Juvenile Delinquency Prevention and Control Act of 1968, this department has made considerable progress in developing a comprehensive plan for the prevention and control of juvenile delinquency. Our relationships with both the regional and central offices of the Youth Development and Delinquency Prevention Administration have been excellent, and we are of the opinion that the Juvenile Delinquency Prevention and Control Act should continued to be administered by that office.

We support H.R. 6247 in that it does provide additional funds for juvenile delinquency programs. However, we would like to point out certain negative factors in the original act. As previously stated it has always been underfunded in terms of amounts appropriated. State Agencies providing delinquency services under an approved State Plan are penalized in that the agencies obligate themselves for 50 percent of the non-federal share of programs funded. Also, the state agency administering the approved Comprehensive State Plan is not eligible to receive funds through the Act for state administered programs.

We hope some consideration can be given to correcting these weaknesses which penalize the state agencies. We want to thank you for your interest in this matter, and for your assistance.

Cordially yours,

RUBEN K. KING,

Youth Development and Delinquency Prevention Administration,
Washington, D.C.

Regional Office,

Atlanta, Ga.

Mr. Charles Schultz, Director,

Office of Management of the Budget,
Washington, D.C.

Commissioner.

DEAR CONGRESSMAN PERKINS: We would like to ask your committee's favorable consideration of the legislation pending, which will extend the Juvenile Delinquency Act of 1968 that is scheduled to expire on June 30th 1971.

It is imperative to the youth of America that this legislation be extended. Some plan to have programs funded under the Safe Streets Act of 1970. It should be noted that the various Law Enforcement Planning Agencies are dominated by Law Enforcement Officers, and give high priority to funding programs which will directly affect themselves.

West Side Neighborhood Center does not receive funds under either of the above programs, but we do feel strongly that the Juvenile Delinquency Act of 1968 should be extended.

Thanking you for your consideration, I am

Yours for a better community,

NEAL W. CHAPMAN,

Resource Developer.

EXTENDING THE PROVISIONS OF THE JUVENILE DELINQUENCY PREVENTION AND CONTROL ACT OF 1968

THURSDAY, APRIL 29, 1971

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

GENERAL SUBCOMMITTEE ON EDUCATION OF THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR, Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met at 9:30 a.m., pursuant to call, in room 2257, Rayburn Office Building, Hon. Roman C. Pucinski (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Pucinski, Hicks, Chisholm, Biaggi, Forsythe, Veysey, and Peyser.

Staff members present: John F. Jennings, majority counsel; Alexandra J. Kisla, clerk; Toni Painter, secretary; and Charles W. Radcliffe, minority counsel for education.

Mr. PUCINSKI. Resuming our hearing on H.R. 6247, we are very pleased this morning to have with us Hon. Russell W. Peterson, the Governor of Delaware, who is chairman of the National Governors' Conference Committee on Crime Reduction and Public Safety.

Governor, we are very pleased to have you here. I know that you are extremely busy and have got many, many problems of your own, but it is most encouraging to see the chief executives of our States take time to come here and share with us their experiences on the need for legislation to help these problems.

I understand you have a statement. I will let you proceed in any way you wish, sir. Your entire statement will go in the record, but you proceed in any way you wish to.

STATEMENT OF HON. RUSSELL W. PETERSON, GOVERNOR OF

DELAWARE, CHAIRMAN, NATIONAL GOVERNORS' CONFERENCE COMMITTEE ON CRIME REDUCTIONS AND PUBLIC SAFETY

Governor PETERSON. Thank you, Chairman Pucinski.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you here this morning to present the views of the Governors of all the States on this urgent problem of juvenile delinquency and the Federal legislation which you are now considering on this subject.

It is not necessary for me to detail for you the seriousness of the youth offender situation in this country. Of course, it is well known by the Congress. You have had numerous reports made available to you which dramatize the startling increase in juvenile delinquency and youth involvement in felony crime.

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Essentially, most juvenile crime involves a fairly well-defined group of about 3.5 million youths who come to the attention of the police or the juvenile courts each year because of alleged behavior defined as delinquent. Slightly less than a million of these actually receive formal disposition by the juvenile courts.

The Uniform Crime Reports for 1969 reveal that 39 percent of all reported police arrests were of persons under 21 years of age. When only serious crimes are considered-such as murder, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny over $50, and auto theft-almost one-half of all persons arrested in 1969 were 18 years old or under. The under 21 group accounts for nearly 8 out of 10 auto thefts. Recidivism rates reach an astounding high of 72 percent for those first arrested at age 20 or under.

The real tragedy of the juvenile crime problem goes beyond these statistics, however. The fact is that these young offenders most often set patterns of antisocial behavior for the rest of their lives. They graduate from being juvenile delinquents into adult felons. One mistake with a juvenile can trigger a career of crime.

Your committee is very much aware of the failings of our justice system in dealing with youthful offenders. More often than not a young person, after being processed through the juvenile justice systems, ends up graduating with advanced knowledge of criminal tactics. In other words, our institutions too often serve as colleges of criminal knowledge.

Our present system tends to label youth offenders rather than really help them. We segregate them from the positive influences in our society. This tends to reinforce their antisocial behavior rather than rebuild wholesome personalities.

When our committee met with you in February, in an informal session, I expressed the view that we must change the way in which government at all levels responds to the problems of youth. If we had a disorderly child in our own family, we would not push him out of the home, and segregate him.

