Federal Prison Bureau Nonviolent Offender Relief Act of 2007

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

First of all, I want to commend our leader of the Congressional Black Caucus, the gentlewoman from Detroit, Michigan, who engages us in such a way that we are able to do a number of different things as she provides opportunity for different individuals to display leadership. And so having Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones convene each Monday a Special Order, an hour, where the Congressional Black Caucus members come and discuss issues, I tell you it is a pleasure for me to be here with my Delta sister from Cleveland, Ohio, a distinguished jurist, having been a defense attorney, a judge, a prosecutor, legislator, who understands this issue from every angle, any way that you look at it. Individuals who are being defended, individuals who have gone into the system, having to pass judgment, in a sense, and having to bring charges. It is just a pleasure to be here and to commend you because you do this every week, every Monday night. I mean, I was struggling to get here because my plane had some difficulty, but I am so delighted that I made it.

And to have the opportunity to work with individuals like Representative Barbara Lee, listening to Barbara with all of the things that are going on in the Oakland community, the neighborhood, it almost makes you dizzy.

But the interesting thing about it is that you know that it's real because you get the opportunity to see it. I mean, just imagine that number of individuals that you all have helped clear their records so that they can get a job, so that they can go to work, so that they can have a chance. And to know that that's only one of the issues, because you're leading internationally in creating awareness about the AIDS pandemic, generating resources and money, bringing to the forefront health issues that people kind of forget about.

Barbara, it is just a pleasure and an honor to have the opportunity to serve in the same body with you at the same time and to be inspired and motivated by the work that you do and by the spirit that you have and the energy. I mean, Members of the caucus trying to keep up with you and Sheila Jackson-Lee, with your energy levels, I mean, it's almost impossible. You can't do it. And so, you know, you just do the best that you can and follow along and follow suit. Because it has been a combination of all this work that has raised this issue to the point where I'm holding in my hand 17 pages of paper that the Chicago Tribune did last week on this issue, beginning last Sunday with a front page story, and then following through Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. And the first story was three pages.

You know, the Chicago Tribune is a big newspaper, and they highlighted the work of the North Lawndale Employment Network that has a project where they're teaching ex-offenders how to make honey and how to tend to bees. And they've actually developed a business. And these individuals are able now to actually go to work every day, earn a living. Some of them have already been able to max out of that program, go into other areas and get jobs, as people have seen what they do. And so, we are making progress.

But even so, the progress that we're making is awfully small compared to what is needed. And I thought it was just so important what you said about Booker Washington in terms of looking at where people have been and where they've come from. And so when we look at the history of this country and we recognize the travail, the difficulty that some population groups have had, that African Americans have experienced, and now we're trying to make sure that these individuals who have fallen off the path, who have succumbed in some ways to the difficulties of living in a tough environment, who are trying to find their way back, every day I come into contact with a story of somebody who is on the way up, on the way back, who found a way to get themselves a job.

I agree with all of my colleagues who have talked about this being National Bible Week. And I was thinking, as I listened, that we all get awards and we all get plaques and we all get things given to us. And the greatest thing that I have ever had given to me was something called the Gutenburg Award, which came from the Chicago Bible Society, which is a group of theologians and Bible scholars who analyze work. And on the basis of one's work and whether or not the work that they're doing is in keeping with the principles of the Bible, they give awards.

And so, when we talk about redemption and the need to redeem, there are more than 650,000 individuals who come out of jail and prison every year in the United States of America and they need to be redeemed. And so, if you want to be redeemed, you don't have to just go down by the Jordan Stream, you can go to some of the community programs that exist. You can help make sure that we provide resources so that those individuals who come home from jail and prison have some place to go, so that they have somebody to help them. Because if they get help, the chances of them recidivating are much less than if they don't.

The statistics show that 67 percent of the individuals who don't get help are more than likely going to do what we call ``re-offend'' within a 3-year period of time. More than 50 percent of them will be reincarcerated. But the recidivism rate goes down contingent upon the amount of help that they get. Some programs has it down as low as 18-20 percent. Well, that's just doing a great job. And I would hope that before the week is over, and we're expecting certainly before we adjourn, that the United States Congress is going to see the wisdom of reclaiming lives, of helping put people back on the employment rolls so that they can pay taxes.

You know, I would much rather help a person pay taxes. There is an old saying that if you give a man a fish, he can eat for a day, but if you teach him how to fish, he can eat for a lifetime. And so, if we help the individuals learn how to re-enter and function, then they're going to help further develop our Nation.

So, I just thank you so much for your leadership and the great work that

you've done on this issue and how you tie in the Ways and Means functions with the needs of these individuals. And we talk about, you know, people can't get food stamps.

Well, there are so many barriers, when you sit and look at it, and you wonder, for example, the person who wants to go to college can't get a Pell Grant. And many of the individuals who are incarcerated are young individuals who got caught up maybe in a place where they were smoking cocaine or they may have gotten picked up and had some controlled substance on them. And now they're out of school, they can't get a Pell Grant. And fortunately, we're beginning to seriously look at that. And fortunately the Supreme Court is looking seriously at the sentencing disparities that have existed relative to the difference between the sentences that you get for a conviction of having crack cocaine versus powder cocaine.

And I think what we're really saying is that these issues have to be brought to the forefront, and that's why these Special Orders are so important. I've always been told that awareness brings about dissatisfaction, and that the more people learn about the way things are, the more dissatisfied they become. And then if you can take that dissatisfaction and organize it into some action, now you've got a chance for some movement.

And therefore, we want to thank all of those many groups who have been in support of the Second Chance Act, all of that coalition, The Working Group, individuals who work with criminal justice issues, individuals who work with drug courts, individuals who know that there is a better way and a different way, we just have to see that road.

And, you know, the Bible has just so many great experiences. You know, I remember the story of Paul, you know, Saul of Tarsus on his way to persecute the Christians, but something turned him around. He met something and somebody along the road. And from being a prosecutor, he became the greatest advocate for Christianity that we have known, other than Jesus the Christ himself.

And so, we hope that there are people who will change their opinions about what to do with individuals who have fallen off the path. And again, it's just a real pleasure to be here with you and to share this time.

Let me do this before you do. I would like to have this document included in the Record, because I think they are such a great indication of how mass media is beginning to understand the issue and beginning to recognize it as a problem. And I would like to include in the Record this document from the Chicago Tribune.

[From the Chicago Tribune, Oct. 28, 2007]

The Beekeepers

(By Louise Kiernan)

The men opened the hive and bees swirled up into the sky

like sparks from a fire.

Bees flew through the weedy yard and past the chain-link

fence. They flew into the alley, where a woman braced herself

against the hood of a police car.

Bees flew toward the gas station, where the calls of

hustlers selling drugs sliced the air. And beyond where the

men could see them, bees scattered into the vacant lots and

back-yard gardens, parks and parking lots of Chicago's West

Side, searching, as always, for nectar.

This sunny morning in September 2006 was warm, but a bite

to the breeze signaled fall. A boy walked by, dressed in a

white shirt and navy pants. School had opened today. It was

time for a new start, time for what the people who work at

the non-profit agency on this corner in East Garfield Park

had decided to call Sweet Beginnings.

The three men standing at the hive were learning how to

become beekeepers. None had any experience at this job or,

for that matter, much significant work history at all.

Tony Smith, a pug of a man with a broad face, moved with

the graceful, contained gestures of someone accustomed to

negotiating small spaces. At 30, he had spent half his life

in prison.

Hovering uneasily behind him was Shelby Gallion, a 22-year-

old former drug dealer. In an oversized T-shirt and jeans

that blurred the outlines of his body, his expression

unreadable, Shelby looked a little out of focus, as if he

might eventually drift out of sight. He lived in a halfway

house, still on parole.

Gerald Whitehead, the oldest member of the trio at 49, had

been released from jail just a week before, after being

cleared of a heroin-possession charge, the most recent

stumble in the struggle to turn his life around after decades

of violence and addiction. Gerald seemed intimidating, with

his heavy-lidded eyes and thrust-out chin, but when he

smiled, his face cracked open wide and bright.

The three men and 17 hives in this yard were the makings of

a small experiment, an attempt to address one of the most

stubborn and destructive problems in Chicago and other cities

around the country: what to do with the hundreds of thousands

of people released each year from prison.

Over the last three decades, harsher penalties for drug

crimes and stricter sentencing laws have helped fuel

explosive growth in the nation's prison population and,

inevitably, in the number of inmates returning to society. In

Chicago alone, roughly 20,000 ex-offenders come home each

year.

Most end up in neighborhoods like this one, where

unemployment is high, opportunity scant and the temptation of

drugs and crime rarely more than a corner away. They don't

stay long. More than half the state's prisoners find

themselves back behind bars within three years of their

release.

Finding work can reduce someone's chances of returning to

prison. Although getting a job with a criminal record is

difficult, checking the conviction box on an application

poses only one hurdle. Many former inmates face other

problems, from poor education and little understanding of

workplace rules to drug addiction or a lack of stable

housing. And behaviors that help people thrive on the job--

teamwork, communication--are often the opposite of those that

ensure survival in prison.

For five years, the North Lawndale Employment Network, or

NLEN, had helped ex-offenders find employment. With Sweet

Beginnings, the agency decided to create its own jobs, in its

own neighborhood, where people could learn how to work and

build an employment history before they moved on. The idea

attracted the attention of major philanthropies and

companies, among them the MacArthur Foundation, Boeing Co.

and Ben & Jerry's, each of which donated expertise or money

to the effort.

Now, what may have once seemed like little more than a

quirky venture--using former prisoners to produce honey in

the ghetto--stood on the verge of transforming itself into a

high-profile business.

Whether it would succeed depended in part upon the three

men in the yard. The men measured success in starker terms.

