Bart Stupak

Mr. STUPAK

Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds. In response to the gentleman from Florida, we are going to go back and forth here all day. Let me remind my colleague what Mr. Ralph Martin, a Republican district attorney in Boston stated. It is in today's Washington Post. As to my colleague's bill, he says, and I quote, ``There is a lot of concern among a lot of State prosecutors because we do not want to see overfederalization of juvenile crime.'' Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute and 45 seconds to the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pascrell].

Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, the Stupak-Stenholm-Lofgren-Scott substitute takes the approach that juvenile crime can best be battled at the local level. In our bill we set aside the same $1.5 billion over 3 years for local initiatives. Our Crime Task Force went to the communities around this Nation and they asked us, give us the flexibility and give us local control. We need help from the Federal Government. We do not need mandates. Unfortunately, the majority legislation here, the majority bill, puts down four mandates that each State must follow. In those mandates, if we do not follow those mandates, our State is denied any access to the $1.5 billion. In the most recent list that has been compiled, in reviewing the majority's bill, only six States may be eligible. Forty- four other States would be denied access to any funds in fighting juvenile crime. Mr. Chairman, the Democratic substitute is a balanced approach to the problem of juvenile crime. It is an approach that includes enforcement, intervention, prevention, and we reform the juvenile justice system to target violent kids, and they would be locked up underneath our bill. We allow the local community approach and not the federalism approach. The National Conference of State Legislators has written to each Member of Congress and they asked us not to pass this bill, not to pass the majority bill, adopt the Democratic substitute. Why do they not want the Republican bill? Because there are mandates there. It is a continuation of federalism, with four different mandates that most States cannot comply with. Since when has the Federal Government, who does not have juvenile courts, who does not have juvenile probation officers, since when have we become the experts, and we are telling the rest of the country how to fight juvenile crime? The Democratic substitute is a smart bill, a fair bill, a tough bill, and everyone gets to join in, and we work with our local officials. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. STUPAK. Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Chairman, I offer amendment No. 1 in the nature of a substitute.

Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 10 seconds. Mr. Chairman, as to the gentleman from Georgia, his State will not even qualify. The police unions, the International Union of Police Associations, the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, all support our legislation. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Wynn].

Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Chairman, I yield 15 seconds to the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Watt].

Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Connecticut [Mrs. Kennelly]. (Mrs. KENNELLY of Connecticut asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Etheridge], another new Member.

Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands [Ms. Christian-Green]. (Ms. CHRISTIAN-GREEN asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Boyd].

Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time as we have one more speaker left to close.

Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Chairman, I yield the remaining time to the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Stenholm], who helped draft this proposal and is one of the chief sponsors, along with the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Lofgren], the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Scott], and myself. (Mr. STENHOLM asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. STUPAK

Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California.

Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Speaker, tonight I am joined by many of my colleagues as we want to talk about H.R. 3, the so-called Juvenile Crime Control Act, put forth by the majority party. Mr. Speaker, as co-chair with the gentlewoman from California, Ms. Zoe Lofgren and the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Bobby Scott, for the last 3 months we have held hearings, we have held meetings to try to fashion a bill that could really treat juveniles with justice, with compassion, with punishment, with treatment, with education, and a comprehensive plan. We have brought forth such a bill, and it will be the substitute tomorrow. Mr. Speaker, before we talk about the substitute we are going to propose, let me just for a few moments reflect back a little bit on the debate we had here tonight. In the past 3 months that the Democratic Party has been working on our juvenile justice bill, we learned a couple of things. We learned, number one, that most juvenile crime, contrary to what we heard here tonight, is not murders, it is not rape, it is not robbery. The most common crime is what we call MDOP, malicious destruction of property. It occurs between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. That is what most of the juvenile crime in this country is. We learned that in the Federal Government we have control over 197 juveniles. One hundred ninety-seven juveniles. Of that 197, 120 are Native Americans or are on reservations, and we have jurisdiction over them. So we are talking about 77 individuals that we as a Federal Government have control over. The States, on the other hand, they incarcerate or have under their control up to 300,000 juveniles per year. What has the majority party recommended? That the Federal Government, in its infinite wisdom, basically take control of the juvenile justice system for the whole country. We base that knowledge upon 197 juveniles that we happen to have some control over in this year of 1997. We heard so much about Tax Freedom Day a little bit ago, and a bloated Federal Government, and all the majority party are these great deficit hawks. Yet, they want to spend $1.5 billion over the next 3 years to incarcerate juveniles, according to Washington standards, according to our standards. Whatever we pass in H.R. 3, that will be the standard. Mr. Speaker, that is no way to deal with juvenile justice, it is no way to deal with juveniles in this country. We are here tonight. We spent 2 hours on the bill. We will have approximately 2 hours tomorrow; 4 hours on juvenile justice. We heard what a great problem it is throughout this country, and it is. Can the 105th Congress not give us more than 4 hours on juvenile justice? We have been working on a HUD bill, housing and urban development bill, for over 1 week. Yet, when it comes to crime and juveniles, we can only spend 4 hours. Mr. Speaker, tomorrow I will be proud to introduce the Stupak- Stenholm-Lofgren-Scott-Delahunt-Mel Watt substitute. It is going to be our Juvenile Offender Control and Prevention act. It is a tough bill. It is a smart bill. It is a balanced bill. It is tough in the area of providing comprehensive treatment, education, and prevention for juvenile delinquency. We give the local communities, not the Federal Government but the local communities, the flexibility to decide what they need to stop violence in their community. It is the local communities that must determine how to stop violence; not the State, not the Federal Government, but our local communities. We in our 3 months of hearings got together with police officers, probation officers, judges, teachers, parents, and what is needed to fight this problem we have of juvenile delinquency in this country? They said, give us the flexibility to address our individual needs. I come from northern Michigan. My largest town is maybe 20,000 people. I have a very large rural, sparsely populated area. Our problems are much more different than Boston or south central LA. And what have the experts said? We should give the local communities the flexibility to do what will work in their community. What will work in northern Michigan is greatly different from what is going to work in Boston or LA or Alabama. Sixty percent of the 1.5 billion we use, the same money that the majority party is going to use, we are going to take about 60 percent of our money over the next 3 years; and it will be used for prevention, early intervention and treatment of juveniles. We are going to do that by strengthening the family. We are going to provide for safe havens for after school. Why? Because as I said earlier, most crime occurs between 3 and 8:00 p.m. and it is vandalism. We have drug prevention, drug treatment and drug education. Each community must base their initiatives and it should be based upon research, proven research, cost-effective efforts, because we want to be smart with the taxpayers' money, smart in our approach as we prevent serious violent juvenile crime. The McCollum bill, the majority bill, gives us zero money for prevention, zero money for early intervention, zero money for detention, zero money for prevention. Instead the majority bill wants to try 15-year-olds as adults and after they convict them, then they are going to tell you, you have to lock up that 15-year-old with adult prisoners. There is no option and there is also an option. There is also an option with the majority bill to even try juveniles as young as 13 years old, 7th graders and 8th graders as adults. That is their bill. Get tough, lock them up, put them away and do not worry about it. That is coming from the Federal Government who has no experience in this area. Instead, the minority party, the Democratic substitute will have a smart, tough and balanced bill. We are going to be tough on juveniles in that right now underneath the Federal system, juveniles can only stay until 21 years old. We are going to extend that time for violent juvenile offenders. They are going to be incarcerated through age 26 in our bill. We are going to expedite the time that a judge will only have 90 days, and it will be the judge who will make the decision. He will have 90 days to decide whether or not to transfer a juvenile from juvenile court to adult court; not the prosecutor, not the popular elected thing, because we are going to take politics out of juvenile crime. We are going to let the judges decide where they are empowered to enforce the law, not the political speech. We are going to increase the penalty for those juveniles who are using a gun in a crime, something that has not been done before. We are going to increase that penalty. If they are going to use a gun in a crime, punishment will be swift and severe. We are going to expand the use of records, juvenile records for law enforcement purposes. We will require mandatory restitution in juvenile offenses. And once a juvenile is determined delinquent, the court is only going to have 20 days to finally impose sanction and penalties and not drag it on. And all of the States in our bill will benefit, all States including the District of Columbia can benefit because the money will go to local units of government based on tough, smart research, proven research based upon local community initiatives. Mr. Speaker, that is not like the majority party. What do they want to do? We are going to mandate what we have to do, what States have to do, and if they do not do it, they get no money.

