Paul Wellstone

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. I will yield for a question in a moment. Again, let me be clear. Many of us have been waiting to offer amendments. We have a finite list of amendments. We are going through the amendments. That is how we do business in the Senate. That is how we complete this bill. You do not have somebody--now I am not speaking for the party, I am speaking for myself--you do not have somebody come out here and basically say: You agree to do the amendments you have in a short of period of time; we will give you one more day, that's it, because this is a great bill, this is really important, and we have to pass it tomorrow. It may be a great bill, but some of us have disagreements with portions of this bill. My colleague from Mississippi talked about what happened last night in D.C. Two kids are going to be tried as adults. That is done locally. They did not wait for this bill to be passed. I can give examples of kids struggling with mental illness who have died in some of these juvenile correction centers, and I want to see something done to protect them. I feel as strongly about that as the majority leader feels about other provisions.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, first of all, as the majority leader knows, there are some of us who have waited patiently. We have amendments that are right on point with this legislation. We are concerned about things like disproportionate minority confinement, some of the sort of sentencing that has to do with race, some of what is very weak in this bill in addressing that. My colleague from Alabama says it would be a tragedy if this bill didn't pass. Some of us think it would be a tragedy--let me finish if I could.

Mr. WELLSTONE. What I thought I heard was no debate, and that all debate would be over.

Mr. WELLSTONE. If I could respond to the majority leader, I have amendments that are on point. I am more than ready, willing and able to debate these amendments, but I believe what Senator Daschle was saying, and this was the point I was trying to make, in all due respect, the substance of this legislation, the juvenile justice legislation, you can't artificially say by the end of Tuesday that is it; surely, Senators don't have anymore amendments that deal with this topic; surely, we don't have anymore time to spend on this. We are talking about kids. We are talking about how to prevent kids from getting into trouble. We are talking about the best kind of corrections for kids that get into trouble. We are talking about a lot of issues here. I think Senator Daschle was saying you just can't simply say if it is not done by Tuesday, it is all over, period. Amendment No. 351 (Purpose: To allow the erecting of an appropriate and constitutional permanent memorial on the campus of any public school to honor students and teachers who have been murdered at the school and to allow students, faculty and administrative staff of a public school to hold an appropriate and constitutional memorial service on their campus to honor students and teachers who have been murdered at their school)

Mr. WELLSTONE. If I could finish my statement; I have been patiently waiting here. Let me just be crystal clear that when I hear colleagues from Utah and Alabama, both of my friends, say it is a great piece of legislation, it would be a tragedy if it didn't pass right now, that they have presupposed what is in doubt about a good piece of legislation. Aren't there places where it could be corrected? Aren't there things we could do better? I give one example: the amendment I introduced with Senator Kennedy which deals with the whole problem of disproportionate minority confinement. We need time to do that.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Thank you. Some of us think it would be a tragedy if this bill passed in its present form without an opportunity to try to make this a much better bill. I gave one example. I can talk about the amendments that deal with juvenile justice and mental health. There has been very little focus on that. I think there has to be a full-scale debate and discussion about what it means when so many kids of color are disproportionately incarcerated. What does that mean in America? And what kind of legislation is this that does not allow States to do the kind of investigation they need to do, or that really doesn't give the States the encouragement to do that kind of investigation so we can understand it better? There are a lot of key issues here that are directly relevant to this piece of legislation. Nobody is talking about 6 weeks. Nobody is talking about 1 month. But in all due respect, you brought the bill out. It is called the juvenile justice legislation. I would like to have an opportunity to vote on this on the justice part. There are a lot of serious human rights abuses in some of these facilities. I have visited some of these facilities in this country, some of which are snake pits. I would like to make sure that these kids, even if incarcerated, are treated in such a way that it is correctional. Don't tell me that the kinds of amendments I have in mind aren't on point. I think we would be willing to move forward on this legislation. I want the majority leader to know that it is not a question of 6 weeks, it is just a question of some of us refusing to essentially be squeezed and jammed, to be told: All right, now we don't focus on a lot of the substance of this legislation. We have amendments. We are ready to debate these amendments. I will bet that if we even went another day, Tuesday, and we could offer amendments Tuesday as well when people are here and then we finish as soon as possible, that we would move forward--if I could just finish.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I said what I needed to say.