Failing, they feared, meant going back to the streets, going

back to prison or getting killed.

During the coming year, through the bees' final foraging in

fall, the threat of winter, promise of spring and richness of

summer, the men and the enterprise of Sweet Beginnings would

attempt nothing less than their own reinvention.

This morning's lesson was about survival. John Hansen, the

beekeeper training the workers, showed them how to tilt the

hives to get a sense of how much honey they contained. A

heavy hive meant the bees had stored enough to make it

through the winter. A lighter hive would need help.

The hives, with their unevenly stacked wooden boxes, called

supers, looked like tipsy filing cabinets scattered among the

clumps of goldenrod, Queen Anne's lace and clover.

The men moved among them, gently leaning each hive back and

opening the lid to peer inside.

An elderly woman stopped at the fence. ``What ya'll got in

there? Bees?'' she asked.

``Yep,'' John answered, still bent over a hive.

``Oh, Lord, think I better get back.''

After a minute or two, Shelby disappeared inside the

building. John continued to make his way around the yard,

Gerald and Tony in tow.

``Look at that,'' John cried out at Hive No. 2, lifting a

frame thick with honey, each cell a stud of gold. At Hive No.

6, bees crowded the entrance, but the supers felt

suspiciously light.

When they finished, John delivered his verdict.

``I think,'' he said, ``we can bring them through the

winter.''

Second Chances

``To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,--

One clover, and a bee,

And revery.''--Emily Dickinson

In this pocket of the West Side, the past may fade or burn

or erode almost to dust, but it persists. It holds on.

Like the Star of David that adorns the front of the

Independence Boulevard Seventh Day Adventist Church, a

remnant from the time when Chicago's Jews lived and worshiped

in the neighborhood. Or the cracked patches of concrete in

the overgrown lot at 1550 S. Hamlin Ave., where Martin Luther

King Jr. lived for a short time in a rundown apartment to

protest the way Chicago's blacks were housed.

Or, in the conference room at the North Lawndale Employment

Network, the blotch of greenish ink on Tony Smith's right

forearm, visible as he took notes in a narrow,

slanting script. It had been a tattoo of a cobra until he

removed what he could with lemon juice and a sewing needle.

The cobra is a symbol of the Mickey Cobras street gang, as

is the ``MC'' inked on Tony's left shoulder. Police records

say Tony belonged to this gang. He won't say much about that

or anything else in his past.

What he will say is this: ``I was a naive, snotty-nosed

street kid who didn't care about himself or other people.''

His first arrest came at age 9, for disorderly conduct. By

the time he turned 13 he had been convicted in an attempted

murder and was, according to a police officer who knew him,

one of the most violent and feared gang members in the

Cabrini-Green public housing complex. He marked his 16th

birthday awaiting trial for beating three men with a gun and

torturing two of them with a heated ice-chopper. That crime

earned Tony a 30-year prison sentence.

He emerged almost 15 years later, having never used a cell

phone or filled out a job application. When he talked about

what he wanted to see for the first time with his own eyes,

he named--after Navy Pier and Millennium Park--a Jet Ski.

Across the conference table, Shelby idly twirled one of the

braids near his ear. Shelby's past was his shoes. The

butterscotch Timberland boots imprinted with tiny hexagons or

the candy-bright Bathing Ape sneakers. New shoes, like his

new watch and new cell phone, the leather ``Scarface'' cell

phone case--all accessories of the lifestyle he said he

wanted to leave behind.

He began selling drugs about the time he started high

school, and by his senior year, the money and all it bought

had easily trumped education. Then came two stints in prison

and, during the second one, nights spent lying on his cot,

wondering what would become of his two young daughters.

That was why he had come to Sweet Beginnings. But he still

thought about the old life. It took him a week at the agency

to earn what he could have made in a matter of hours on the

street.

And Gerald, standing at the kitchen window, staring out at

the hives?

Gerald's past was the hovel of a building across the alley,

where he had snorted $10 bags of heroin. And his

grandmother's house three blocks away, where he had stayed as

a child and sexually assaulted a young woman as an adult. The

bar around the corner where he once got shot on his birthday.

His past was the man crossing the street he knew from

Narcotics Anonymous and the cap-shadowed teenager who walked

in the door of the North Lawndale Employment Network and

addressed him as ``Brother Bone.''

Gerald's past was everywhere.

His earliest memory was of being bitten by a dog. He bit

the dog back.

Gerald wasn't sure whether he remembered this incident

because it happened or remembered it because he was told it

happened. It didn't matter. He became that story: the boy who

would bite back.

He grew up with two older brothers and 10 younger sisters,

a mother who worked as a live-in nurse and a father who was,

as he put it, ``kind of missing in action.''

Gerald struggled in school. He never learned how to read or

write well. The other children made fun of him. By 6th grade,

he had basically stopped going.

``I started out making a career,'' he said. ``Whatever I

could steal to make a hustle.''

At the same time, he joined the Unknown Vice Lords. In the

gang, he could force respect from all the people who had once

belittled him. He moved up to become an ``elite,'' a top-

ranking gang member and close associate of onetime Vice Lords

kingpin Willie Lloyd.

From the age of 20, Gerald bounced in and out of prison,

spending more time inside than out: armed robbery, home

invasion, criminal sexual assault, burglary, aggravated

battery, drug possession.

He was 43 before he decided he couldn't do the time

anymore. He has his conversion story. One night in prison, he

broke down. Was this all his life would ever be? Had God put

him here for nothing more? He wanted to die.

Then, in his cell, he sensed the spirit of his late

grandmother, who always gave him a meal when he was hungry

and a bed when he was homeless, and he felt at peace.

He could try to change.

It proved difficult. He lost a job working in maintenance

at a nursing home after a background check revealed his

criminal record, he said. There was an arrest for domestic

battery. He was using drugs too, crack and then heroin. He

became a dope fiend, a hype.

That went on for years, until his mother persuaded him to

check into a residential drug treatment program, where he

stayed for five months. Not long after he got out, in the

spring of 2006, he stopped by the fence at NLEN on his way to

sell loose cigarettes at the gas station nearby. He knew the

agency; the month before, he had gone through its four-week

job-training program for ex-offenders.

A couple of men were setting up hives. Gerald asked if he

could watch. Then he asked if he could help. He stepped into

the yard and began handling the hives, as though, one of the

men observed, he had been beekeeping all his life.

At first, Gerald worked for free. He did whatever needed to

be done: fixing the lawn mower, pulling weeds, picking up the

trash that blew in from the alley. It was somewhere to go

every day. Soon, the agency began to pay him, $7.25 an hour.

Every day was a fight. Stay straight, go to work. Failing

would be as easy as stumbling off the curb into the street.

``It's a wrassle trying to do good,'' Gerald said one

afternoon. ``You always got evil whispering in your ear.''

He felt comfortable around the bees. He liked them. If you

didn't know bees, he thought, they might scare you. But once

you knew them, you came to respect them.

Gerald understood bees.

Finding sweetness

The building that housed the North Lawndale Employment

Network, near the corner of West Flournoy Street and South

Independence Boulevard, had once been a duplex and still felt

like someone's home.

Walk in and you might find a worker bouncing a toddler on

her knee while she interviewed the child's mother or an old

woman grumbling about delays on the Pulaski bus.

Most days, the center hummed with people who came for one

of the agency's job-training programs, a computer class or to

get help writing a resume. Amid the bustle, the Sweet

Beginnings employees set up beekeeping class at whatever

table happened to be free and began to learn about bees.

They learned there are three types of honeybees: the worker

bee, which is female; the drone, which is male; and the queen

bee, which mates with the drones and lays the colony's eggs.

They learned that a worker bee lives for about six weeks.

They learned that it takes the nectar from 5 million flowers

to make 1 pint of honey. They learned that pollen mixed with

nectar is called bee bread.

During these lessons, Tony took notes on a yellow legal

pad. Gerald tilted his chair back or leaned forward, head

propped on his arms, always restless. Shelby occasionally

cleaned his nails with a public transit card.

Their teacher, John Hansen, was 76 and white and jangled

the change in his pocket. He had begun keeping bees 31 years

before, after he saw a sign someone had posted on a bulletin

board at the suburban publishing company where he worked,

offering to sell two hives. He went on to become president of

the Illinois State Beekeepers Association, and in his

retirement, he still kept bees, sold honey and ran a small

business managing hives and removing bees from people's

homes.

Of everything John taught the men about bees, they found

nothing as interesting or amusing as what they learned about

drones.

When drones hatch, the worker bees help them out of their

brood cells while the worker bees must emerge on their own.

Drones that mate with the queen on what is euphemistically

called the ``nuptial flight'' die because the act rips their

sexual organs from their bodies. When winter approaches,

worker bees drive the drones from the hive, to certain death.

One morning, Tony walked in with his heavily underlined

copy of ``Beekeeping in the Midwest,'' the book they were

assigned to read.

``It said male drones are like human males,'' Tony told

John. ``They don't do no work. I kid you not, that's what

they said.'' The book doesn't compare men and bees; that was

Tony's analysis.

In the beginning, the men's hands-on instruction mostly

involved learning how to care for the hives and prepare them

for winter. While they worked, they used a smoker, a metal

can with attached bellows, to blow smoke into the hives to

distract the bees. The smoke causes the bees to act as though

their hive is on fire, and they eat honey to fortify

themselves to flee, ignoring intruders.

Honey bees usually sting only if they feel threatened. Tony

had never been stung, so John plucked a bee from a hive and

stung him with it to make sure he wasn't allergic to the

venom. Gerald hardly seemed to notice stings or care beyond

issuing the occasional epithet. Shelby seemed the most leery,

often hanging back while the others worked. But when Tony

asked if the bees scared him, Shelby denied it.

