Attack on crime: Congress passes largest anti-crime bill in U.S. history - Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 - Cover Story

WASHINGTON, DC--What do polls show is America's number one worry?

It's not health care, nor AIDS, nor joblessness, nor education. It's crime. People are simply afraid. All across the country, from small towns to big cities, from schoolrooms to corporate offices, people say they worry about their safety in a rising tide of violent crime.

A recent national poll (see graph below) showed that 83% of Americans rate crime as the most serious threat to their freedom.

According to the FBI, violent crime, fueled mainly by the illegal drug trade, is mushrooming. During the last four years, there were 90,000 murders in the United States--up more than 10 percent from the previous four-year period. In just one typical week last year in Washington, D.C., there were 24 murders.

The New Crime Bill

Responding to widespread public concern about crime, Congress last month (August 26) passed the biggest anti-crime bill in U.S. history.

The bill, officially named the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, provides $30.2 billion over six years for crime prevention and control. Here are some of the bill's key provisions:

* More Police. The bill provides $13.5 billion to put 100,000 new police officers on the streets. Many of these new officers will be involved in "community policing"--walking the streets of crime-prone areas to give neighborhoods a higher sense of safety. In addition, the bill grants more than $100 million for college scholarships for present and future police officers.

* Safer Schools. The bill includes $810 million to create safer schools, including "safe havens" in and around schools. Those would be protected areas where children could safely take part in school activities, free from fear.

Violent crime in U.S. schools, say experts, has grown rapidly in recent years. In a 1993 survey of more than 65,000 students in grades 6 through 12 USA Weekend magazine found that 37 percent of students felt unsafe in school--up from 22 percent who felt unsafe only five years before.

According to the same survey, 2,000 students across the country are attacked on school grounds each hour of the school day. Each day, more than 160,000 students skip school out of fear of violence.

A Louis Harris poll released at the end of the 1993-94 school year showed that 40 percent of city teens and 36 percent of suburban teens knew someone who had been injured or killed by gunfire.

More Prisons

* More Prisons. The bill provides $9.9 billion to build new prisons to relieve prison overcrowding. In the last ten years, the U.S. prison population has more than doubled--from 436,855 in 1983 to 948,881 in 1993. The prison population explosion has resulted in severe overcrowding and forced some prisons to release prisoners before their sentences were up.

* Wider Death Penalty. The new crime bill allows juries to apply the death penalty to an expanded list of 60 federal crimes. This includes killing a member of Congress, kidnapping that results in death, and drive-by shootings that result in death.

* Tough Assault Weapon Ban. The bill calls for a ten-year ban on the manufacture, sale, or possession of 19 semiautomatic assault weapons. Assault weapons are weapons that fire a large number of bullets in rapid succession. Most assault weapons are military weapons designed to be used in combat.

The federal government will give most of the bill's $30.2 billion to the states, which will then divide the money among cities and towns. Big cities will get most of the money. New York City--where the number of murders adds up to over 2,000 a year--expects to receive at last $829 million.

Supporters and Critics

The bill was greeted with great joy by its supporters.

"We can finally get about the business of making our towns and cities safe," said President Clinton, who pushed the bill through Congress.

Pat Murphy, a former New York City police commissioner, is one of many police officials who support the bill. The crime bill, says Murphy, "will reduce crime because it will bring real community policing to hundreds of police departments."

But the new crime bill also has its critics. Many think it just won't be effective.

Joseph Sheley, a criminologist (scientist who studies crime), says that more cops on the street "probably will mean a disruption of crime patterns for a while, but by the time the $30 billion is spent, the crime rate will go back up."

One major opponent of the crime bill is the National Rifle Association (NRA). The NRA is a strong supporter of more police and more prisons. But the NRA believes that the bill's ban on assault weapons is dead wrong. NRA members say that all this part of the bill will do is take such weapons away from law-abiding citizens who use them for self-defense, target practice, or hunting. Criminals, says the NRA, will still get assault weapons and she use them. The NRA also feels that the assault weapon ban is a violation of the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which grants Americans the right to bear arms.

Supporters of the bill however, including Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) say that assault weapons have only one purpose--to kill people--and that banning them will make our cities safer.

The NRA has vowed to campaign during this November's congressional elections against those members of Congress who voted for the crime bill. But many members of Congress are betting that the public will support the bill as a major step against violent crime.

COPYRIGHT 1994 Weekly Reader Corp.
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