his trail from State to State. They finally found him, after 8 years, in California. Mr. President, a national, easily accessible database would have made that capture probably a lot easier and maybe, just maybe, that little girl would have been reunited with her parents a lot sooner than 8 years after her disappearance. The Oklahoma City bombing case, as I mentioned a moment ago, demonstrates the real value of a usable national database. A scrap of metal that was blown 2 blocks away from the crime scene by the bomb blast had a vehicle identification number on it. The FBI fed the number into the computerized rapid start system. The vehicle identification number then led the FBI to the rental company in Junction City, and that is where they got the description of the suspect. Then it took more legwork around Junction City to match a name to the suspect. When the suspect's name was fed into the FBI's national computer database, that is how the FBI found that the terrorism suspect actually had been arrested earlier in Perry, OH, that he was actually in custody. Mr. President, local law enforcement officers really need access to that kind of technology. The measures I am talking about will help provide them with these tools. This technology may not be glamorous--it is not glamorous--but believe me, it matters, it makes a difference. It will make a huge difference in our national fight against crime. Every single time a police officer pulls someone over, we need that police officer to know that America is with him or with her, not just our encouragement, not just our moral support, but we need to back up that by giving that police officer all the relevant facts we as a nation have compiled about that person, that individual that the police officer has just pulled over. Last year, we started down the right path. Last year's crime bill did provide some money for this important work. But now we have to concentrate on helping the local--the local--law enforcement community to participate. That is what this year's crime bill absolutely must do, because, Mr. President, if we do not do this, we will be missing a major component of our crimefighting arsenal. It is no use to have a gold-plated database system in Washington if local crimefighters cannot, do not contribute to it and if they cannot draw out the information, if they cannot use it. Again, back to the statistic that I started this speech with and that is that well over 90 percent of all criminal prosecution is, in fact, local. And so, you have to judge the system you are establishing not just by what it does for the FBI, although that is important, you have to judge what it does for its component parts, what it does for the tens of thousands of police officers and law enforcement agencies around this country. Our challenge, Mr. President, is to prepare America's law enforcement for the 21st century, and we are falling behind in this task. We have the technology, we have the ability to prevent many of the crimes that are being committed today. Think of it, that is in and of itself a crime, that we have the technology to give law enforcement the tools they need to solve crime and to, more importantly, catch criminals and put them behind bars and keep them locked up, criminals who, but for that technology, will continue to go on and continue to commit crimes and continue to prey upon our citizens. We need to get that technology to where it is needed the most, and that is the local law enforcement. The improvements I am proposing in America's crime information system constitute a basic investment in the security of American families well into the next century. It is time to move out of the stone age on law enforcement. That is the principle behind my crime technology proposals. I look forward to working on this in our Judiciary Committee process and on the floor of this Senate in the next few weeks. I think the work we do on this truly has the potential to make a major difference in the lives of ordinary Americans for decades to come. I am proud to be a part of this effort. I yield the floor Mr. KENNEDY addressed the Chair.

Mr. DeWINE

Mr. DeWINE. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DeWINE

Mr. DeWINE. Under the previous order, there will now be a period for the transaction of morning business until the hour of 11 a.m. with Senators permitted to speak therein for not to exceed 5 minutes each. Under the previous order, the Senator from North Dakota [Mr. Dorgan] is recognized to speak for up to 20 minutes. The Senator from North Dakota is recognized.

Mr. DeWINE

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, this amendment will, I believe, clean up the bill and it will finish a process that was begun several days ago. That was a concern that I expressed on the floor yesterday in regard to the way the bill was originally drafted, which said that juries no longer could consider the assets that a corporation had when that jury made its decision about what was the appropriate level of punitive damages. As I indicated yesterday, that type of preemption of State law makes absolutely no sense because punitive damages have always been intended to do basically two things: One, to serve as punishment and, second, to serve as a legitimate deterrent. A jury cannot make that determination unless the jury knows all the facts. One of the pertinent facts has to be what the assets of the corporation might be, and other relevant financial information. The danger of the way the bill was written was not only that we might lose that deterrent effect. Because a jury would not really know what assets the company had, it might have just the opposite effect. You might have a jury assuming that a company had a great deal of assets and the company did not have those assets. The jury then would make a disproportionate award. And so it could hurt really on both sides. What this amendment does is really complete the process that was started several days ago, by providing and taking out of the bill that preemption. So if this amendment would be passed, we would be back to where we were before in regard to what juries could consider in regard to making their decision about punitive damages; namely, we would be back to State law, which I think is where we need to go. So, in this case, I hope that tomorrow, when we vote on this particular amendment, we will agree to it. I think it is only equitable and fair. I urge my colleagues to do so. At this point, Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I offer this amendment on behalf of Senator Abraham and myself. It really is an amendment that is a small business amendment. I expressed yesterday on the floor a concern, a twofold concern: One, that we make sure that the cap was sufficiently high so that larger businesses would in fact be deterred by the proper awards juries would make in regard to punitive damages, and that we not lose that deterrent effect; but I also expressed a concern that small business not be unduly penalized by punitive damages. I have talked to small business men and women throughout Ohio who do have this very legitimate concern and who really live in fear literally every day of something happening where they would have a huge award that would literally put them out of business; that what would become a punitive damage award which, for a big business, might, in fact, be a deterrent, might, in fact, be for a small business actually the death penalty. This particular amendment provides an exception for small business. And small business is defined in the amendment as any business that has 25 or fewer employees or has a net worth of not over one-half million dollars. If this amendment is agreed to, a punitive damage award could not exceed $250,000. I think this amendment makes a great deal of sense. I think it will take care of one of the problems that we have today, a problem expressed to me many, many times by small business. I hope that tomorrow it will, in fact, be adopted. Mr. President, at this time, I ask unanimous consent that this amendment be set aside for the moment.

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside.

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I send another amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. DeWINE

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. DeWINE

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, for the information of all members, there will be a series of stacked rollcall votes beginning at 11 a.m. on Tuesday.

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I further ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess between the hours of 12:30 p.m. and 2:15 p.m. in order for the weekly party luncheons to occur.

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand in recess until the hour of 10 a.m. on Tuesday, May 2, 1995; that following the prayer, the Journal of proceedings be deemed approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and that the Senate then resume consideration of the pending product liability bill; further, that there be an hour for debate, to be equally divided between the two managers or their designees, prior to the stacked votes, which are scheduled to occur at 11 a.m.