In the early fall, the men learned how to extract honey, to

harvest it from the frames where bees build the combs.

Because the Sweet Beginnings hives didn't contain enough

honey to spare, John brought in eight frames from his own

apiary. The frames, stacked in the kitchen of the resource

center, looked a little like wood-frame screens, except that,

instead of wire grids, the panels held hundreds of hexagons

filled with honey.

As the men crowded around a large metal tank, a lone bee

banged against the kitchen window.

``Do we have to actually do it?'' Tony asked.

``Yeah, you guys are going to do it,'' John replied.

To extract honey, a beekeeper uses a knife to cut open the

wax caps that seal the individual cells of honey in the

frame. Then, the frames are placed in an extractor, which

spins them to release the honey. The honey drips down the

walls of the extractor and exits through a tap.

Slowly and delicately, Shelby slid the knife against the

frame. Wax curled off in strips. A slight scent, sweet and

floral, filled the kitchen.

``Just swipe it,'' Tony advised.

``Let it ride even and flat,'' Gerald said.

``You're doing fine,'' John said. ``Just watch your

fingers.''

Tony and Gerald each took a turn. The knife, as it drew

across the wax, made the

thick, wet smack of a cartoon kiss. Sunlight warmed the honey

in the frames to the color of amber, glowing against the

black shadow of the blade.

``That honey look good, don't it?'' Tony asked.

As the extractor spun, the air began to smell sweeter and

sweeter. Thin streams ran down the inside of the tank.

Minutes passed. A nickel-sized dollop of honey pooled on the

filter atop the white bucket under the tap.

``There's the first drop,'' John said.

While the extractor whirred, the men went outside to check

on the bees. Brenda Palms Barber, the exuberant black woman

who served as the North Lawndale Employment Network's chief

executive officer, joined them.

``I want to see how the babies are doing,'' she called out,

standing at the hives, perfectly at ease in her gray suit

while the others wore jackets with netted hoods.

More than two years before, Brenda had come up with the

idea for Sweet Beginnings when she decided that the

employment network needed to do more than help people find

jobs; it needed to create them.

She considered a landscaping business or delivery service

but worried that customers might be reluctant to allow ex-

offenders in their homes. A friend suggested a honey co-op.

Brenda knew nothing about honey, but the idea intrigued

her. She liked it even better when she learned that some

people consider urban honey more flavorful than its rural

counterpart because the bees can gather nectar from more

varied flowers within a shorter distance. Imagine creating

sweetness out of the asphalt and hardship of the West Side.

The agency launched Sweet Beginnings in the spring of 2004

with a grant from the Illinois Department of Corrections. Two

years later, after parting ways with the original group of

beekeepers working with the agency, the program started over

with fresh bees and a new idea.

The bees came from Wisconsin, picked up and delivered by

NLEN's chief operating officer, who had to roll down the

windows of his Jeep Cherokee on the way back because the

30,000 bees generated so much heat and noise.

The new idea came from a business plan created by

volunteers at Boeing, the chairwoman of the board of Ben &

Jerry's and others. It called for Sweet Beginnings to shift

its focus from selling honey to selling honey-based products

such as lotion and lip balm. They hoped the move would

increase profits and, with the expansion into manufacturing,

packaging and marketing, the job prospects of its workers.

When Brenda and the beekeepers returned to the kitchen,

about 4 inches of honey stood in the 5-gallon bucket.

She passed out plastic spoons and everyone dipped in to

taste.

``Yum,'' she said. ``It's really, really good.''

She continued to talk, in a stream of words as smooth and

unbroken as the honey pouring into the bucket. She talked

about biscuits and business competition and hosting a honey

cook-off and social purpose and making lip balm.

When she was almost done, she said, ``That's some of the

stuff we're thinking.'' Then she paused and said something

else, slowly, as if the idea had just struck her.

``Our demographic,'' she said, ``is the opposite of the

people working on it.''

Under suspicion

``There is a Thief Amongst Us!'' the signs announced.

``IS IT YOU!''

One sign was posted above the sink in the kitchen of the

resource center. Another was taped to the bathroom door. More

hung on the walls next to inspirational quotes from Eleanor

Roosevelt and Gail Sheehy.

The signs went up in late September, after someone stole

the agency's digital camera from a cabinet in the downstairs

conference room. It was only the second theft in the two

years since NLEN had moved into the building, and it hurt.

The agency prided itself on being the kind of place where

visitors wandered back to the kitchen to help themselves to

coffee and bought candy for school fundraisers by dropping a

dollar on a desktop.

No doors barred the offices; no cameras peered down from

the ceilings. The clients who came here already felt as

though the world treated them like criminals; the people who

helped them didn't want to do the same.

That trust disappeared with the discovery of a dented

cabinet door.

Brenda felt betrayed. She didn't like thieves. She could

find a job for a murderer before she could find one for a

thief. Stealing was a crime of opportunity, and every time a

thief saw something to steal, he had to decide not to steal

it.

If the signs shouted the crime, other conversations in the

building occurred in whispers.

Who would know the camera was kept in the basement

conference room, in the cabinet with the VCR? The beekeepers,

who watched videos for their classes. And Gerald? Well, he

had been an addict, and everyone knows that hypes steal.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the distinguished chair.

Let me first of all, as I bring my amendment to the attention of my colleagues, thank the chairman of the subcommittee Mr. Mollohan, and the ranking member of the subcommittee Mr. Frelinghuysen, for your leadership on a number of these issues of which I will discuss today.

Let me, first of all, acknowledge the Department of Justice funding, particularly the State and local law enforcement and crime prevention grants and the COPS program, of which many of us have supported for an extensive period of time.

I rose to the floor of the House yesterday and indicated that I believe that the father of community-oriented policing was both the mayor and chief of police in my city of Houston, Lee P. Brown, who served as the chief of police in New York and Atlanta.

I rise today to emphasize for my colleagues the importance of providing resources to public safety officers so that they can provide the service to the community in this increasing period of rising crime statistics, and let me share with you the vastness of the public safety officers' responsibility.

What I want to suggest in this amendment is that public safety officers are needed in schools. They're needed on the highways. They're needed in our neighborhoods. They're needed on our buses and our trains. Many times incidences will occur on our trains and buses with citizens who are using those facilities, and the quick response of public safety officers can lead to the saving of lives. That is why it is important for them to have appropriate commitment and the appropriate equipment.

Let me cite in my own community, which we're seeing statistically across the Nation, having just heard the FBI report that says crime statistics are increasing all over America, not only in the urban centers like Houston, which is the fourth largest city in the Nation, but it is also increasing in our rural hamlets and villages and farmlands. We have a crisis in crime. Part of it has been because we have not provided, I think, the extra resources that we see in this bill.

But let me just cite for you why people traveling on transportation need the quick access of a public safety officer. One article says, a second metro bus driver attacked. Two men attacked a metro bus driver Tuesday after they argued with her about a fare. That means all of those riding the bus were in jeopardy. A quick response by a public safety officer was clearly a need.

And so my amendment is simple. It provides for the reemphasis of the need of this equipment, whether they are walkie-talkies and others, to ensure that we have safety, and as well to ensure that these dollars are used effectively for safety in our community.

I'd ask my colleagues to support this amendment.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for allowing me to explain my amendment to H.R. 3093. My amendment is simple. It seeks to assist public safety officials in the United States in communicating with one another across jurisdictions and disciplines, to enhance the public's safety and prevent unnecessary loss of lives and property.

My amendment recognizes immense importance of hand-held communication devices to the transit workers and other public officials who play a key role in responding to disasters and terrorist attacks. It seeks to ensure that they may be provided with fully interoperable equipment, maximizing their effectiveness and working to ensure their safety as they work to protect our communities.

Throughout the United States, public safety agencies--law enforcement, fire fighters, emergency technicians, public health officials, and others--often cannot communicate effectively with one another, even within the same jurisdiction, or with other public safety agencies at the Federal, State, or local level, when responding to emergencies.

As a senior Member of the Committee on Homeland Security, I have worked tirelessly to ensure that our communities' first responders are equipped with the best possible equipment, including communication devices that allow them to effectively communicate with each other and with their Federal counterparts across jurisdictions and disciplines. Interoperable communications would allow our Nation's first responders to communicate in real time, in the event of an emergency.

Mr. Chairman, the lack of sufficient hand-held communications devises may have contributed to the deaths of 343 firefighters in New York City on September 11, 2001, when police could not communicate effectively with firefighters prior to the collapse of the Twin Towers. Similarly, the lack of adequate equipment exacerbated the difficulties in evacuating people during hurricane Katrina, where many could have been saved if effective communications equipments were available not only to safety workers but to transit authorities and others in a collective effort to save the lives of those who were stranded and injured that tragic day.

Recent national catastrophes, including the terrorist attacks of September 11th and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, clearly illustrate the need to ensure that safety responders have interoperable communications systems. Emergency response systems must be able to function under extreme and unpredictable conditions. We can learn from our past that when those responding to emergencies cannot communicate effectively, the danger to public safety officials and the public increases.

The Department of Homeland Security has recognized the importance of providing effective and real-time communication capabilities. Secretary Chertoff stated in November 2006 his intention to make sure that major cities ``have interoperable communications in effect by the end of this coming year.'' Interoperable communications provide tangible benefits to places like my home City of Houston, with its 5.3 million residents and concentration of critical infrastructure.

Mr. Chairman, my amendment simply aims to ensure that high risk areas, like Houston, have sufficient communications devices to enable our Nation's first responders and transit workers to communicate in real time, in the event of an emergency.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

[From the Houston Chronicle]

Second Metro Bus Driver Attacked

(By Lindsay Wise)

Two men attacked a Metro bus driver Tuesday after they

argued with her about the fare, making it the second attack

this week of a female driver.

