Correspondence

...Herb London New York, NY CCRI and David Duke In the Scrapbook item “Tarring CCRI With the David Duke Brush” (Sept...

...There is still plenty of room for debate about crime-fighting programs, but it should be based on fact, not errors and misinterpretation...

...Police chiefs and mayors kept telling Attorney General Reno that they were seeing progress against youth crime, she asked the FBI to check into it, and when it did she announced the results...

...Biden and the administration’s own new drug czar, Gen...

...The data indicated that between 1994 and 1995 violent crimes fell by 9.9 percent, from 10.9 million to 9.9 million, and that property crimes fell by 5.5 percent from 31 million to 29.3 million...

...About 20,000 federally funded police are on the beat now, with more coming on every week...

...Since my story ran, and in concert with pressure brought by NAAG and others, Justice has backed off some, but not all, of its most underhanded antiPLRA legal maneuvers and arguments...

...But to describe Pataki as the state’s most genuinely conservative governor makes sense only if he is compared with Mario Cuomo and, even then, only if he is compared selectively...

...In addition, I reviewed Mr...

...The New York personal income tax rate is still higher than that of contiguous states...

...Allan J. Favish Tarzana, CA...

...Business taxes have remained intact...

...Schmidt is thereby answering, in the negative and for the public record, one of the many questions that I posed in my article, namely, Was the timing, production, or release of data conditioned in any way by White House political operatives or done in conjunction with the president’s reelection drive...

...Prof...

...Misinterpreting one line in an initial Justice Department legal brief, DiIulio says the department is gutting the recently enacted Prison Litigation Reform Act by contending that any prison that violates a judicial order of any kind should continue to be supervised by the courts...

...And now this “conservative” governor has introduced an environmental bond issue of $1.75 billion that will increase state indebtedness—already the highest in the nation per capita— another $2.5 billion...

...New data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, for example, show a 9 percent decline in violent crime from 1994 to 1995...

...16) deserves perspective that the article does not offer...

...But those weapons figured in only an infinitesimal amount of crime in the first place, and many of them are now available in modified form...

...that the program’s funds have been spread for purely political purposes across hundreds of jurisdictions (which Sen...

...The so-called dramatic tax cut launched by Pataki is little more than the long-delayed third year of the tax plan introduced by Mario Cuomo...

...We are proud of our crime-fighting record, and objective measures show it is making a difference...

...RESPONDS: With due respect, Mr...

...The 1996-97 budget of $66 billion is the largest in the state’s history, with “one-shots” and borrowing from the state pension fund that Pataki, as candidate, deplored...

...Moreover, as a number of analysts have argued conclusively, the Brady Bill’s background-checking system is full of holes...

...DiIulio may not have seen all of these briefs—but we would have provided them if he had asked about the issue...

...Despite the claim that spending declined in 1995 “for the first time since 1943,” spending actually increased if “off-budget” expenditures are included in the total budget, as they should be...

...What a charming tale...

...In other words, unless a murderer engages in serial killing, torture, or the murder of a police officer, capital punishment does not apply...

...This same “conservative” governor vowed to lead the charge against the pro-life plank in the Republican platform...

...In the first two years of a six-year program, we have funded nearly half of those 100,000 community police...

...it had nothing whatsoever to do with the pre-convention cycle...

...The death penalty in New York for which the governor is given credit does not include first-degree murder...

...Until recently, the administration was asserting that the program had already put over 40,000 more cops “on the beat...

...But before 1995, the same agency that compiled these data, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), counted well under 7 million violent crimes for 1992...

...Joseph Biden scolded me for failing to be realistic about when I testified before him that the program’s effectiveness would be compromised unless its resources were concentrated so as to permit “saturation community-based policing” of high-crime neighborhoods...

...Schmidt’s own testimony before the Senate, plus other materials and news reports on the Clinton administration’s official position on the reform...

...We never intended that to be our position, we expressly said so to the courts in subsequent filings in each case where that brief was filed, and we have explicitly rejected that position in every case since...

...Duke’s appearance, however, helps to illustrate the common ground he shares with opponents of CCRI: Both are in favor of subordinating the merit principle to achieve their desired racial outcomes in academia and the work force...

...In other words, I suppose that Mr...

...Before I wrote the essay, I read several of the Department’s anti-Prison Litigation Reform Act motions (not just its “initial legal brief ”) and a highly critical analysis of the same by the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG...