Instead, we would seek to surround him with all the love and positive influence of the family in order to rehabilitate him and correct his bad behavior. We would take a comprehensive approach to the problem.

Governments should do the same thing, and we are doing this in Delaware. We have set a goal of reducing violent crime by 50 percent by the year 1980.

To succeed in reaching this goal, we are marshalling our resources into a comprehensive attack on all facets of the problem-law enforcement, courts, correctional agencies and the root causes of crime, such as unemployment, poverty, poor housing, inadequate education, drug abuse, and racial unrest.

I think the crime rate is an index of society's failure to solve these problems. As we reduce crime, we will undoubtedly improve the quality of life.

And so in Delaware, we are mobilizing our educational system, our social welfare programs, our public health agencies, our job training and industrial development programs and, of course, our criminal justice system in a concerted effort to direct them toward this major goal for the State.

We are placing special emphasis on vocational education as a means of helping our young people select rewarding and meaningful careers. We must do a better job of guiding each child into a career that will enable him to develop his talents and abilities to the fullest potential.

Our aim is that every student who leaves school, regardless of whether he graduates, should have in hand either an acceptance to another educational institution, or a job offer, or both. I think each of us needs enough choices to be able to find a career that he thinks is satisfying.

To improve the effectiveness of this overall effort to reduce crime, we hope to establish with funds provided by the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration a systems analysis management approach. With this computer-assisted modern management technique, we can tell whether we are making progress toward our goal and we will adjust our programs accordingly.

This same agency in Delaware is designated to implement the Juvenile Delinquency Prevention and Control Act presently administered by the Youth Development and Delinquency Prevention Administration in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

We view our efforts to reduce crime as a comprehensive program to pull together all that Government does to establish domestic tranquility, to administer justice, to rehabilitate and correct individuals, and to prevent crime by the elimination of social conditions which breed antisocial tendencies in both adults and youth.

The prevention and control of juvenile delinquency is a major part of the crime reduction program in our State, and indeed, in all States. It is a major concern for all State government agencies dealing with social concerns and human needs.

The Omnibus Crime Control Act and the Juvenile Delinquency Act were designed to be companion programs, jointly administered by the States to form a comprehensive effort to deal with the problems of crime and juvenile delinquency.

The experience of the States in working with each of these two Federal programs, one in the Justice Department, and the other in HEW, as you well know, has been very different. The States have been pleased with the operation of the Omnibus Act, and with the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration.

The LEAA program has been well funded by the Congress, and has received a high priority within the Administration. What many felt would be just a police-oriented program has developed, under the leadership of the States where the decisionmaking responsibility resides, into a comprehensive effort at prevention of crime and delinquency, and of reform of the entire criminal justice system.

Major parts of the block grant money, under this Act, are being used by the States for juvenile delinquency prevention and control. In fiscal year 1969 in the country over $4 million in LEAA funds were spent for prevention and control of juvenile delinquency.

In fiscal year 1970, over $28 million was spent for these purposes at the direction of the States; and in fiscal year 1971, more than $65 million will be spent for juvenile programs. In Delaware in this current year we have three times as much money from LEAA for juvenile delinquency prevention and control as we have from Juvenile Delinquency Prevention and Control Act.

The simplicity of the Omnibus Crime Control Act, the simplicity of the guidelines written to administer this program, and the fact that decisionmaking power is held by the States all contribute to the effectiveness of this program. Title I of the Omnibus Act is simple because the Governors had a hand in writing it.

The National Governors' Conference, in the first real exercise of effective federalism by the Congress, actively participated in the drafting of this act, and in the writing of the guidelines, and finally, in the actual administration of the program.

Because of the latitude preserved by the States in the Omnibus Crime Control Act, the States have been able to determine their own priorities for dealing with youth delinquency, and have been able to spend the large amounts of money mentioned earlier. I can assure you that the States will continue to increase the funds committed for this purpose.

The special problems inherent in dealing with antisocial behavior in youth receive the expert attention they deserve from dedicated State government administrators and professionals. Their voices and hands are effective in giving direction to the setting of priorities within the State criminal justice plan required by the Omnibus Act.

The humanitarian approach to juvenile delinquency is not overshadowed by the interests of those who simply want to buy more hardware to fight crime in the streets. Law and order is not enough. We must seek law with justice.

The crime control planning commissions of many States have young people as members or advisers actively involved in writing the State plans.

Our own survey of State programs for the treatment and control of juvenile delinquency shows that the 23 States contacted in a spot check are spending in fiscal year 1971 $283 million. This is for treatment only. This is State-appropriated money, and does not include any Federal or local funding, and does not include the billions of dollars spent by the States in prevention of delinquency.

This is a measure of the commitment which State governments have made toward solving the problem of juvenile delinquency. The States have invested what resources they have in this effort. And now they ask the Federal Government to become an effective partner. We have found that willingness and cooperation in the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act.

Unfortunately, this has not been the case with the Juvenile Delinquency Prevention and Control Act. The act itself is far too complex in that it imposes, in sections 113, 123, and particularly in section 131, unnecessarily detailed requirements for getting anything done.

These are like hoops through which the States and localities are made to jump before they are allowed to get on with solving the problems of juvenile crime. I have asked the staff of the National Governors' Conference to furnish the subcommittee with a detailed analysis of the various provisions of the act.

Difficulties with the Juvenile Delinquency Act were further complicated by the 9-month delay in writing guidelines for the program. In contrast to the Omnibus Act there was no opportunity for States and localities to assist in the writing of these guidelines.