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Reserving the right to object, I want to make sure I know what is on the list.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I have spoken a number of times on the floor of the Senate about the crisis in Kosovo. I think it is important, under the circumstances, that I do so again in order to pose some critical questions that have emerged recently about United States and NATO policy there. I saw a window of opportunity for diplomacy. I was really optimistic given the direction of the G-8 countries. I thought we were then going to be going to the United Nations, and we had an opportunity perhaps through diplomacy to bring this conflict to an end. I think that given what has happened over the weekend, and given the very delicate discussions now underway involving NATO, the U.N. Secretary General, Russia, China, and other key players, it is time to reconsider a proposal that I made 10 days ago: a brief, conditional pause in the airstrike campaign to allow for a de-escalation of this military conflict. Let me be clear. I continue to support the basic military, political and humanitarian goals that NATO has outlined: the safe return of refugees to their homes; the withdrawal of Serb security forces; the presence of robustly armed international forces capable of protecting refugees and monitoring Serb compliance; full access to Kosovo for nongovernmental organizations aiding the refugees; and Serb willingness to participate in meaningful negotiations on Kosovo's status. These goals must be met. But in the wake of the Chinese Embassy accident, NATO needs to be even more focused on diplomacy, and I think we have to be very careful to not appear to be belligerent in our public statements--to be strong in terms of the goals that have to be met but be creative in our diplomacy. I don't really know what there is to the withdrawal of some of the Serb military. Secretary Cohen has raised some very important questions. But on the floor of the Senate, I do want to point out that contrary to some published reports of United States and public statements that suggest that we intend to continue the airstrikes even against Serb forces who may actually be beginning to withdraw, I believe we and NATO should reiterate what we have been saying earlier-- that NATO will not strike at Serbian troops who are actively pulling out of Kosovo. How can we expect even the Serbs to withdraw their troops if we have made it clear that we will bomb them on the way out unless they have agreed to full withdrawal and outlined a timetable for it? Is this seeming new emphasis on continuing the airstrikes even if the troops are withdrawing a change in emphasis, or tone, or is it a substantive change? What precisely would the NATO rules of engagement be if substantial numbers of Serb troops begin to actually withdraw from Kosovo? What did Milosevic's statement on a return to ``peacetime troop levels'' mean? If he means a return to prewar levels, that is a nonstarter. What small token Serb forces, if any, would NATO allow to stay, as long as an armed international presence was allowed? While I understand NATO's decision to remain silent, or to leave some ambiguity on some of these questions, it has created an unnecessarily confusing, and sometimes conflicting, set of policy prescriptions from NATO. Mr. President, while I think a diplomatic solution is the best way to resolve this crisis, I want to make clear that I have no illusions about Milosevic and what he has done. My disgust with his actions was only increased yesterday when I read some of the information in the new State Department report entitled ``Erasing History: Ethnic Cleansing in Kosovo.'' The report catalogs the horrific events that continue to unfold in Kosovo. Interviews with thousands of refugees have revealed brutalities which boggle the mind and sicken the soul. I shudder to think what else we will learn in the months and years to come after looking at forensic evidence within Kosovo. It is clear that even while the bombing campaign has raged Kosovo has been emptied, and it has been burned. Mr. President, let me just make it clear that I know why we have been involved, and I think we have launched our military actions with the best intentions and with what I truly believe was sound moral authority. But I am troubled now by some actions by NATO, including the so-called ``collateral'' damage we have wrought, and the embassy bombing, which I believe may undermine that sense of moral legitimacy. The embassy incident is only the latest of targeted errors which have caused civilian casualties. We have seen errant strikes on a refugee convoy, a civilian train, a bus and other incidents. While I understand clearly the difference between the brutal, deliberate and systematic attacks of Serb forces, which have resulted in the deaths of thousands and displacement of over a million more, and the accidental death of civilians caused by our wayward missiles, any serious moral reflection requires us to consider the impact of our actions on innocent civilians. Taken together, I fear these incidents are beginning to erode the moral authority of our efforts in Kosovo. I do not mean to suggest in any way a moral equivalence between the two. But as the number of civilian casualties mounts, it will become increasingly difficult to justify as we try to balance these regrettable losses against whatever progress we are making toward our goal. One way to put an end to Milosevic's atrocities and to the recurring cycle of collateral damage and NATO apologies may be to pursue a more creative coupling of our military, political and diplomatic goals. Last week, I called for a brief, conditional and reciprocal pause in our military