The men, who appeared to be inebriated, got into a dispute

with the driver over fares and threatened her, said Metro

spokeswoman Raequel Roberts. The men initially retreated into

the bus, but about 10 minutes later, they returned to the

front and punched her, Roberts said.

The driver was taken to Memorial Southwest hospital, where

she was treated for a cut on her nose, Roberts said.

Some passengers on the bus took pictures of the two men

with their cell phones, and Metro police are now looking for

the suspects, Roberts said.

The assault took place on the same bus route and in the

same area as the reported robbery and sexual assault of a

Metro bus driver early Sunday.

In that case, a man boarded a Metro bus on Hillcroft at

Bellaire and remained on board for several miles, waiting for

the last passenger to exit before dragging the driver to the

back of the bus and assaulting her at gunpoint, Metro

officials said.

According to statistics provided by Metro, 28 violent

crimes--ranging from robberies to aggravated assaults--

occurred so far this year on their buses. Last year, 50

violent crimes were reported on Metro buses, up from 38 in

2005.

Roberts said Metro has increased security patrols in the

area as they search for the attackers.

``We've been out there with officers in force,'' she said.

I yield to the gentleman from West Virginia.

Reclaiming my time, I'd like to thank the distinguished gentleman and the ranking member.

And let me just say to all those individuals impacted by crime, particularly these bus drivers that I'm speaking of today, help is on the way.

I ask for support of my amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back my time.

Mr. Chairman, let me also thank the chairman and ranking member for their infusion of dollars in the Federal prison system, $179 million above 2007.

There needs to be an infusion of funding because we have an overcrowded system in the Federal Bureau of Prisons. We, as the authorizing committee, the Committee on the Judiciary, have heard repeatedly of the concerns of both the management of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, but also the inmates. I have visited institutions in my own area. I've seen the overcrowding. I've seen the conditions and paid attention to some of the elements that we could improve.

Many may hear this debate and suggest that incarcerated persons should be treated in a certain way. This is a very simple amendment. It asks for a study to look at the possibilities of early release for nonviolent prisoners who are over the age of 45.

How does that help our community? One, it sends individuals back home to their families to provide resources. We know that we are watching a second chance bill make its way through this Congress. We hope that it will move quickly. Many of these offenders are middle age. Many of them are sick. This costs a great deal for the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

It is noted that 1.1 million nonviolent offenders are currently locked up. Many of them are African Americans, and in the 1930s, 75 percent of the people entering State and Federal prison were of the majority population. That is not the case now.

So it's a simple premise. It has been adopted in the authorization bill. It asks the hard question, why are we incarcerating for decades and decades nonviolent individuals who pay their debt to society, when they could come out and provide the comfort and nurturing and financial support to their own families and also address the question of Federal prison overcrowding?

I'd ask my colleagues to support it.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman for this opportunity to explain my amendment. My amendment provides for the early release for non-violent offenders who have attained the age of at least 45 years of age, have never been convicted of a violent crime, have never escaped or attempted to escape from incarceration, and have not engaged in any violation, involving violent conduct, of institutional disciplinary regulations.

My amendment seeks to ensure that in affording offenders a second chance to turn around their lives and contribute to society, ex- offenders are not too old to take advantage of a second chance to redeem themselves. A secondary benefit of my amendment is that it would relieve some of the strain on federal, state, and local government budgets by reducing considerably government expenditures on warehousing prisoners.

Mr. Chairman, some of those who are incarcerated face extremely long sentences, and this language would help to address this problem. Releasing rehabilitated, middle-aged, non-violent offenders from an already overcrowded prison population can be a win-win situation for society and the individual who, like the Jean Valjean made famous in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, is redeemed by the grace of a second chance. The reentry of such individuals into the society will enable them to repay the community through community service and obtain or regain a sense of self-worth and accomplishment. It promises a reduction in burdens to the taxpayer, and an affirmation of the American value that no non-violent offender is beyond redemption.

Mr. Chairman, the number of federal inmates has grown from just over 24,000 in 1980 to 173,739 in 2004. The cost to incarcerate these individuals has risen from $330 million to $4.6 billion since 2004.

At a time when tight budgets have forced many states to consider the early release of hundreds of inmates to conserve tax revenue and when our nation's Social Security system is in danger of being totally privatized, early release is a common-sense option to raise capital.

The rate of incarceration and the length of sentence for first-time, non-violent offenders have become extreme. Over the past two decades, no area of state government expenditures has increased as rapidly as prisons and jails. According to data collected by the Justice Department, the number of prisoners in America has more than tripled over the last two decades from 500,000 to 1.8 million, with states like California and Texas experiencing eightfold prison population increases during that time. Mr. Chairman, there are more people in the prisons of America than there are residents in states of Alaska, North Dakota, and Wyoming combined.

Over one million people have been warehoused for nonviolent, often petty crimes. The European Union, with a population of 370 million, has one-sixth the number of incarcerated persons as we do, and that includes violent and nonviolent offenders. This is one third the number of prisoners which America, a country with 70 million fewer people, incarcerates for nonviolent offenses.

The 1.1 million nonviolent offenders we currently lock up represents five times the number of people held in India's entire prison system, even though its population is four times greater than the United States.

As the number of individuals incarcerated for nonviolent offenses has steadily risen, African-Americans and Latinos have comprised a growing percentage of the overall number incarcerated. In the 1930s, 75% of the people entering state and federal prison were white (roughly reflecting the demographics of the nation). Today, minority communities represent 70% of all new admissions--and more than half of all Americans behind bars.

This is why for the last several years I have introduced the Federal Prison Bureau Nonviolent Offender Relief Act. The bill I introduced earlier this year, H.R. 261, forms the basis for the present amendment.

Over 2 million offenders are incarcerated in the nation's prisons and jails. At midyear 2002, 665,475 inmates were held in the Nation's local jails, up from 631,240 at midyear 2001. Projections indicate that the inmate population will unfortunately continue to rise over the years to come.

To illustrate the impact that this amendment will potentially have on Texas, the Federal prison population for the years 2000, 2001, and 2002 reached 39,679, 36,138, and 36,635 persons respectively; the State prison population for the same years reached 20,200, 20,898, and 23,561 persons. These numbers have grown since 2002, so the impact is indeed significant and the State of Texas is an important stakeholder.

As I stated at the outset, my amendment will ensure that in affording offenders a second chance to turn around their lives and contribute to society, ex-offenders are not too old to take advantage of a second chance to redeem themselves. My amendment will also relieve the some of the strain on federal, state, and local government budgets by reducing considerably government expenditures on warehousing prisoners.

For these reasons, I ask that all members to support my amendment.

Let me thank the distinguished chairman, and I ask my colleagues to support this amendment. This will go a long way to this very strong and harsh question of Federal prison overcrowding and how

we use our resources for nonviolent prisoners.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back my time.

Mr. Chairman, let me thank the Chair, and again, I thank the chairman and ranking member of this subcommittee. Let me also add my appreciation to the appropriators and the chair and ranking member of the full committee.

Mr. Chairman, I also want to acknowledge the hard work of the Science Committee. I had the pleasure of serving on that committee for almost 12 years. My issue there was the question of safety during the tenure that I was in that role or a member of that committee. Of course, we had the backdrop of Challenger and then Columbia.

Safety is a crucial component to the continued support of Americans of the international space station and America's space program. When I have an annual Christmas party in Houston, the most popular visitor is not Santa Claus. For children, it is the astronauts, and I rise today to offer an amendment that will reinforce the importance of safety in the NASA program.

Space exploration remains a part of our national destiny. After the Columbia disaster, NASA stands at a pivotal moment in its history. It is the responsibility of this Congress to ensure that the future of NASA is one of continued progress. I have long been an advocate of space exploration, and I have steadfastly emphasized that while safety must be the number one priority of NASA, this should not deter us from pushing the boundaries of technology and discovery.

In June of this year, we saw the space shuttle Atlantis and the international space station both experience serious safety scares. The shuttle's mission had to be extended following the discovery of a rip in the shuttle's thermal blanket, while the space station experienced the failure of a Russian-operated computer system controlling a crucial portion of the station's navigational system. These recent incidents clearly indicate the need for improved safety standards and oversight. Space exploration must be coupled with satisfactory safety assurances.

The amendment, Mr. Chairman, that I offer refers to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act signed into law by President Bush, which provided for the establishment of an International Space Station Independent Safety Commission, that I authored, to discover and assess any vulnerabilities of the international space station that could lead to its destruction, compromise the health of its crew, or necessitate its premature abandonment.

We will launch on August 7. That launch will head to the international space station. People will be on that international space station, which is the ultimate goal, that scientists will find the place in space to be able to do the research that will carry America forward.

That safety task force provided valuable observations on the strengths and weaknesses of the international space station safety systems. It went on to say that we should have strong congressional support for the space shuttle and international space station, as well as a number of specific technical recommendations, such as increased attention to orbital debris and ensuring that all personnel and managers have the necessary skills and experience.

If these recommendations are to be successful in identifying and mitigating future risks, then we must have a Congress that reinforces safety for NASA.

We shouldn't have the individual there who is afraid to speak up. We should have whistleblower protection. And we should have a director who cares about safety and does not reject Congress' interest in safety.

I hope that we will keep our eye on this international space station commission on safety, even though its report is in, to ensure that the individuals we sent on the space shuttle, the work that we are doing on space has the element of safety to save lives and create the opportunity for men and women to live and work in space.

I ask my colleagues to support this amendment as we support NASA and my appreciation for the funding that is in this bill for NASA and aeronautics and research and ask my colleagues that NASA should equate to safety, NASA should equate to science. That is an important aspect.

