Criminals Are Wrongdoers, Not Victims Americans are alarmed at the high rate of violent crime, and justly so. Each year, nearly 5 million Americans are victims of murder, rape, robbery or assault. A murder occurs every 21 minutes, a rape every five minutes, a robbery every 46 seconds and an aggravated assault every 29 seconds. Even worse, juvenile crime increased by 60 percent during the last decade. St. Louisans don't need to read statistics to know how bad the crime problem really is. We witness the results of violent crimes daily on the news, and too many of us have been victimized. We also know things about crime that statistics can't account for. The crime epidemic is demoralizing and disheartening. It erodes our confidence in law enforcement. It takes away jobs as businesses flee areas where crime and disorder are rife. It discourages us from participating in activities we enjoy or going to places we want. Ordinary citizens know the system is failing and that it will continue to fail until individuals are held accountable for their actions and the harm they do to others. For 30 years, leaders in Washington have had a different idea: that criminals are victims of an unjust society. They tell us that individuals do not freely and intentionally choose a criminal career. Instead, individual offenders are shaped by factors - whether social, economic, biological or psychological - over which they have no control. According to this mode of thinking, people become violent criminals because the schools fail them or they have trouble finding jobs. The erosion of the idea of personal responsibility has had tragic consequences. It has created revolving-door justice where convicted offenders are able to commit crimes over and over again. More than a third of all those arrested for violent crime are violent criminals who were on probation, parole or other forms of judicial custody. A Bureau of Justice statistics report indicates that in 1991, 94 percent of state prison inmates had been convicted of a violent crime or had a previous sentence to probation or prison. For every 100 crimes reported in 1986, only 4.3 percent of the perpetrators went to prison; when adjusted for unreported crimes, only 1.7 percent of offenders were imprisoned. Convicted criminals should spend their time in the penitentiary being penitent. Instead, our system encourages them to file grievances challenging the conditions of their incarceration. In the past 20 years, the number of prisoner lawsuits has skyrocketed and exceeded 33,000 in 1993. About one out of every six suits in federal court each year is filed by convicts. Prisoner petitions have turned many prisons into "glamor slammers." As a result of court-ordered relief, many criminals have better living conditions and opportunities than honest families. Felons in Pennsylvania exercise with aerobic machines while watching HBO. Massachusetts‘s life inmates, along with the invited guests, eat catered prime rib. A provision [to the new crime bill] makes federal prison funding available only to states that agree not to provide inmates with such extravagances. Second, new truth-in-sentencing incentives would help lock the revolving door of prisons. Currently, violent criminals receive an average sentence of eight years but serve only one-third of the sentence. History shows that after incarceration rates increase, the crime rate moderates. Keeping violent criminals in prison for at least 85 percent of their sentences - truth in sentencing - is the surest route the criminal justice system can take to achieve safer schools, streets and homes. The crime bill authorizes $10.5 billion for state prison cell construction but reserves half that money for states that adopt truth-in-sentencing statutes. More prison cells and guarantees that prisoners serve most of their sentence means violent criminals would be behind bars longer. Third, the crime bills return to the traditional idea that, to reduce violent crime, punishment must be swift, certain and severe. Today, a criminal can appeal his conviction an unlimited number of times. Every year, inmates file thousands of habeas corpus petitions challenging their incarceration. Virtually all such petitions lack merit, and they clog federal court dockets. This trend has made a mockery of the criminal justice system. The crime bill significantly reforms the system by limiting the number of appeals and establishing time limits. Convicted felons would be able to file only one appeal and would have to file that appeal within one year. This reform means that convicted murders on death row, like John Wayne Gacy, would not be able to delay execution for 10 or 12 years. Of course, stopping crime means more than criminal justice reform. It also means empowering Americans to rebuild the families and neighborhoods of our cities. But part of the overall solution is institutionalizing the idea that people must accept responsibility for their actions. That idea has tremendous power, and the legislation reincorporating it into our criminal justice system represents a major step forward in restoring the basic right of our people to safe homes and neighborhoods.

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