action. I wish we had done so. On NATO's part, this would entail a bombing pause of perhaps 48 hours. Such a pause--if it can be worked out in a way which would protect NATO troops and would not risk Serb resupply of their war machine--could help to reinvigorate--and I think we need to now--diplomatic efforts and halt the steady movement toward bombing that we have now seen which could lead to a deeper involvement and a wider war. Mr. President, we need to reinvigorate our diplomatic efforts, and we need to halt the steady movement in the bombing. We need to figure out a way that we can involve critical parties and countries in a diplomatic effort. While my proposal is not the proposal that comes from the Chinese and Russians, it is more qualified. And it would require a more immediate reciprocal response from Milosevic. I believe we need to take this step. I am not naive about whether we can trust Milosevic. We have seen him break his word too many times with that. We may even be seeing that again now in what NATO leaders have called a ``feint'' of a partial withdrawal. I am not proposing an open-ended halt in our efforts, but I am talking about a temporary pause of 48 hours or so offered on condition that Milosevic not be allowed to use the period to resupply his troops, or to repair his air defenses, and that he immediately order his forces in Kosovo to halt their attacks and to begin to actually withdraw. It would not require his formal prior assent to each of these conditions. But if our intelligence and other means of verification concludes that he is taking military advantage of such a pause by doing any of these things, we should resume the bombing. I believe, however, that we need to take this first step, a gesture, in order to move diplomacy forward and bring these horrors to an end. Let me conclude by saying that as a Senator I have been so impressed by the heroic efforts of nongovernmental organizations to bring humanitarian supplies by convoy to hundreds of thousands of homeless and starving misplaced refugees still wandering in the mountains of Kosovo. I believe a pause might very well serve their interests. It might enable these aid organizations and other neutrals in the conflict to more easily airlift or truck in and then distribute relief supplies to them without the threat of their humanitarian mission being halted by the Serbian military. A Serb guarantee of their safe conduct would be an important reciprocal gesture on the part of Milosevic. These people must be rescued. My hope is that a temporary bombing pause might help to enable aid organizations to get there. Mr. President, I intend to press these questions that I have raised with the administration officials later today. I think we have an opportunity still for diplomacy. We must not allow this window of opportunity provided by the Russians and others to close. I thank my colleagues for their graciousness. I urge the President and his foreign policy advisers to consider steps to deescalate this military conflict, and to work with our allies, with the U.N. Secretary General, with the Russians and others to take advantage of whatever opportunities present themselves to forge a just and lasting peace which restores the Kosovar Albanians to their home, provides for their protection and for their secure futures, allows aid groups access to them, and provides for negotiation on their political status. We must move forward now. I wish that we could have had this pause that I called for 10 days ago. I am extremely worried about the repercussions of the bombing of the embassy in China. I am worried about the events in Russia. I am worried about a window of opportunity for diplomacy closing and more escalation in this military conflict. I think it is important that we take this step under the conditions that I have outlined. I am going to continue to press forward with this proposal. I hope that in the Senate next week we will again have a discussion and debate about the events in Kosovo, about our military involvement, about where we are, about where NATO is, and what we need to do to achieve our objective. I yield the floor.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I wasn't going to say anything-- reserving the right to object, and I will not, but listening to this discussion, can I reinforce--I as one Senator don't want to delay tonight and going into tomorrow, but can I reinforce the remarks of Senator Daschle? Some of us have amendments that are on point on this piece of legislation. We have patiently waited for days and were glad to do so. We don't intend to trivialize our amendments. We don't intend to trivialize the debate. We think these are important issues. That is why we are in the Senate, and we intend to go forward. I will tell you something else. It probably will be hard in the future to get cooperation from Senators who wait, and all of a sudden we find the debate relegated to midnight and on weekends with most Senators gone. That doesn't seem really acceptable to me. We will see what we agree to tomorrow. But I want to express my reservations about the direction of this. There is a whole lot of substantive debate that needs to take place, that hasn't taken place, and will take place.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. I think it needs to be repeated one more time what a moderate, commonsense proposal we have here. This is constitutional. This is the right thing to do. As far as I am concerned, any steps we can take, albeit small steps, but significant steps that can reduce this violence, that can deal with this cultural violence, I think is absolutely the right thing to do. I add my support. I heard my colleague from Vermont speaking as a grandfather. Our children are all older, but we have children, and now grandchildren: 8, 5 and almost 4. This is the right thing to do. There should be overwhelmingly strong support for this proposal.