THE MISSING VOICE IN DEBATE ON YOUTH CRIME

The debate in the U.S. Senate on guns and juvenile crime last week was
missing something vital. If only I could amend the Congressional Record ...

The presiding officer: The senator from the District of Columbia is recognized.

(The first U.S. senator elected from the District rises to address the
nation's most elite political body. He is tall and robust, in his late
sixties, has a bad back and a shock of gray hair but doesn't need Viagra or
want Rogaine.)

My senator: Mr. President, let me say at the outset that I am honored to be
a part of this distinguished group. I know that my presence here today
frightens some of you who thought all along that the District would send
another liberal to Congress and, indeed, I am one. But when it comes to this
epidemic of death by murder of our children, just call me concerned.

As you know, one out of every two children murdered in America is a black
child, even though black children make up only 15 percent of the juvenile
population. But it wasn't until the shooting deaths of white children in
suburban Littleton, Colo., that this body started to get serious about guns.
What am I supposed to say now, "Thank God for Columbine"? Distinguished
ladies and gentlemen, we can't go on doing business this way.

Among the issues before us today is an amendment to the Violent and Repeat
Juvenile Offender Accountability and Rehabilitation Act of 1999 -- called
the Disproportionate Minority Confinement mandate, which seeks to reduce the
number of black children being imprisoned.

But, as was the case with the homicide statistics for black children, the
incredibly high incarceration rate of black children is not seen by the
majority of the Senate as a matter for concern.

According to Barry R. McCaffrey -- the national drug policy director --
African Americans make up only 13 percent of those who actually commit drug
crimes in the United States, but we are 67 percent of those in prison for
drug crimes. What gives?

My distinguished colleague, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), replies: "The fact
that 13 percent of the offenders are African American and 67 percent of
those incarcerated are -- I don't see any information here saying that
higher percentage was unjustifiably put in jail. These percentages don't
tell us what the crimes were in the individual cases. If these individuals
committed a crime, then they go to jail. Does that mean there are a lot of
white people getting off? I don't see any evidence of that, either."

And yet, Mr. Hatch, if we are honest with ourselves, I think we can deduce
from those numbers and other reports that black people are getting the short
end of the justice stick and that white America is in denial about its own
drug problems.

My Democratic colleagues in Congress have been hammering away at racial
disparities in America's justice system, and to no avail, I might add, ever
since conservative Republicans took over Congress.

I admire those liberals. I'm a big fan of Sen. Paul D. Wellstone (D-Minn.).
And I applaud him and Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), Russell Feingold
(D-Wis.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) for
pushing so valiantly for a national review of why so many black children are
being imprisoned these days.

But I sometimes wonder how much my white colleagues really know about
fighting racism in modern America. They keep trying to use rational
arguments when racism is not a rational concept.

Consider what the juvenile justice expert Jerome Miller wrote about his days
dealing with youthful offenders in
the great state of Massachusetts:

"If a middle-class white youth was sent to us as dangerous, he was much more
likely to be dangerous than the African American teenager with the same
label. For [the white youth] to be labeled dangerous, he usually had done
something that was very serious indeed. By contrast, the African American
teenager was dealt with as a stereotype from the moment the handcuffs were
first put on, to be easily and quickly moved along to the more dangerous end
of the violent/nonviolent spectrum, albeit accompanied by an official record
meant to validate the biased series of decisions."

That is the kind of subtle but devastating racism that will never show up on
Sen. Hatch's radar. He doesn't even grasp the most blatant stuff.

Here's the raw deal in a nutshell: Blacks are six times as likely to be
admitted to state juvenile facilities for committing the same crimes against
persons as their white counterparts, four times as likely to be imprisoned
for the same property crimes as whites and more than 30 times as likely to
go jail for the same drug offenses as whites.

Sen. Hatch says: "I just hear that there are more young African American
kids who go to jail than white kids; therefore, there must be something
wrong with the system. I don't agree with that. If there are more young
African American kids committing crimes, and especially vicious crimes and
violent crimes, you don't help the problem by saying they should not be
punished and they should not be incarcerated somehow or other . . . unless
there is a justification for that."

Orrin, Orrin . . . look at me. Must we always wait for a problem to hit
white America before we act as Americans to solve it? How easily some hearts
bleed at the sight of wounded white children but become like turnips when
those in pain are black.