Mr. Chairman, I rise today in strong support of this amendment. It states that none of the funds made available in this Act may be used to limit the safety provisions enumerated in the NASA Authorization Act of 2005 (Public Law No. 109-155), particularly those regarding the International Space Station Independent Safety Commission.

Space exploration remains a part of our national destiny. After the Columbia disaster, NASA stands at a pivotal moment in its history. It is the responsibility of this Congress to ensure that the future of NASA is one of continued progress. I have long been an advocate of space exploration, and I have steadfastly emphasized that while safety must be the number one priority of NASA, this should not deter us from pushing the boundaries of technology and discovery.

In June of this year, we saw the Space Shuttle Atlantis and the International Space Station both experience serious safety scares. The shuttle's mission had to be extended following the discovery of a rip in the shuttle's thermal blanket, while the space station experienced the failure of a Russian-operated computer system controlling a crucial portion of the station's navigational system. These recent incidents clearly indicate the need for improved safety standards and oversight. Space exploration must be coupled with satisfactory safety assurances.

Mr. Chairman, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2005, signed into law by President Bush, provided for the establishment of an International Space Station Independent Safety Commission, to discover and assess any vulnerabilities of the International Space Station that could lead to its destruction, compromise the health of its crew, or necessitate its premature abandonment.

This congressionally mandated International Space Station Independent Safety Task Force offered its recommendations in the form of a final report, which was submitted to NASA and the United States Congress in February of 2007. This report offered a number of valuable observations on the strengths and weaknesses of the International Space Station's safety systems, and it went on to make several important recommendations. The report called for strong congressional support for Space Shuttle and International Space Station, as well as a number of specific technical recommendations, such as increased attention to orbital debris and ensuring that all personnel and managers have the necessary skills and experience.

If these recommendations are to be successful in identifying and mitigating future risks to the International Space Station, Congress, together with the Administration, must firmly reaffirm its commitment to pursuing safety as a top priority. My amendment speaks to this clear need to emphasize the importance of safety standards by ensuring that none of the funds made available in this Act may be used to limit the safety provisions enumerated in the recent NASA Authorization Act.

We must continue to work to ensure that adequate safety standards apply to all NASA endeavors, and particularly to manned space exploration. As I previously stated, I am a strong supporter of the International Space Station, and I hope that we can move forward with its mission. However, our mission for discovery can not be done in haste; instead we must ensure that all steps have been taken to minimize the risk to astronauts onboard.

I hope that my colleagues will join me in supporting this important amendment.

U.S. and Russia View Space Station Safety Differently

(By Mike Schnelder)

Cape Canaveral, FL.--It was just four high-energy

batteries, the kind that are found in a lot of military

equipment such as walkie-talkie sets and night vision

equipment. Similar batteries already were being used on the

International Space Station.

But when NASA officials discovered last year that Russian

space officials were allowing the four batteries on-board the

space station without the proper testing, they objected

strenuously. The batteries could be toxic and had a small

potential to explode. The Russians went ahead anyway.

Nothing ever happened. But the friction caused by the

batteries underscores the divide between the now hyper-

safety-conscious Americans and what the Russians describe as

their ``more flexible'' approach.

It's a different philosophy, explains Shirley McCarty,

former head of NASA's safely advisory board: In the U.S.

program you must prove it is safe. The Russian approach is

``prove it's not safe.''

After the Columbia space shuttle disaster, safety is

getting even more attention by the U.S. Space program,

Tensions over the two countries' approaches are being

played out in Houston and Moscow as both programs debate

whether to allow a spacewalk by the current space station

crew of just two men--astronaut Michael Foale and cosmonaut

Alexander Kaleri. A spacewalk would leave the space station

temporily empty. Previous spacewalks at the international

space station have depended on a third crew member inside.

The Russians, however, are comfortable with the risk and

carried out spacewalks on their Mir space station with just a

two-man crew. They are pushing for a spacewalk in late

February to do minor work involving payloads and preparatory

work for a new type or cargo ship.

The Russians consider themselves less rigid and more

inventive than the Americans, who tend to follow every letter

in the technical manuals, said Sergei Gorbunov, a spokesmen

for the Russian Space Agency.

``Here in Russia, we are more flexible in our approach to

technical problems,'' Garbunov said. ``The Americans are more

conservative in dealing with technical problems, but this

isn't a fault.''

It may not be a fault but the different approaches

contribute to communications problems that could lead to

dangerous situations, NASA's safety advisory board warned in

a report last year.

``They share safety concerns,'' Michael Suffredini, the

station's operations and integration manager for NASA, said

last week of the Russians. ``Sometimes we have a different

view.''

Jerry Linenger, a former astronaut who lived aboard

Russia's Mir in 1997, said there has to be a ``happy medium''

between the two approaches.

``The Russians are probably on one side of the balance, and

the Americans are probably too much on the other side,''

Linenger said.

During Linenger's stay on Mir, the Russian space station

suffered the most severe fire ever aboard an

orbiting spacecraft, a near collision with a cargo ship,

failures of onboard system including an oxygen generator,

loss of electrical power and an uncontrolled tumble

through space.

The current space station crew also is experienced with

close calls. Foale was on Mir when it collided with a cargo

ship. Kaleri was on Mir along with Linenger when the fire

broke out.

The differences between the Russian and U.S. approaches to

safety are as much from cultural as economic factors, said

Linenger.

Russian industry, for instance, doesn't have the commitment

to worker safety that the United States has adopted in recent

decades through agencies such as the Occupational Safety and

Health Administration. In addition, workers in the Russian

space program haven't shaken off the Soviet-era habit of

following orders without question, Linenger said.

``The Russians don't want to lose a cosmonaut any more than

we want to lose an a astronaut,'' he said, but suggested that

perhaps they were ``less used to protecting the worker . . .

They're probably more willing to overlook a lot of things

that we're not.''

The limited budget of the Russian space program also

contributes to how it approaches safety, Linenger said. The

cash-strapped space agency, after all, has allowed U.S.

millionaire Dennis Tito and South African Mark Shuttleworth

to pay for the privilege of being space tourists on the

station despite the initial objections of NASA officials.

Most recently, the Russian space program disclosed that

government funds allocated for building crew capsules and

supply ships for the space station are only about half of

what's needed.

``When you have a limited budget like they did when I was

there, you can't afford to go to option B,'' Linenger said.

``Maybe we misinterpret that they're cavalier about things

when they have no options.''

Linenger noted that NASA recently decided to send the

current crew to the space station despite concerns from a

NASA physician and scientist that exercise equipment and some

water and air monitoring devices weren't working properly.

``When you're between a rock and a hard place. I'm not sure

we would act any differently,'' he said.

Ed Lu, who returned from the space station last month after

a six-month stay, said any differences in approaches to

safety aren't noticeable.

It's really one big program right now,'' he said during an

interview from space before his return. ``You can't really

separate the organizations too much anymore.''

But members of NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel felt

otherwise. They resigned en masse in September after being

described as ineffective in a report by the Columbia Accident

Investigation Board. Before resigning, members cited two

other recent incidents in which miscommunication between the

Russians and Americans on the ground had caused problems with

how the space station was positioned.

``It just seems all the required operating procedures, the

ground rules aboard the station, really hadn't been

completely planned out between the various international

partners,'' said Robert Schaufele, a former member of the

safety panel and a professor of aircraft design at California

State University.

But the two programs have learned from past problems, and

new procedures have been put in place, said Bill

Gerstenmaier, the space station's program manager for NASA.

Since the batteries incident, complaints or concerns can be

taken up the command chain more quickly, said Arthur

Zygielbaum, a former safety advisory board member.

And in recent years, eight NASA specialists have worked in

Russia while 10 Russian specialists have worked with NASA in

Houston to smooth out potential communication issues, said

Joel Montalbano, lead flight director for the current space

station mission.

With this communications foundation, Montalbano said, ``we

can work better and stronger.''

I thank the distinguished chairman for his courtesy, I thank the ranking member, and I thank the Congress for accepting the importance of safety as we explore the beyond.

I simply say thank you to the staff of these committees, and I ask my colleagues to support it.

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

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to offer an amendment to ensure that the U.S. Attorney General appoints attorneys to assist in enforcing Federal law when it comes to public interest as outlined in 28 U.S.C. 542 and 28 U.S.C. 543. It is in the public's interest to prosecute crimes committed against Native women, including domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking and dating violence. As they take on this task, I also urge them to consult with tribes as practiced and required under Executive Order 13175.

As we know, there are 4 million American Indian and Alaska Native people throughout the United States, and jurisdictional questions today are preventing the enforcement of Federal laws. Indian women suffer 2\1/2\ times more domestic violence and 3\1/2\ times more sexual assaults than the rest of the American population. An Amnesty International report showed that 86 percent of these crimes are committed by non-Indian men, and the law prevents Tribal courts from prosecuting them.

As a former prosecutor, I was shocked that the majority of criminals go unpunished. Justice Department data compiled by Syracuse University showed that in two decades, only 30 percent of tribal land crimes referred to U.S. Attorneys were ever prosecuted. I would like to see U.S. Attorneys consult with the tribes and work to enforce Federal law, especially when it comes to crimes of domestic violence, stalking and sexual assault. And ensuring that U.S. Attorneys appoint special attorneys to assist in prosecuting these Federal laws is imperative.

I will include for the Record information from a Wall Street Journal article entitled, ``Tattered Justice on U.S. Indian Reservations, Criminals Slip Through Gaps.'' It is time we close those gaps, and I urge U.S. Attorneys to act with dispatch in this regard.