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, first of all, I just came down after listening to the debate. I want to ask both my colleagues to put me on as an original cosponsor. The second thing I want to say is in this debate we have been having on this juvenile justice bill, part of the context for this has been the nightmare of Littleton, CO. That is always, ever present. I read a piece the other day--I don't even remember the author, I say to my colleague from South Carolina--but I thought it was very balanced. The author made the point: Yes, you want to go after the guns, but you also want to go after the culture of violence. I think we have to do both. Yes, you want to do much more for prevention for kids before they get in trouble in the first place. Yes, I argue, you want to have support services and mental health services. All these pieces go together. But if I could ask my colleague very briefly, will he just describe this amendment? Will my colleague just briefly describe the very essence of this amendment? Because it seems to me to be very, very mild. I want to be sure I am correct in my understanding.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. I will be done in a moment. I started at 20 after. I will be done in about 2 minutes.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I say to my colleague from Montana, I am going to hurry right up. I waited about 3 hours. I am just trying to go through this. I do not plan on going on a long time, but I just want you to understand. I appreciate it. The Mental Health Juvenile Justice Act, which I will basically offer as an amendment, says, A, let's do careful assessments on the front end. Let's not incarcerate kids who do not need to be incarcerated; and, B, let's provide the funding for these facilities to provide mental health services for kids; and let's make sure that the law enforcement community, whether it be on the front end or whether it be in these facilities, is trained to recognize kids who are struggling with mental illness. That is the direction to go in. Right now the situation is absolutely brutal--absolutely brutal. I have spoken on the floor of the Senate before--and I could go on for hours on this, and I will not--about some trips I have taken to some of these facilities. One trip to Tallulah, LA, was enough, although there are other Justice Department reports on Georgia and Kentucky as well, and it is the tip of the iceberg. It is really just unbelievable to read about kids who spend as much as 7 weeks, 23 hours a day, in solitary confinement, to go to these facilities where these kids do not get any treatment whatsoever, kids who are brutalized. To go to the Tallulah ``correction'' facility with all of it privatized out to a private company--TransAmerica Corporation, I think, is the name of the company--and to have kids just blow the whistle on the whole facility, I say to my colleague from Montana, is just absolutely unbelievable. There have been lawsuits filed. It really is, frankly, unconscionable that we put so many of these kids in this situation. And 95 percent of the kids in Tallulah have not committed a violent crime. We are talking about racial disparity. There was a sea of African American faces. There were up to 650 kids, and I bet you 80 percent of the kids were African American children. That is my first point. What I want to do is really put a very strong emphasis on mental health in juvenile justice. I want us to do a much better job as a Nation, and we need to get the resources to the State and local communities to do the assessment, to do the alternatives to incarceration, to make sure kids who are in these facilities get the treatment they need. And right now we are not doing it. We have criminalized mental illness among kids and adults. Many of them should not be in these facilities. And when they are in these facilities, they receive no treatment whatsoever. I want to make sure that with the debate on this legislation and the amendments that are offered we have a very strong focus on juvenile justice and the mental health of kids. That is my first point. My second point is, I think that--well, no. In deference to my colleague from Montana, I will just sort of say it in 1 minute, and make my final two arguments. We are getting to the point now where we have six States, led by California, that are spending more money on prisons than on State colleges and universities. In the State of New York, keeping a juvenile in New York's Division of Youth now costs $75,000 a year. You can send three kids to Harvard for the same amount of money. And I think we have to come to terms with some basic facts. There is a higher correlation between high school dropouts and incarceration than cigarette smoking and lung cancer. It would seem to me, again, we would be doing a whole lot more by way of prevention--I certainly do not think it is in this legislation, albeit there is some minor improvement with the Hatch-Biden amendment which is helpful, but I think it does not give the legislation the balance that it should have. I do not see us doing very much when it comes to the early years. I do not see us doing very much at all. Frankly, if we really want to make a difference, we are going to have to pay some attention to all of these reports that have come out about childhood development. Where is the focus on early childhood development? I thought we were going to do a whole lot to make sure that we do well for children from right after birth to age 3, much less before kindergarten. Why are we not doing that? Kids who come to school behind fall further behind, drop out, and then wind