MEESE PANEL URGES CURBS ON FEDERAL OFFENSES

WASHINGTON -- An American Bar Association panel led by former Attorney
General Edwin Meese III warned lawmakers Monday against the "misguided,
unnecessary and harmful" tendency of showing they are tough on criminals by
turning more offenses into federal crimes.

In a report, the panel said that the penchant for federalizing crimes that
had been the purview of the states -- like murder, drug possession and
trafficking, rape and robbery -- ran counter to the nation's historic
reluctance to concentrate broad powers in a national police force.

"Enactment of each new federal crime bestows new federal investigative
power on federal agencies, broadening their power to intrude into
individual lives," the report said. "Expansion of federal jurisdiction also
creates the opportunity for greater collection and maintenance of data at
the federal level in an era when various databases are computerized and
linked."

The task force's reports said the federalization of crime was quickening as
lawmakers, seeking to be perceived as being tough on crime, were approving
an increasing number of federal criminal statutes.

The report said 40 percent of all federal criminal laws that had been
enacted since the Civil War were passed since 1970. In the previous
congressional term, more than 1,000 bills dealing with federal criminal
statutes were introduced through July.

Indeed, the task force said, so many federal criminal statutes are now on
the books that "there is no conveniently accessible, complete list of
federal crimes."

The report, titled "The Federalization of Criminal Law," is similar in tone
to comments made in December by Chief Justice William Rehnquist. In his
year-end report to the judiciary, Rehnquist criticized Congress, saying
that it was buckling under pressure to "appear responsive to every highly
publicized societal ill or sensational crime."

Monday's report is also noteworthy since the task force was headed by
Meese, who, during his tenure as President Ronald Reagan's attorney
general, had the reputation as being a prosecutor tough on crime.

The report warned in dire language of the potential threats of the
explosive growth in federal criminal statutes. It noted that federal
criminal justice system expenditures grew by 317 percent from 1982 to 1993,
compared with a 163 percent increase in state criminal justice financing in
the same period. And the report said the number of federal prosecutors in
U.S. attorneys offices increased to 8,000 from 3,000 in the last 30 years.

Several new laws that were passed amid heightened publicity, like
legislation in 1994 making "drive-by shootings" federal offenses, did not
result in the filing of even a single charge in 1997.

The report said that of the 59,242 federal charges that were made against
individuals in 1997, 16,629, or 28 percent, were for only one type of
offense -- drug trafficking.

"Increased federalization is rarely, if ever, likely to have any
appreciable effect on the categories of violent crime that most concern
Americans, because in practice federal law enforcement can only reach a
small percent of such activity," the report said.

It noted that despite the huge increase in financing for federal anti-crime
efforts, 95 percent of all prosecutions are still handled by state and
local authorities.

The report said the increase number of federal crimes placed new strains on
federal courts. Scarce resources for the federal courts were increasingly
being soaked up by criminal trials, sentencing hearings, post-sentencing
matters and appeals. "Civil litigants therefore suffer because of the
priority that must be given to any increase in federal prosecutions," the
report said.

The report's authors also worried that increased federal responsibility in
the criminal arena might confuse and discourage local law enforcement
efforts. "In light of federal assumption of jurisdiction, some state
entities may hesitate in pursuing the conduct in question," the report
said. "Such hesitation or withdrawal by local law enforcement would
undermine the primary role played by state law enforcement."

The panel suggested several means to help Congress refrain from enacting
more federal criminal statutes.

It recommended, for example, that Congress consider the costs to the
federal and state systems of any new federal criminal law before any new
criminal statutes are enacted. The panel suggested that the Congressional
Budget Office or the Congressional Research Service could conduct such an
analysis. The panel also recommended that new federal criminal laws contain
a "sunset provision" of no more than five years that would force lawmakers
to take another look at the need for the law after passions had cooled.

Failure to halt the trend, the report said, could have dire constitutional
consequences.

"The current federalization trend presents a troubling picture with
far-reaching consequences," the report concluded. "It reflects a phenomenon
capable of altering and undermining the careful decentralization of
criminal law authority that has worked well for all of our constitutional
history."