[From the Wall Street Journal, June 12, 2007]

On U.S. Indian Reservations, Criminals Slip Through Gaps

(By Gary Fields)

Cherokee, N.C.--Jon Nathaniel Crowe, an American Indian,

had a long-documented history of fighting with police

officers and assaulting women. But the tribal court for the

Eastern Band of the Cherokee, under whose jurisdiction he

lives, couldn't sentence him to more than one year for any

charge. Not when he left telephone messages threatening to

kill an ex-girlfriend, not when he poured kerosene into his

wife's mouth, not when he hit her with an ax handle.

``We put him away twice for a year, that's all we could

do,'' says James Kilbourne, prosecutor for the tribe. ``Then

he got out and committed the same crime again.''

Indian tribes are officially sovereign nations within the

U.S., responsible for running services such as schools and

courts. But a tangle of federal laws and judicial precedents

has undermined much of their legal authority. As a result,

seeking justice on Indian reservations is an uneven affair.

Tribes operate their own court systems, with their own

judges and prosecutors. Sharply limited in their sentencing

powers, they are permitted to mete out maximum jail time of

only 12 months for any crime, no matter how severe. The law

also forbids tribal courts to prosecute non-Indians, even

those living on tribal land.

Federal prosecutors can intervene in serious cases, but

often don't, citing the long distances involved, lack of

resources and the cost of hauling witnesses and defendants to

federal court. In the past two decades, only 30% of tribal-

land crimes referred to U.S. attorneys were prosecuted,

according to Justice Department data compiled by Syracuse

University. That compares with 56% for all other cases. The

result: Many criminals go unpunished, or minimally so. And

their victims remain largely invisible to the court system.

The justice gap is particularly acute in domestic-violence

cases. American Indians annually experience seven sexual

assaults per 1,000 residents, compared with three per

1,000 among African-Americans and two per 1,000 among

whites, says the Justice Department. The acts are often

committed by non-Indians living on tribal land whom tribal

officials cannot touch. Local prosecutors say members of

Indian communities have such low expectations about

securing a prosecution that they often don't bother filing

a report.

``Where else do you ask: How bad is the crime, what color

are the victims and what color are the defendants?'' asks Mr.

Kilbourne, who has prosecuted cases on Cherokee lands since

2001. ``We would not allow this anywhere else except Indian

country.''

The lack of prosecutorial discretion is one of many ways in

which Indian justice has been split off from mainstream

American due process. For example, some defendants appearing

before Indian courts lack legal counsel, because federal law

doesn't require tribes to provide them with a public

defender. Although some tribes have them, others can't afford

to offer their members legal assistance. It's not unusual for

defendants to represent themselves.

The Indian Civil Rights Act, passed by Congress in 1968,

limited to six months the sentences tribes could hand down on

any charge. At the time, tribal courts were seeing only minor

infractions. Congress increased the maximum prison sentence

to one-year in 1986, wrongly assuming that the Indian courts

would continue to handle only misdemeanor-level crimes.

Tribal offenses, meanwhile, escalated in both number and

severity, with rape, murder and kidnapping among the cases.

The Supreme Court weighed in on another level, with its

1978 Oliphant decision ruling that tribes couldn't try non-

Indian defendants in tribal courts--even if they had

committed a crime against a tribe member on the tribe's land.

In its ruling, the court held that it was assumed from the

earliest treaties that the tribes did not have jurisdiction

over non-Indians.

``If you go to Canada and rob someone, you will be tried by

Canadian authorities. That's sovereignty,'' says University

of Michigan law professor and tribal criminal-justice expert

Gavin Clarkson. ``My position is that tribes should have

criminal jurisdiction over anybody who commits a crime in

their territory. The Supreme Court screwed it all up and

Congress has never fixed it.''

Jeff Davis, an assistant U.S. Attorney in Michigan who

handles tribal-land cases, acknowledges that his hands are

often tied. Mr. Davis is also a member of North Dakota's

Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. ``I've been in the U.S.

Attorney's office for 12 years, and both presidents I have

served under have made violent crime in Indian country a

priority. But because of the jurisdictional issue and

questions over who has authority and who gets to prosecute,

it is a difficult situation.''

Often cases don't rise to the level of felony federal

crimes unless the victim has suffered a severe injury.

Federal prosecutors have limited resources and focus almost

exclusively on the most serious cases.

Compounding that is the fact that domestic-abuse cases are

difficult to prove, especially if the lone witness recants.

``It requires stitches, almost a dead body,'' says Mr.

Davis. ``It is a high standard to meet.''

For some non-Indians, tribal lands are virtual havens.

Chane Coomes, a 43-year-old white man, grew up on the Pine

Ridge Reservation in South Dakota--home to the Oglala Lakota,

near the site of the infamous 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee.

Marked by a small obelisk, the mass grave is a symbol of

unpunished violence, literally buried in the soil of the

tribe. The 2000 census documented Shannon County, which

encompasses the remote and desolate reservation, as the

second-poorest county in the U.S., with an annual per-

capita income of $6,286 at the time. Only Buffalo County,

S.D., was poorer.

According to local authorities, Mr. Coomes used his home on

the reservation as a sanctuary, knowing he would be free from

the attentions of tribal prosecutors.

Tribal Police Chief James Twiss says Mr. Coomes was

suspected of dealing in small amounts of methamphetamine for

years. Tribal police also thought he might be trafficking in

stolen goods.

In 1998, Mr. Coomes assaulted a tribal elder, Woodrow

Respects Nothing, a 74-year-old decorated World War II and

Korean War veteran. Because it couldn't prosecute, the tribe

ordered Mr. Coomes off its land. But attempts to remove him

were unenforceable.

``All I could do was to escort him off the reservation,''

says tribal police officer Eugenio White Hawk, who did that

several times, the last when he spotted the banned man

hauling horses in a trailer. ``He kept coming back. After a

while I just left him alone and let it go. It was just a

waste of time.''

Mr. Coomes remained in his Shannon County home until 2006

when he was accused of beating his estranged wife in nearby

Nebraska and threatening to kill her, according to Dawes

County District Attorney Vance Haug. The crime was committed

off the reservation, and the subsequent investigation gave

state authorities official jurisdiction.

After raiding his home, they found stolen equipment as well

as 30 grams of methamphetamine and $13,000 hidden in the

bathroom, along with syringes.

Mr. Coomes is now in the Fall River County Jail charged

with possession of stolen property, grand theft and

unauthorized possession of a controlled substance. He also

faces separate charges, of assault and ``terroristic

threats'' related to his wife, in Dawes County, Neb. If

convicted on the latter charges, he faces up to six years in

prison, Mr. Haug said. Mr. Coomes's attorney declined to

comment.

The jurisdictional quagmire also has implications for

Indian members on the other side of the tribal border. Gene

New Holy, an ambulance driver on Pine Ridge, had been

arrested by the tribe more than a dozen times for various

drunk-driving offenses, for which he received only two

convictions totaling about a month in a tribal jail. In state

court, four convictions would have led to a maximum sentence

of five years.

Lance Russell, the state prosecutor for Shannon County and

neighboring Fall River County, had never heard of Mr. New

Holy until Feb. 11, 2001, when Mr. New Holy got drunk at a

Fall River County bar. According to court documents, he

nearly hit one car on a main highway, forced two others into

a ditch and sideswiped a third that had pulled off the road

as Mr. New Holy approached it in the wrong lane.

The last car he hit contained three tribe members--cousins

Bart Mardinian, Anthony Mousseau and Russell Merrival-- all

of whom died. The accident was less than a mile off the

reservation, enough to give Mr. Russell and the state

jurisdiction in the case. Mr. New Holy is serving 45 years in

state prison for three counts of vehicular homicide--much

longer than the 12 months per count he would have served

under tribal law. His attorney didn't return a call

seeking comment.

``The holes in the system are more practical than legal,

and the victims of crime pay the price,'' says Larry Long

III, the South Dakota attorney general. ``The crooks and the

knotheads win.''

The Eastern Band of Cherokee, located in the Smoky

Mountains of North Carolina, is one of the most efficiently

run tribes in the country. Its ancestors hid in these

mountains while Cherokee east of the Mississippi River were

forcibly moved to present-day Oklahoma, a migration known as

the ``Trail of Tears.'' Today the tribe is spread across five

counties and is economically well off: It takes in more than

$200 million annually from the Harrah's Cherokee Casino &

Hotel, which it owns, and has a robust tourist industry.

About half of the tribe's gambling spoils go to pay for

infrastructure and government services.

Its court, which is housed in a prefabricated building,

looks like any other in the U.S., except the judges wear

bright, red robes. The offices, while cramped, are modern and

computerized, and are a little over one hour's drive from the

federal prosecutor's office in Asheville. Tribal authorities

meet regularly with federal prosecutors for training. The

tribe's top jurist is a former federal prosecutor who has

regular contact with his successors.

Yet even here, the justice system works erratically. In

2005, tribal police received a tip that James Hornbuckle, 46,

an Oklahoma Cherokee who had moved to the reservation, was

dealing marijuana. Officers built a case for weeks. They

raided the business and then Mr. Hornbuckle's home, where

they found 10 kilograms of marijuana, packaged in small

bricks. By tribe standards, it was a big haul, and

authorities approached the U.S. Attorney's office.

Gretchen Shappert, U.S. Attorney for the Western District

of North Carolina, says federal sentencing guidelines for

marijuana are so lenient, that ``we'd need 50 kilograms in a

typical federal case'' to pursue it. The feds rejected the

case.

If the state court had jurisdiction to prosecute the crime,

Mr. Hornbuckle might have received a three-year term.

Instead, he pleaded guilty to the marijuana charge and was

sentenced to one year in tribal court. Recently the tribal

council voted to permanently ban him from the reservation,

with backing from the feds. Messages left for Mr.

Hornbuckle's attorney weren't returned.

Mr. Crowe's name is all too familiar on the reservation.