up in jail. When are we going to begin to get real about responding to these children in America? It is not in this legislation. I have not seen it in any legislation that has come out on the floor. The second amendment that I am going to offer has to do with domestic violence. I hope there will be overwhelming support for this. Let me just tell you that above and beyond the focus on women, I am sorry to say that still about every 13 seconds or 15 seconds--what difference does it make; it is just outrageous--a woman is battered in her home. A home should be a safe place. I have been working with a number of people and staff--Charlotte Oldham-Moore, my wife Sheila--and now we find out that we have not done a very good job of really providing support for kids. They may not be battered, but the effect of seeing this in their home over and over and over again, and then going to school, and not doing well, is that they wind up in trouble. So one of the amendments we are going to have is to provide, again, the funding to be able to recognize this and to be able to bring together all of the actors in the community to provide support for these kids. In other words, we can have the greatest teachers, the smallest class sizes, the greatest technology, and a lot of these children are not going to learn unless we get the support services to them early. We are also going to have an amendment, a third amendment, which really does a good job of having much more focus on school-based mental health services. Again, I will have a chance to speak on this, but I think we have to develop a whole infrastructure that focuses on mental health services. And I think it has to be before these kids get into trouble rather than afterwards. Finally, let me just say that there were some comments here which were made that I wish we would have more debate on. I hope when I have amendments I can get people out here debating. But my colleague from Alabama, Senator Sessions, over and over and over again was talking about drug testing and the rest. What I do not understand is, if you are going to do the drug testing, how about the treatment as well? We do not do the treatment programs. We do not do the treatment programs. So much of what we see is tied into substance abuse problems. I am going to be working on legislation--we have the bill with Senator Domenici to try and end this discrimination in terms of covering mental health services for people. We are not doing that. That is one piece of legislation--including any number of childhood illnesses, autism, or post-traumatic stress syndrome, which, unfortunately, also is something that affects children, or anorexia, or attention deficit disorder. We do not provide any treatment or any coverage for treatment. We act as if these illnesses are not illnesses. There is all this stigma. When are we going to get this right? If we are going to talk about prevention in a juvenile justice bill, we have to have that component. And in the substance abuse, it is the same issue. Where is the parity? Where is there a way of making sure we get the treatment to these kids? It is crazy. So much of this prison construction industry, so many of the people who we are now incarcerating--so many of these kids who are in trouble are in trouble because of addiction. I would love it if my colleagues would just look at the Moyers documentary. Many are viewing brain diseases. We are now talking about the biochemical and neurological connection, and we do not provide the funding. We do not provide the treatment. Mr. President, let me conclude by saying I think we are going to have to do a whole lot better. I will talk a lot about some of my travel around the country and what I have seen with my own eyes, but I bring to the attention of my colleagues, to give this a little bit of context, a report by Amnesty International. It is called ``The United States of America, Rights for All, Betraying the Young.'' Just a few quotes. I am not picking on any particular States, but it is important. ``Judge Zintner, I have an important question to ask you! Would you please move me out of here? Please don't leave me here with all these adults. I can't relate to any of them. They pick on me because I am just a kid. They tease me and taunt me. They talk to me sexually. They make moves on me. I've had people tell me I'm pretty and that they'll rape me . . . I'm even too scared to go eat . . . It's too much for anyone my age to handle . . . Please help me with this.'' Letter from 15-year-old Paul Jensen, imprisoned in South Dakota State Penitentiary, to his sentencing judge, 1997. In September 1998, his mother told Amnesty International that he had not been moved from the prison. ``There are 2.5 psychologists to see the 300 juveniles in general population. This is despite the fact that 40 percent of the juveniles received will be identified . . . as having mental health or suicide watch needs. Because of the number of juveniles that need to be seen, the supervisor has told his staff that they cannot see a juvenile more than three times a month unless they indicate that the juvenile will die if he is not seen more often.'' Official audit of facilities, Virginia 1996. ``. . . girls as young as twelve years old were subjected to sexual abuse, received no counselling, no vocational treatment, no case treatment plans or inadequate or inappropriate medical care, were placed in a `levels' program in which the length of time of the juveniles detention could be unilaterally changed, lengthened or shortened depending on the whims of Wackenhut's untrained staff members, and were made to live in an environment in which offensive sexual contact, deviate sexual intercourse and rape were rampant and where residents were physically injured to the point of being hospitalized with broken bones.'' Texas 1998--extract from a complaint filed in court alleging abuses at a juvenile correctional facility operated by the Wackenhut Corporation, a private for-profit company. On a Sunday morning Paul Doramus, recently appointed director of the state agency that is responsible for juvenile justice----

