Calling It A Crime Bill Is Criminal

Here’s a slogan for the 1996 ClintonGore campaign: We can’t fool all the people all the time, but twice would be nice.

In three ads released last week, the president’s re-election team touted Bill Clinton as the Pillsbury Doughboy version of Clinton Eastwood. The spots boasted that he pushed through the first major crime bill in years and fought to ban assault weapons.

At best, the claims add up to nothing. The federal government handles barely 2 percent of the nation’s criminal prosecutions, so a congressional crime bill has limited reach. But even the toughest stuff looks pillowy. The “100,000 police” provisions in last year’s crime bill provide only enough money for 20,000 cops this year and no funds at all after six years.

Meanwhile, the assault weapons ban only outlaws unlovely guns. Available research indicates that the controversial firearms play a much larger role in Hollywood than in the real world. New Jersey reports that they crop up in 0.026 percent of all crimes in the state. That tracks with figures from around the country. None of the nearly 4,000 homicides committed in Washington, D.C., between 1988 and 1993 involved rifles of any sort.

To appreciate the White House’s true attitude toward punks, check the record. The president’s first two budgets slashed the payrolls of the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Agency. The FBI Academy didn’t graduate anybody in 1993 or 1994 - Congress paid for 600 new G-men this year - and the number of DEA special agents tumbled from 347 in 1992 to zero in 1994.

The education-and-training president also kicked his constables out of the classroom. The FBI offered special training to 14,741 agents in 1992 but to only 2,677 in 1994. The number of agents who received training in the field fell 50 percent in that span, and intelligence-training class at DEA shriveled from 140 to none.

Not surprisingly, this helped the bad guys. The DEA arrested 7,878 scofflaws in 1992 but only 5,279 last year - a 32.8 percent fall. Overseas arrests slid 18 percent in two years from 1,856 to 1,522.

Federal prosecutors also took a dive. Sens. Robert Dole and Orrin Hatch noted last year that federal prosecutions fell in virtually all major criminal categories. Robbery prosecutions dropped 9.5 percent in comparison with the previous two years. Other reductions included cases for assault, down 17.5 percent; for larceny and theft, off 8 percent; for sex offenses, down 11.4 percent; for drug violations, down 9.2 percent; and for weapons and firearms infractions a fall of 23 percent!

While the president handed pink slips to street officers, he sent Congress a bill designed to fight violence by offering kids the equivalent of guest spots on the “Barney” show. The Community Youth Services and Supervision Grant Program Act sought $630 million to expose kids to “athletics, culture, education and arts and crafts.” The Family and Community Endeavor Schools would have tossed dance lessons into the mix, while encouraging local educators to talk with one another.

A $40 million Community Academies Program would have encouraged kids to chill with social workers, who in turn would ladle out self-esteem (“My, Eric, what big shoes you have!”). The Clinton squad also would have cleansed the streets by spending money to find missing Alzheimer’s patients and study plants in Hawaii.

Only certain punishment regularly reduces bloodshed. It changes a criminal’s calculations about the price of breaking the law.

This insight is crucial. John DiIulio of Princeton University and the Brookings Institution warns that “the crime rate is going to go shooting through the roof in a couple of years.” The number of young men aged 14 to 17 will increase 23 percent by 2005, and this “group of kids is going to make the Crips and Bloods look positively tame.”

The key is to discourage savagery now, when violent acts account for an alarming 25 percent of all crime. Unfortunately, federal judges have made it almost impossible to lock up bad people for extended periods of time, especially young bad people - and the president’s judicial appointees haven’t reversed that trend.

When Americans demanded action against crime, Bill Clinton sacked FBI agents and handed out basketballs. That’s not serious - and neither are the ads that portray him as the baddest hombre to occupy the White House since Teddy Roosevelt rode out of town.

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