[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
[January 5, 1999]
[Pages 5-7]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]
Remarks on the Zero Tolerance for Drugs in Prison Initiative
January 5, 1999
Thank you very much. Let me begin by just expressing my appreciation
to all who have spoken and to all who are here for the years and years
and years of commitment you have manifested in this endeavor. I thank my
good friend Senator Leahy and Congressman
Rangel. I thank General Reno and General McCaffrey
for making it possible for us to continue to emphasize these things and
to actually make progress, for being both practical and idealistic.
Thank you, Mayor Griffin, for what you said
and for what you're doing and for bringing your police chief, Chief
Hoover, here with you.
I want to say, obviously, a special word of appreciation to Kathleen
Kennedy Townsend, who has
literally redefined what it means to be a Lieutenant Governor----I would
hate to succeed her as Lieutenant Governor of Maryland--[laughter]--for
her indefatigable energy. I thank the others here from Maryland who are
involved in her endeavor.
I'd also like to say a special word of welcome to Judge Joel
Tauber and all the others who are here
from the drug courts throughout America. I'll have more to say about
them in a moment, but I am especially grateful for their endeavors.
Six years ago, as has already been said, our country was at peace,
but too many of our communities were at war. Illegal drugs were ravaging
cities on both coasts and the American heartland in between. Crack and
methamphetamine use were at near record levels. Drug dealers controlled
whole neighborhoods and thought nothing of opening fire on passing
police cars. Many communities lived in terror; many children feared
walking down the street.
I actually met, in a school in California--I'll never forget this--
with a group of children who were drilled on how to jump out of their
desk and hit the floor if they were subject to drive-by shootings. It
had a searing impact on me. One of the reasons I ran for President was
to give those kids their futures back. And all of you have done a lot to
give them their futures back, and I'm very grateful to you.
In every successive year, I have proposed a larger antidrug budget.
In 1999, we had a 30-percent increase just between then and 1996, even
as we produced the first balanced budget in a generation. Under General
McCaffrey's leadership, we have put these
resources to good use: unprecedented new tools for domestic enforcement;
unprecedented new campaigns to
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convince young people to stay off drugs--I hope you saw one of our ads
on the football game last night, if you watched it--unprecedented new
efforts to stem the flow of drugs across our borders; unprecedented new
efforts to stop the revolving door between the prison and the street.
As you've heard from Attorney General Reno and General McCaffrey,
this strategy is working. We do have the lowest crime rate in 25 years.
Drug use is falling. Finally--thank goodness--drug use is beginning to
fall among our young people.
But the crime rate is still too high. The streets are still too
violent. There is still too much drug use, especially in our prisons.
The mayor of Reno whispered to me when Kathleen
was talking that Mayor Daley told him it
was easier to get drugs in the Illinois penitentiary than it was on the
streets of Chicago. I say this not to criticize the Illinois
penitentiary; that's a statement that could be made in more than half
the States in this country. So we still have a lot to do. There is no
better way to start than to help our prisoners break clean from drugs.
Today we release a new study from the Department of Justice that
offers more convincing evidence that drug use stokes all kinds of crime,
from property crimes like burglary, auto theft, to violent crimes like
assault and murder. It shows that one in six offenders landed in prison
for a crime committed just to get money for drugs, that nearly a third
of prisoners were using drugs at the time they committed their crimes,
that more than 80 percent of prisoners have a history of drug use. And
when you consider that--plus the breathtaking statistic that Lieutenant
Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend gave us about the volume of heroin
and cocaine used by people who are in the criminal justice system--it is
clear to us that if we are going to continue to reduce the rate of
crime, we have to do something to avoid releasing criminals with their
dangerous drug habits intact.
As you've heard from previous speakers, we've already done a lot to
expand drug testing and treatment in Federal prisons and to encourage
States to do the same. But today we want to make a dramatic leap
forward. The balanced budget I will submit to Congress will contain a
$215 million zero-tolerance drug program designed to promote drug
supervision, our Nation's most comprehensive effort ever to test and
treat not only criminals in prison but also those on probation and
parole.
To inmates in every State, we want to send a message: If you stay on
drugs, you must stay behind bars. To probationers and parolees, we want
to send a message: If you want to keep your freedom, you have to keep
free of drugs.
Through this initiative, we will also expand our efforts to help
communities build and administer drug courts. Charlie Rangel mentioned
Attorney General Reno's efforts as a young
prosecutor. Many years ago, long before I ever thought I would be
standing here as President, because my brother-in-law was a public defender in the Miami drug court that the
Attorney General set up, I used to go and visit it in the eighties. I
went three times; one time I stayed for the whole session of court,
almost all day. I have never had a more exhilarating experience in a
courtroom in my life, including the sessions of the United States
Supreme Court I have attended, because finally I saw something that I
thought could actually work to change people's lives, to restore people
to productive use in society, to reduce the crime rate, to make people
safer, and to stop the policy of warehousing people in ever-increasing
numbers in order to keep our streets safe.
When I took office, there were just a handful of these drug courts
in operation, including the one that the Attorney General launched in Miami. Today, there are more than 400. If
our budget proposal is approved by Congress, we can move to have more
than 1,000 up and running by the end of next year. That is a worthy
goal. It will change America for the better. It will give a lot of
people their lives back and make our streets safer.
I'm also proud to say that on top of these proposals, we will free
up another $120 million for drug-free prison initiatives this year,
funds to help States boost testing and treatment, funds to purge their
prisons of drugs with advanced new technologies.
At the end of this century, we've made great progress in our efforts
to free our children and our communities from drugs and crime. As we
begin a new century and a new millennium, we have an enormous
opportunity to finish the job, to harness all the resources of the
criminal justice system--our courts, our prosecutors, our prisons, our
probation officers, our police--to break the drug habits of prisoners
and people on parole and probation. We have to break this
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cycle. We have to give all these people a chance to be drug-free and to
be productive citizens again. It is the only way we can ever, in the
end, assure our children the future they deserve.
Thank you all for what you do. God bless you.
Note: The President spoke at 12:04 p.m. in the Roosevelt Room at the
White House. In his remarks, he referred to Mayor Jeff Griffin and Chief
of Police Jerry Hoover of Reno, NV; Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend
of Maryland; Judge Jeffrey S. Tauber, president, National Association of
Drug Court Professionals; Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago, IL; and
Hugh Rodham, the President's brother-in-law.