Mr. WELLSTONE. I am not yielding the floor.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I yield for a question.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, this will just be an opening statement. I presume we are going to have a lot of time to debate this legislation and all of us will have the opportunity to have amendments we think are relevant and important. Then we will have substantive debate. That is what the Senate is all about. Once upon a time this bill was S. 10. Now it is S. 254. I am not exactly sure about all the provisions in this legislation. I am not exactly sure as to what the Biden-Hatch, or Hatch-Biden, amendment will say, as well. But let me just say at the beginning, what I am quite sure of is that, as I look at this, I do not see a lot of balance. I see a whole lot of emphasis on punitive measures, locking up more children. I do not see a whole lot by way of efforts to keep children from getting into trouble in the first place. I am actually surprised that we have not learned some of the lessons which I think the people who are down in the trenches, working with at-risk kids, have learned. I heard my colleague from Alabama talk, and I like what he did. He talked to people back home. I think if you talk to cops on the beat and you talk to judges and you talk to sheriffs and you talk to counselors and you talk to youth workers, they will tell you we should be doing a whole lot more by way of prevention. As I heard Senator Biden talk about the substitute amendment, it sounds like a pittance we are really putting into prevention. Let me also just say I am not a lawyer, I am trying to wade my way through this argument, but I want to make sure this legislation does not weaken certain core protections we have had for children. There is no doubt in my mind that when certain kids commit violent crimes they may very well be tried as adults and they may be faced with stiff sentences. But we have had certain protections for kids which make sure we do not have too many kids in adult facilities. I do not really know exactly whether or not we have a judicial review process of what prosecutors might want to do. I do not know what kind of protections are there. But to me it is really important, because even if you call some of these facilities ``colocated facilities,'' that may just be a fancy word for adult facilities with juvenile wings. As Senator Biden was saying, with a considerable amount of power and eloquence, there is disturbing evidence that a whole lot of children-- many more children--commit suicide in adult facilities; eight times more often than children held in juvenile detention facilities. I do not think we can take these kinds of risks with young people's lives. Again, I want to really understand whether or not we have the protection we need for kids. I will tell you what is a huge flaw in this legislation, not fixed at all by the substitute amendment or the amendment to the bill or the legislation that is before us right now. This legislation undermines our efforts--and I hope every Senator will feel strongly about this--to deal with the disproportionate confinement of ``minority youth'' in our Nation's jails. In practically every State, children of color are overrepresented at every stage of the juvenile justice system, especially when it comes to secure confinement. Furthermore, they receive unequal treatment by the system. A study in California showed that minority children consistently receive more severe punishments and were more likely to receive jail time than white children for the same crime. Black males are four times more likely to be admitted to State juvenile jails for property crimes than their white counterparts and 30 times more likely to be detained in State juvenile jails for drug offenses than white males. The source is the Youth Law Center study called ``Juvenile Offenders Taken Into Custody.'' Also, let me say at the very beginning of my remarks that it is incredible that here we are at the end of the century--working with kids up to adults--it is my understanding that, roughly speaking, one- third of all African American males ages 18 to 26 or 18 to 30 are either in prison, awaiting to be sentenced, or on probation--one-third of African American males in this country. We ought to think seriously about what that means. In the State of California, I read and, again, I think it is ages 18 to 26--it may be 18 to 30--there are five times as many African American men serving sentences, incarcerated in prison, than in college. We ought to think about what this means. Last month, along with Senator Dorgan, I visited the Oakhill Juvenile Detention Center in Maryland. We were joined by Judge George Mitchell who sits on the D.C. Superior Court. He made an astonishing statement, if anybody wants to pay close attention to this. In talking about the disparity of the treatment of minority children, in his 15 years, as a juvenile judge, having had thousands of juveniles in his courtroom, he has had only two white youths appear before him. That is unbelievable. By the way, this is not due to a dearth of white youth in the District of Columbia, nor is it that they never run afoul of the law. We have a current law that says: States, you need to address this problem and States are directed to identify the extent to which disproportionate minority confinement exist in their State and try to identify the problem, the causes, and what can be done