Tribal Police Chief Benjamin Reed has known him since he was

a juvenile. ``What I remember is his domestic-violence

incidents. He just wouldn't stop,'' Mr. Reed says.

Crystal Hicks, who dated Mr. Crowe before his marriage,

says the tribal member was verbally abusive. She says she

left him after she had a miscarriage, when he berated her for

not giving him a ride to a motorcycle gathering. ``He said I

was using the miscarriage as an excuse,'' says Ms. Hicks, 27

years old.

After that, in several telephone messages saved by Ms.

Hicks and her family, Mr. Crowe threatened to kill them and

bury Ms. Hicks in her backyard. He was jailed by the tribe

and ordered to stay away from the Hicks family.

``One year,'' says Ms. Hicks. ``He even told me he was fine

in jail. He got fed three times a day, had a place to sleep

and he wasn't going to be there long.''

After he married, the violence escalated, says Police Chief

Reed. During one incident he drove to the home Mr. Crowe

shared with his wife, Vicki. ``He had threatened her, and dug

a grave, and said no one would ever find her. We believed

him,'' Mr. Reed said. ``Just look at some of the stuff he'd

done. That girl was constantly coming down here, her face

swollen up.'' At one point, he choked his wife, poured

kerosene into her mouth and threatened to light it, police

reports say. Mr. Crowe's attorney didn't return calls seeking

comment.

None of these acts led to more than one year in jail, a

sentence he has been given twice since 2001. His criminal

file at the tribal court building fills a dozen manila

folders. There are reports of trespassing and assault

convictions, telephone harassment, threats and weapons

assaults--one for an incident when he hit his wife with an ax

handle, breaking her wrist. His latest arrest, in September,

came about a week after he finished his most recent sentence,

when he came home and beat his now-estranged wife--again.

After seven years, his crimes finally triggered federal

involvement, although almost by accident. Federal prosecutors

from around the country met at Cherokee earlier this year to

discuss crime on tribal land. One federal official mentioned

to Mr. Kilbourne, the tribal prosecutor, a new statute that

allows federal intervention where defendants have at least

two domestic-violence convictions, regardless of the crime's

seriousness.

Mr. Kilbourne, who was preparing for a new trial against

Mr. Crowe the following week, quickly turned the case over.

Mr. Crowe pleaded guilty to assault last Friday and is

awaiting sentencing.

Corrections and Amplifications

The attorney for James Hornbuckle, a Cherokee who was cited

in this article, couldn't be reached for comment. This

article incorrectly says his attorney didn't return calls

seeking comment.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw my amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I ask to manage the time on behalf of the opposition since I am opposed to the bill in its current form.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I am sure glad my friend, the chairman of Judiciary, sought time for people to revise and extend their remarks, because they are going to need it. This thing keeps changing. I mean, I reviewed this bill last week. I spent a long time going line by line, only to find yesterday there's still a new version, and today I was provided a 98-page bill. I can't tell you the pages of the issues that I am most concerned about because the version keeps changing.

Now, this bill includes $330 million in authorizations. Normally, suspensions

are noncontroversial, but the fact that this bill keeps changing is absolute evidence that this is not noncontroversial. It keeps changing because people can't figure out what is the best thing to do.

I would submit there is a good reason for that. The bill that this seeks to renew and programs that are sought to be renewed are ones we don't have information on how successful they were, and that was the original purpose of this bill. Back when it expired in 2005, we still did not have the information on what worked and what didn't.

I can tell you from my days as a judge, there was some anecdotal evidence that it looked like faith-based programs did a better job of dramatically reducing recidivism. In one case I was shown results from a prison in Texas where it dropped down to about 8 percent from over 80 percent because of faith-based programs and mentoring.

This new version, I haven't even been through it. I haven't had time to go through it. But the one that I saw and reviewed on Friday, it included reentry programs allowing payment for housing and health care. I know our military members who are leaving after less than 20 years in the service with honorable discharges would love to have that kind of help reentering.

There are some provisions that allow for too much administration, in my opinion; 11 percent at one point, 15 percent at another. That is not going to help people. That is going to build a bigger bureaucracy.

Dismissing all charges if someone completes drug rehab under another provision I think is outrageous. You are going to remove the hammer that would allow you to keep people in line? It is one thing to say we are going to remove you and not have you go to prison and instead send you to drug rehab, and then if you get through there, before you have a chance to go out and do cocaine again, we are going to drop all charges so we have no hammer over your head. I don't know if this is in the final bill. It was in there last I saw on Friday.

There is a provision that allows payments through the Department of Labor for support. There are military members, and I went to another funeral Saturday, a gentleman who was not killed in Iraq, he was killed during surgery, but I know his family would love to have the kind of support being provided in here for felons.

We also have a provision in here, we are going to pay people through these grants to teach inmates how they can go about getting the most welfare before they leave prison and go out on their own. There is also a provision that moves inmates to home detention without approval of the judge who sentenced the individual.

In this bill, the elderly, for purposes of moving to home detention, is defined as 65. I guess apparently under this bill, without any underlying evidence or research to support it, we have arbitrarily picked 65 as deciding that is when people are harmless. But I know from my own experience around this Chamber, there are people in Congress that are 65 or older that are certainly not harmless. In any event, I think that is a little bit too young to classify people as harmless.

There is a provision that assistance will be provided by the United States probation system and it ``shall'' be done. I don't know, I can't find from the bill what kind of assistance that will be. But I think we have all got the same goal. I think one of the worst atrocities in the justice system has been our lack of rehabilitating and educating and preparing people to go out into the world and become productive citizens and finally reach the God-given potential that every one of them has. I couldn't agree more with the proposition, and I know that is the heart of my colleagues across the aisle. But we don't have the information on which programs are successful and which aren't.

I want to work together on a program. I've kind of been cut out of this process. The National Summit on Prisoner Reentry is coming up in Los Angeles on November 27 and 28, but we are going to rush this through on a suspension bill for $330 million without even having a chance to really review the most recent document.

Yes, I will be glad to yield, and if you can show that we have gotten the recent version----

Claiming back my time, I am not yielding for you to criticize me.

I appreciate yielding to the gentlelady to come down and call me outrageous. But what is outrageous is this process, this process of taking something so important and rushing it in here without having the proper input and the proper information. The National Institute of Justice has got their biggest study program in its history ongoing, and we don't have the results, and yet my colleagues want to rush in and throw $330 million at a process that is unproven and untried.

I just don't think that is the way to go. We have got honest people involved in the process, but the process itself here has not been honest.

With that, I would reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, would the gentleman yield for a question?

Was there no version of the bill filed today? Was there no version of the Second Chance Act filed today?

Thank you.

May I inquire how much time I've got.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Nothing would please me more than to be involved in the process of constructively working on these issues. When I think about the gentlelady saying that my comments were outrageous, everything that I have said is documented. Everything I have said comes from reading through this bill, as well as my own experience from my days of being a judge.

I wholeheartedly agree, we should do a better job of rehabilitating and educating. In fact, I just get concerned when we get so anxious to try to do something good that we end up throwing money at a problem just so we can say we worked on it, something had to be done.

But it was the National Institute of Justice Award to RTI International, a nonprofit research organization, to evaluate the programs funded by the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative. This is one of the largest evaluation studies funded by the NIJ, and it is doing this research. The Urban Institute, a nonpartisan economic and social policy research organization in D.C., is the collaborator on the project. I am really looking forward to getting that information. I am wondering why we throw more money at a situation before we get the information that tells me how and tells us how to be most effective?

When my good friend the chairman, and I do think the world of him, talks about comity and goodwill, that is what I would love to have. But when we have such trouble getting copies of the latest versions, and then the chairman says, gee, I had the latest version on Friday, I was notified by the committee staff that there was a new version as of yesterday and then the new version was filed today. So, I didn't have everything Friday. That has been one of the problems here. This is too important of an issue to just be throwing good money after bad.

I would also point out that in the interests of comity and goodwill, the bills that follow this, H.R. 3845, PROTECT Our Children Act of 2007, I indicated before that sounded like something I would want to be part of and helping with, but we never did get a final version that we could say, yes, I want to cosponsor that.

Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators Act of 2007 sounds like another good bill, but we haven't seen it. And talking to the Judiciary staff, that and the Effective Child Pornography Prosecution Act, H.R. 4120, that follows that, we are still trying to get updated versions of those things. So that doesn't sound to me like comity and goodwill, when we are struggling over here to even get copies.

We don't know what requests had been granted. There were things requested by the Department of Justice, in the interest of justice, please get these provisions put in this bill. We don't know what was put in and what wasn't. That, to me, does not indicate comity and goodwill. It creates all kinds of problems.

I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.

I am not sure which four things the chairman is referring to.

I thank the chairman.

Reclaiming my time, I have been over here in the 20 minutes or so before I came up to speak talking to Judiciary staff who, unless they are changing their story now, have not been able to get the latest information on this bill. Well, they have got it on this bill. We have the final copy. I haven't had a chance to review it since it has been filed today. Most of us were out doing what we should have been doing yesterday, paying tribute to veterans all over our districts. But these subsequent bills, these are still a problem that I have been having with the Second Chance Act, getting the latest information on this.

My dear friend, Mr. Coble, we serve together on the Judiciary, had asked for time, and at this time I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina.

Mr. Speaker, how much time remains?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We heard moments ago that there are 212 organizations supporting the bill. I have talked to many of them over the course of our discussions on the Second Chance Act, great, noble, wonderful organizations. I couldn't find but one out of numerous ones that I talked to that actually read the bill. They all have the same goals. They all want to see adequate education and rehabilitation, cutting down on recidivism. We all want to see that. I want to see that. I think we have got to do that as a civilized society. There are many that support this goal. But, again, many haven't seen the bill.