Mr. STUPAK. I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas.

Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I think that is the question we should ask here, it is $1.5 billion, only 12 States at best can enjoy that $1.5 billion. We are spending that much money on a few juvenile delinquents in a select number of States. And what do we tell all of the rest of the children in this country? And we cannot provide health insurance. But yet we are going to spend $1.5 billion over the next 3 years for 12 States to lock up some kids because the majority party feels they are going to get tough on it. What has the National Conference of State Legislatures wrote to us today and said, this is ludicrous. Stop this. You are putting on unfunded mandates. You, the Federal Government, are telling us what to do and giving us very little money. And we all have to comply and you have no experience in this field. Washington is telling us how we have to do it. They have missed the whole point here. I really hope that our Members reject the majority bill tomorrow and accept the Democratic substitute. Let me finish up with a few more words here before I yield to the gentlewoman from California, my good friend. Our bill, the Democratic bill that took us 3 months to put together and many hearings, we target violent kids. We crack down on juvenile gangs. And if you commit a crime with a gun and you are a juvenile, the punishment will be swift and severe. I was a police officer. The gentleman from Florida [Mr. McCollum] said tonight, we are sending a message; we are going to stop crime before it gets started because we are going to be tough on everyone. It does not work that way. I was on the street for 13 years. It does not work that way.

Mr. STUPAK. I yield to the gentlewoman from California.

Mr. STUPAK. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from California [Mr. Riggs] came down and he said he hoped to put on something with a bill later this year with prevention. I think we all know, we all have a couple terms here now, that tomorrow never comes in Congress. It is what we are doing today. This juvenile prevention bill or juvenile control, Juvenile Justice Act, whatever they are calling it now, that is where it is today. It promises something tomorrow, and it will never come because there will be some new crisis we will jump to. But we are not going to arrest our way out of it. The gentleman from California [Mr. Riggs] was correct. He was a police officer for 8 years. He said the same thing. He said it is absolutely right. You cannot arrest everyone and you cannot lock them all up and expect to solve this problem. There has to be a combination here of prevention, treatment and early intervention and intense supervision and, yes, there are some that we will have to lock up. We should be there to assist.

Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, one of the real great spokespersons, articulate individual in this whole matter, has been the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Watt, who points out to us time and time again that North Carolina has more than its share of prosecuting young people and has probably the most severe and toughest juvenile justice laws on the books, and it has not always worked, and I yield to the gentleman for his comments.

Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for all the work she has done on this and look forward to the continued fight tomorrow, and with that I yield to the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Scott].

Mr. STUPAK. The gentleman makes an interesting point that in his prison construction of $1 billion in new prison construction in Virginia, even if you receive your $10 million if you ever met the Federal standards or the Federal mandates, remember, that is just $10 million to help you build a prison. That is not what it costs for the guards and everything else that goes in. The smallest cost in prison is the construction. The most expensive, 80 percent, is for personnel, the cost to operate. We are leaving the States with that extra burden of now having to operate it. We will pay for the brick and mortar, but now you have to operate it.

Mr. STUPAK. I yield to the gentleman from Virginia.

Mr. STUPAK. I thank the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Scott] for all of his work and being the cochair of the Democratic Task Force on Crime, I will continue to work throughout the rest of the 105th Congress with the gentleman and with the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Delahunt], a new Member from Boston who has been of great help to us. In summation, the Families First juvenile justice bill that we will be presenting tomorrow morning at approximately 10:30 as a substitute to the McCollum bill, really it indicates that we need a balanced approach to the problem of juvenile crime, an approach that would include enforcement, intervention, prevention, and, of course, detention for those violent individuals who have to be detained. It would be based upon smart, cost-effective, community-based initiatives, proven initiatives through research as we have seen in Boston, in Minnesota, and other places around this Nation when we have let local communities determine what is best for them in their communities to deal with their problem of juvenile crime.