about it. This requirement has never resulted in the release of juveniles who have broken the law, nor any kind of quota system on arrest or release of youth based on race. As a result of the current legal requirement, 40 States to date are implementing intervention plans to address this problem. It seems to me we would want to do this as a nation. S. 254 is a piece of legislation that does not want to mention race and has removed this current DMC requirement. Efforts to remedy the disparate treatment of minority youth that are underway in States is going to be seriously undermined as a consequence of this legislation. As a result of this, our juvenile justice system will fail, as it is now failing, to treat every youth fairly and equitably, regardless of race. I oppose this legislation, given the way it is now framed, and I think other Senators should oppose this legislation for this reason alone. Another issue that is going to come up in our debate--and the legislation does not really address this in any major way--has to do with the issue of gun violence. Please do not misunderstand me. I have been very careful in talking about Littleton and what happened at Columbine High School to simply not make a one-to-one correlation of any particular agenda that I am for because sometimes events in human experience are so dark, so evil that they cannot be flippantly explained. I do not know why those kids did what they did, why they committed murder. It is hard for me to know what really happened. I will tell you this--and by the way, I have been so impressed with discussions with students in Minnesota. Just yesterday at Harding High School, we had a great discussion about education, violence in schools, violence in communities, and those students had so many poignant and important things to say. This I do know: A Washington Post editorial pointed out that 13 children a day in this country are killed by guns. That is, in effect, one Littleton massacre each and every day in the United States. Of the 13 children killed by guns, 8 are murdered, 4 commit suicide--there is a lot of youth suicide in this country; it is hard for me to accept as a father and grandfather--and 1 is killed accidentally by a firearm. I will leave it up to other colleagues to go over the legislation we will have on the floor that is going to be much tougher in terms of how to keep guns out of the hands of kids, much tougher on adults who peddle guns to kids, et cetera. I am saying we have to get a whole lot more courageous and tougher when it comes to this gun legislation. What I want to focus on is the whole question of the criminalization of mental illness. We are talking about a juvenile justice bill. I point out--and I will talk about a piece of legislation that I have introduced, the Juvenile Justice Mental Health Act which has 40 sponsors, including the American Bar Association--a lot of people are talking about juvenile justice and a lot of people are talking about mental health services. I want to make sure we are of substance. I want to make sure we do not engage in symbolic politics. I want to make sure this debate is real. That may sound self-righteous. Sometimes I worry about everybody carrying on about this legislation and the legislation then going nowhere, or people staking out a lot of positions, maybe not even based upon having had any experience for this. I hope we remain very, very focused. One of the things that is going on right now is we have criminalized mental illness. There are a whole lot of people--I am going to talk about kids today--who should not be incarcerated in the first place. There are many children in their very short lives who have been through what children should not go through. When we look at the statistics on kids who are incarcerated, roughly speaking, 1 out of every 5 is struggling with some kind of mental disorder, struggling with mental illness. Moreover--and Senator Biden talked about this--many of them struggle with substance abuse, many of them have learning disabilities, many of them come from troubled homes, many of them come from homes where they have seen violence every day. The question becomes whether or not we are going to make some changes in this juvenile justice legislation that responds to these kids' lives. In setting the context, I will say that, despite popular opinion, most of the kids we lock up are not violent. The Justice Department study shows that 1 in 20 youth in the juvenile justice system have committed violent offenses--1 in 20. What has happened is that, No. 1, a lot of kids who could be in community-based treatment who have not committed a violent act instead wind up in these so-called correctional facilities which are not very correctional. And, No. 2, once there--and I am talking about 20 percent of the kids, probably more, kids who struggle with mental illness--the law enforcement community, the guards, the police at these facilities do not know how to treat these kids. Quite often, they do not know with what these kids are dealing. As a result, many kids end up being disciplined within these facilities and put in solitary confinement. As the juvenile justice system casts a wider and wider net, which is the direction of this legislation, and as we have more fear and more intolerance of kids who misbehave or commit nonviolent crimes, we are pushing more and more children into the juvenile system who would not have ended up there in earlier times. In particular, what bothers me to no end is a lot of these kids should not be there. A lot of these kids are struggling with mental illness and should be treated in a community setting, and that is not happening. The warnings are there. There is the school failure. There is the drug and alcohol abuse. There is the family violence. There