...3. The national crime-victimization data released on September 16 were preliminary estimates...

...They would join me in disputing outright his blanket statement that the Department is now “defending” the PLRA...

...Schmidt, or, better, his boss, the attorney general, would plainly state the following truths, and release the following data, at a press briefing to be held on the same day as the president’s next crime speech: 1. There are not 100,000 new cops on the beat thanks to Bill Clinton, and that program has had no known effect on crime rates...

...I guess that’s progress...

...John R. Schmidt Associate Attorney General Department of Justice Washington, DC JOHN J. DIIULIO, JR...

...Finally Prof...

...Correspondence We’re Tough on Crime John J. DiIulio, Jr.’s criticism of the Clinton administration’s crime-fighting record is wrong on several counts (“How to Deal with the Youth Crime Wave,” Sept...

...We are ahead of schedule in putting 100,000 police on our streets, and we will get there...

...There was no such conspiracy...

...Schmidt also confessed that the 20,000 new cops include not only new hires but redeployed personnel...

...The job increases to which Tucker refers represent a small and disproportionately lower total than increases in the rest of the nation...

...I would be more inclined to accept this stunning double coincidence if Mr...

...16), you rightly denounce the invitation extended to David Duke to make the case against racial preferences...

...The attack on President Clinton’s 100,000-police-on-the-street program is also misleading...

...This program is an unqualified success—which is why it is supported by every major law-enforcement organization in the country...

...After redesigning its survey instrument, it counted about 10 million violent crimes for 1992...

...Schmidt to governors, other state and local leaders of both parties, and career law-enforcement officials to whom I have spoken...

...Schmidt suggests that Reno’s premature release of good-news crime data on August 8 was purely in response to requests by local police who wanted to know whether the progress they were sensing was for real...

...I would be glad to introduce Mr...

...The Justice Department erred in not publicizing the fact that the federal government had for years been unintentionally undercounting violent crimes in America by as much as 50 percent...

...And I suppose that the release of more goodnews crime data on September 16—the day of the dueling crime speeches by Clinton and Dole—was not politically timed, either...

...In testing my own observations (I am not a lawyer, but it seemed clear from what I read that Justice was purposely undercutting both the letter and the spirit of the PLRA), I consulted several people, including the one who knows most about the PLRA and its stunted implementation, Pennsylvania Corrections Department general counsel Sarah Vandenbraak, who in the early 1990s spearheaded the PLRA effort for the National District Attorneys Association...

...But police hiring never happens overnight—unless you want underqualified, undertrained recruits...

...Or, if Justice Department officials prefer, let them just put it as follows: The probability that the administration’s cops and guns programs have caused the drops in crime we so much enjoy reporting is about equal to the chance that a hurricane that blows through a Washington, D.C., cement factory will leave an exact replica of the Lincoln Memorial in its wake...

...Schmidt’s response is disingenuous and misleading on every count...

...In fact, the effective capital gains rate in New York is 40 percent...

...Sept...

...4. Recent federal and other data show that drug use is up substantially among young people, and for reasons that Sen...

...It would have been truer, however, had Mr...

...and that New York City, which alone accounts for about a third of the crime drops since 1993, experienced the drop without adding more cops...

...The Justice Department supports the Prison Litigation Reform Act and is defending it in court against constitutional challenges brought by prisonersrights groups...

...But before BJS released its first summary of the new survey data, and before the vintage ’96 champagne got uncorked to celebrate the decline to 9.9 million violent crimes, no one had ever counted as many as 7 million violent crimes in a single year...

...that not even the outside “experts” who remain in favor at Reno Central will argue that the 20,000 have yet had any measurable effect on crime rates...

...That there has been some positive change in New York is undeniable...

...Schmidt asserts that about “20,000 federally funded police are on the beat now...

...Barry McCaffery, have indicated, including the Clinton administration’s substantial cuts in federal anti-drug efforts, both at the borders and on the streets...

...DiIulio insinuates that some political conspiracy was behind the release of the FBI’s data showing the first drop in juvenile violent-crime arrest rates in seven years...

...Their only significant difference is the color of the finished product— white or rainbow...

...The new survey instrument is more accurate...

...2. The Brady Bill, which Reno has credited repeatedly for drops in crime, banned 19 assault weapons...

...Doubting Pataki William Tucker’s piece “Who Is George Pataki...