Mr. STUPAK. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. STUPAK

Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Chairman, we have a substitute that will be offered tomorrow which is a tough bill, it is smart and it is balanced. The bill put forth by the majority party tonight is not smart and it is not balanced and its toughness only comes from trying to lock up young people. We have a carrot, says the majority. That carrot is based upon 197 juveniles that we have in the Federal system. Of those 197, 120 are Native Americans. So we have 77 juveniles and we are using these 77 juveniles to be the carrot for the 300,000 juveniles that are around the States. So we tell them we have these certain incentives, these certain carrots, and therefore if they do what we tell them to do, we will make available $1.5 billion to punish young people. The National Conference of State Legislatures wrote to all of us today and said the bill is an unfunded mandate. The Federal Government is now going to apply, and I will quote, ``new rules nationwide regarding juvenile records, judicial discretion, parental and juvenile responsibilities; these present new obstacles for the States that need Federal funds.'' And, therefore, they oppose the bill. The State legislatures, the council oppose the bill. What have you done? You give zero money for early intervention, zero money for detention, zero money for prevention, and instead you want to try 15-year-old kids as adults with the option of trying 13-year-old kids as adults and you say that they got to do what Congress says; if not, they get no money. Only 12 States will get money; well, maybe 11. My State of Michigan will receive no money. You say you do not know what is in there. Your own report from the conference, your own report from your committee, the majority and minority report lists the 12 States. Thirty-eight States plus the District of Columbia cannot partake in this bill. And this is a balanced approach to law enforcement? You say you are going to get tough because if you get tough, you will stop crime before it starts. Well, I was a cop. I was there. The old ways do not work. If we continue down your way of locking up every kid who steps out of line, we cannot arrest our way out of this problem. We are going to lose a whole other generation of young people. We will lose a whole other generation of young people as we are trying to be tough, and we have this carrot based on 197 juveniles who are in the Federal system, 197 juveniles. If we take a look at the bill, your bill does not address what the communities need. Communities have come to us and said, give us flexibility. Let us work with our own communities. The problems in northern Michigan are much different than the problems in Florida or L.A. or Boston. They need flexibility. They do not need more Federal mandates. Mr. Chairman, I will submit the letter the National Conference of State Legislatures addressed to Members of Congress in opposition to H.R. 3. Mr. Chairman, I include for the Record the letter from which I quoted: National Conference of State Legislatures, Washington, DC, May 7, 1997. Dear Member of Congress: We are writing to express our opposition to mandates in H.R. 3, the Juvenile Crime Control Act of 1997. Mandates in existing law require that states deinstitutionalize status offenders, remove juveniles from jails and lock-ups, and separate juvenile delinquents from adult offenders. Under H.R. 3, the federal government would apply new rules nationwide relating to juvenile records, judicial discretion and parental and juvenile responsibility. These present new obstacles for states that need federal funds. States are enacting many laws that attack the problem of violent juvenile crime comprehensively. Many have lowered the age at which juveniles may be charged as adults for violent crimes; others have considered expanding prosecutors' discretion. Without clear proof that one choice is more effective than the other, Congress would deny funding for juvenile justice to states where just one element in the state's comprehensive approach to juvenile justice differs from the federal mandate. The change of directions ought to make Congress wary of inflexible mandates. For example, until federal law was changed in 1994 states were forbidden to detain juveniles for possession of a gun--because possession was a ``status'' offense. The federal response was not merely to allow states to detain children for possession, but to create a new federal offense of juvenile possession of a handgun. (Pub. L. 103-322, Sec. 11201). The advantage of states as laboratories is that their choices put the nation less at risk. This bill would make the nation the laboratory. NCSL submits that the proposed mandates, however well- intentioned, are short-sighted and counter-productive. We urge you to strike the mandates from H.R. 3. Sincerely, William T. Pound, Executive Director.