is the poverty at home. Yet, we do not put the emphasis on community prevention. We do not put the emphasis on early intervention services for these kids. We do not put the emphasis on mental health treatment. As a result, we make the same mistake over and over. There are two amendments--or several amendments--that I am going to offer to this bill. But two of the amendments that I am going to offer are based upon the Mental Health Juvenile Justice Act. It is a comprehensive strategy. We get the money to State and local communities and we provide the mental health services. There is strong support from 40 organizations. When we introduced it with Congressman Miller about a month ago, I guess, there was strong support from 40 organizations--every organization, from the American Bar Association to the American Psychiatric Association, the Children's Defense Fund, you name it. And what we are basically saying is, as opposed to warehousing children with mental illness, we provide moneys to State and local communities to identify kids with these problems on the front end of the system, look to alternatives to incarceration, provide mental health services for these kids. Mr. BAUCUS addressed the Chair.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Reserving the right to object, I could not hear the first part of what the Senator from Utah said.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Emilia Beskind, an intern, be permitted floor privileges during the duration of the debate.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I say to my colleague that I waited for 3 hours and I also deferred to others. Senator Mack needed to speak, and others. I understand that. I will finish up. I said that several times, I think, to my colleague. On a Sunday morning Paul Doramus, recently appointed director of the state agency that is responsible for juvenile justice institutions, visited the Central Arkansas Observation and Assessment Center. He heard a boy sobbing: ``Mister, get me out of here, I want my mother.'' Doramus discovered a 13-year-old boy in an isolation cell, ``sobbing so hard he could hardly speak.'' The boy had been caught in a stolen car and was arrested for theft of property. At the institution he had been disruptive, and staff placed him in isolation. ``As I attempted to talk with him, his calls for help just grew louder,'' Doramus said. The boy's next words jarred Doramus even more. ``Jesus doesn't love me anymore for what I did.'' Doramus held the boy's hands through the cell bars. ``That's not true, partner,'' he assured him. ``He does.'' ``All I could think of was my two kids who were at home, who got the hugs and got the love and got the support,'' Doramus said. ``I thought, God forgive us all. How could we allow kids to live in an environment like this?'' Little Rock, Arkansas, June 1998. This is from an Amnesty International report that came out this past year, November 1998. Mr. President, I have seen these conditions in these facilities. I will have a number of amendments dealing with domestic violence, dealing with mental health and juvenile justice that I have been working on for the past year, dealing with the whole question of how we can get more support for kids before they get into trouble. I look forward to this debate, and I hope before it is all over we will have a balanced piece of legislation. I am sorry for being so sharp in my response to my colleague from Montana, but when I read from such a report--and these are children's lives--I just don't like to be interrupted. I yield the floor.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, just very briefly, let me thank Senator Robb and Senator Kennedy and say to my colleague from Utah, I look forward to that reauthorization. My focus has been on mental health services. But I tell you, for the last 8\1/2\ years I have been in a school about every 2 weeks, and students talk all the time about the need to have more support services. We can no longer view mental health services as icing on the cake. It is part of the cake. If we are serious about juvenile justice and we are serious about prevention, then we need to focus on what we can do. When I meet with teachers and principals and education assistants, they all say to me, many children, in their very small lives, I say to Senator Kennedy, even by first grade have been through so much that even the smallest class size, best teachers, and best technology will not do the job. This effort, at the community level, to put a focus on mental health services and to have the coordination and make sure this is part of our approach to juvenile justice is right on target. My final point. I have said it a thousand times on the floor of the Senate, and I will shout it one more time from the mountaintop: You can build all the prisons you want to and physical facilities; you will fill them all up, and you will never stop this cycle of violence unless you invest in the health and skills and intellect and character of children. That is what this has to be about. That is what this amendment speaks to. And the vast majority of people in this country understand that essential truth. That is what this amendment is about. That is what this vote is about. I yield the floor. Mr. HATCH addressed the Chair.

Mr. WELLSTONE

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I also thank the Senator from Texas and the Senator from Maryland. We will certainly bring this amendment to the floor.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, just on the order of business, I have an amendment I was going to offer with Senator Harkin. I know colleagues want to leave. I need to talk with Senator Harkin and make a decision as to what we want to do here, if the manager can give us a couple of minutes.