And I have checked with the staff in the interim. For example, H.R. 719 is file-stamped November 13 at 1:11 today, and the Judiciary got it for the first time just before 3 p.m. so that you know.

But if we really want to help the situation, doesn't it make sense to get the information on one of the biggest-funded programs NIJ has ever had so we put the money where it works and take it away from where it doesn't work?

Mr. Speaker, in responding to the chairman's comment, I would have to say I noticed in reviewing the bill on Friday, it is a better bill than it was, in my opinion; but we still have a little ways to go. That is why I just think this is a bill in its present form, as it continues to morph, that should not be on the Suspension Calendar, but should come up under a regular rule where we have a chance to work on these other issues.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time so the gentleman from Michigan has the time to respond.

I appreciate the chairman yielding. I think we are getting closer, actually.

I would like to see the information that is being prepared to come forth on November 27 and 28, the newest information that is being brought to bear, all of these groups coming together. I would think then by December we ought to be able to have something.

Might I inquire, I don't have any other speakers, if I can find out where the chairman is with regard to additional speakers.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate Mrs. Tubbs Jones' comments. And I guess calling me or my comments outrageous was somewhat offensive, but as an old judge I was used to that. In fact, I have been called all kinds of names.

And, yes, even 2 days ago when I was buying some potting soil back home, I had a guy come up to me with his father and said if it were not for me, he would never have straightened his life up.

Those are not uncommon comments. And what it came from was being fair, but also having tough love. Because, as those who have been involved in dealing with people who have been addicted to drugs or alcohol, it does take tough love. And you do want to help them get out of the cycle rather than becoming an enabler. And that is my number one concern, is that we do not want to be enablers.

And when we talk about Scripture, absolutely, there are all kinds of verses that apply to us for those that believe the teachings of Jesus as I do. They are entirely appropriate. Those are directed to individuals. If you get over to Romans 13, that is directed to the government. And where it says if you do evil, you need to be afraid, because God does not give the government the sword in vain, that is part of the role of government; if you do evil, then there are consequences.

But it is a worthy goal to want to try to stop the cycle of recidivism. We all, I think, want that. No, I don't think; I know, we all want that same goal. But I am very concerned that we may be enabling by throwing money at a problem.

One of the saddest words and lines I ever heard came at a hearing when the wealthiest people in my home county, they had the courtroom packed so that they were hoping that I would put her on probation yet again, and they knew she had had it too many times and it wasn't going to happen under me. And it didn't. And it turns out she had a huge trust fund every month. She never had to work, she never had to study, and she had spent all her money on drugs. And the last thing she said before I sentenced her was, ``I wish somebody had told me `no' before today and meant it.''

She has now gotten out. Her mother, when I was walking neighborhoods, I went up to her door and her mother said, ``Come in and sit down.'' She said, ``You know, my husband and I just hated you at one point, but you saved our daughter's life.''

Sometimes it is the tough love things that turn things around. We want the same goal. I don't want to throw good money after bad in renewed programs that shouldn't be. And I hope that if this fails on suspension, we can get the new data that is going to be forthcoming and work toward the same goal with additional, more helpful information.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 1593) to reauthorize the grant program for reentry of offenders into the community in the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, to

improve reentry planning and implementation, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill under consideration and on H.R. 3461.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, Members of the House, as the prison population has grown over the past two decades, so has the number of prisoners completing their sentencing and returning to the general population. More than half a million, some 650,000 men and women, are leaving the Federal and State prisons each year. While the vast majority of the prisoners are committed to abiding by the law and becoming productive members of society, they often encounter the same pressures, the same environment, the same temptations that they faced before prison, and with insufficient resources to assist them in dealing with those pressures and temptations, sometimes, despite their best intentions at the time of release, too many of them commit new crimes and end up back in prison. More than two-thirds of them are arrested for new crimes within 3 years of their release. This exacts a terrible cost in financial terms as well as in human terms.

Congress has been very active over the years in strengthening our criminal laws and our investigative and prosecutorial tools against crime. The bipartisan legislation we are considering today, aptly named the Second Chance Act, complements those efforts by helping give ex- offenders the tools they need to stay out of trouble. It's a very commonsense piece of legislation and it recognizes that too many ex- offenders lack the education, job skills and stable living arrangements, the substance abuse treatment and health services that they need to successfully reintegrate into our society.

Many have trouble finding a job and some have trouble holding a job. Many move straight from their prison cell to a homeless shelter. Many entered prison with alcohol and drug habits, and the pull remains hard to resist once they reemerge in our society. Many are physically or mentally disabled. Some have chronic disease; others need psychological treatment. Many left spouses and young children behind when they entered prison. While these family relationships can be of tremendous value in helping an ex- offender build a stable life outside prison, it can be very difficult to rekindle these ties after a long and painful absence.

The Second Chance Act will help provide these men and women with the education, training, counseling and other support needed to help them obtain and hold steady jobs; to kick their drug and alcohol habits, if they have one; address medical and dental needs; rebuild their families; and deal with the many other challenges that they face in their efforts to successfully rejoin society. These kinds of programs have been tested on a smaller scale, to be sure, where they have already made a measurable difference in reducing recidivism. The Second Chance Act builds on these efforts in a measured but significant way to reduce recidivism, increase public safety, and help ex-offenders lead productive and law-abiding lives.

We have the support of current and former chairmen and ranking members of the Judiciary Committee and the crime subcommittee, chaired by Bobby Scott of Virginia, as well as a wide range of national, State and local law enforcement and rehabilitative organizations.

I submit for the Record a new section-by-section analysis reflecting some of the revisions to the bill reported in response to suggestions by members of the Committee on the Judiciary. I urge my colleagues to give careful consideration in their support of this measure.

Changes to Second Chance Act of 2007 (Reported Version to Suspension

Version)

Added Rule of Construction to confirm Act does not create a

right or entitlement to assistance or services, and to

promote transfer of programs to programs not funded under

this Act.

Reduced number of new Federal programs from 18 to 10 by

consolidating or eliminating programs.

Reduce authorized spending from $427 million to $330

million over two fiscal years.

Reduced permissible uses under reauthorized reentry

demonstration programs from 21 to 9.

Added measurable goals for programs--reducing recidivism

rate by 50 percent over 5 years, and 10 percent over 2 years.

Prohibited Bureau of Prisons from Preventing Access to

Chapel Library Materials.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, here we are the day after Veterans Day. We come back in comity and goodwill. We are trying to finish off the last week before the Thanksgiving recess. And I want Judge Louie Gohmert, my dear friend from Texas, to understand as much as I can explain to him about the reservations that he has raised thus far.

I want him to know this is not a partisan bill at all and that the changes that have been made to the bill were made before Friday when you examined it. So if you were examining this measure on Friday, that is the last, that is all she wrote, because we haven't been in since then.

So, please understand that, first of all, this is a bipartisan bill. We had the hearings. We had a markup in which you participated rather actively. We had a record vote. We went to the Rules Committee. Everything is working I think very smoothly, according to the chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime, Bobby Scott, and the author of this bill for three Congresses, Congressman Danny Davis of Illinois.

Please know that we have been working on this bill. You are right, it has been through a lot of changes. The changes started before you graced us with your presence in the Judiciary Committee as a very important member of it. We have been working on this all the time. We think it is in an improved state.

I would just like you to know that we have 212 organizations, and because we are on a rather fast schedule here this afternoon, I won't bother you with them, but none of them are political. They are all community organizations. They are all organizations concerned with the reentry of people who have served their time and are now coming out.

We are trying to deal, Judge Gohmert, with this huge problem of people returning from their terms in prison. They come out and sometimes in my State, I hate to say this, they don't even have a bus ticket or a suit of new clothing to get to where they are supposed to be going. Many of them don't know where they are going. It is that dislocation that creates the situation of so many of them returning back.

One of the most distressing things I ever heard when I was visiting one of these places is that the guard tells the exiting prisoner, former prisoner who serves his term, ``I'll see you when you get back.'' Nothing tells the story more than I know there is nothing for you out in society. You're not trained for anything, you're not fit for anything, there are no jobs for you, so you're going to go back into your old ways and we're going to get you back in our clutches again. What we are trying to do, Judge Gohmert, is to change that. I know in your court you have seen your share of this kind of process even in Texas.

So I urge you to join with us in trying to be as constructive as you normally are, to help make everybody understand that we are trying to make

rehabilitation mean something besides just the phrase used in the criminal justice system.

Of course.

Absolutely, yes, it was.

You're welcome.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I am being told that we have been working with the minority in Judiciary on an ongoing basis, and I just wonder if you are aware that four of your changes in particular have been accepted and incorporated into the measure that is before us now?

I will bring them out for you and be happy to show them to you.

That is correct.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to recognize the Chair of the Subcommittee on Crime of the House Judiciary Committee, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) for 2 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I am glad that you find we are making progress; that is very encouraging. How much time do you think we would need to arrive at a point where your observations about the bill and the needed improvement and our position would intersect so we could get it before the body?

I yield to the gentleman.

How about tomorrow? If I gave you 24 hours, what would happen differently?

Mr. Speaker, I am going to recognize the distinguished whip of the majority, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Clyburn), for 2 minutes, and maybe within his comments he can help us frame some kind of time line.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to recognize now the author of this bill, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis). We said it started three Congresses ago, but Danny Davis started it many years before three Congresses ago, and I am proud to yield 2 minutes to him.

(Mr. DAVIS of Illinois asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the distinguished Member from Ohio, a former jurist and prosecutor herself, Stephanie Tubbs Jones, for 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud now to yield to Gwen Moore, the gentlelady from Wisconsin, 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to close the debate on our side to Eleanor Holmes Norton, who has been not just a trial lawyer but has been before the Supreme Court on numerous occasions.