Mr. TWINAME. Mr. Shah might respond to that, if he may.

Mr. SHAH. You have made an excellent comment, Mr. Bell, about needing to motivate these youngsters in training schools. I think one of the prime examples is about some of the instances I have heard, about we have had enough research, I would argue with you. Everyone knows kids are dropping out of schools at high rates. We also know they don't seem to adapt very well to the middle class oriented educational system. Why hasn't that knowledge been applied as we know it?

I don't think it is fair, or appropriate, to balance action money against research money. I might simply remind the committee that something like 15 percent of our defense expenditure money goes into research, and a fraction of 1 percent into crime and delinquency. Are we to assume that we already have to have such a fund of knowledge, technology?

There are the most pressing problems. I think there are technologies developed that motivate youngsters.

As a matter of fact, a project done under the act which has been described over here, the national training school right here in Washington, D.C., manages to increase the standard achievement score of juvenile delinquents, something like two grades in 6 months.

That is not just a question of personnel, but technology, a precise, more powerful teaching technology. This is the kind of research we are supporting at the National Institutes of Mental Health, and this kind of knowledge needs to be funneled into the action programs.

Mr. BELL. I think what you are saying is very effective. One of the important points to remember is just what you are saying, the fact that they have already been dropouts, probably, is certainly going to hinder their adjustment to education in the different institutions; they have to be motivated as you said a few minutes ago. How do you bring that about? You have to have the kind of personnel that can motivate these kids. Every kid is different; one type of motivation might apply in one case that may not work on the other.

Mr. SHAH. I might reiterate the point that we are talking about crowded court calendars. We are talking about an influx of cases, and the outputs are very limited so you have a backup, and you are talking in a sense making some more holes in the receptacle so the water, if you wish to use that analogy, can go out faster.

I suggest that too many youngsters are being funneled into juvenile justice systems to begin with, and we pay a great price for that.

There is no reason why running away from home, a youngster who is truant from school, which may be more a reflection on the classroom

than on the kid.

That leads to big loads on probation, poor conditions in training schools. I would suggest that there are far too many youngsters who are being labeled as delinquent, and it is a label; it is not a condition like malaria or typhoid that a person has or has not. I think the basic point was made earlier that there are too many youngsters who do have problems, but these should not be handled by the juvenile justice system.

Mr. BELL. Perhaps that, or perhaps the juvenile system ought to develop a halfway house, which is not like being incarcerated; they treat you like a kid in school, there are no guards and an attempt is made to develop psychological understanding.

Mr. SHAH. There are some very good programs along that line going on, where the youngster is provided something in between probation, and institutionalization.

The youngster goes to a public school, but from the halfway house rather than from home. He goes home on weekends. If he is having problems, he can come back to the halfway house just for a weekend. He does not again have to go right back to the institution, even if he is having problems.

Mr Bell. Just to take a different tactic, would you suggest that perhaps as high as 60 percent of any kind of serious crimes are committed by recidivists?

Mr. SHAH. That is a fair statement if you are talking about adult crimes; yes.

Mr. Bell. Doesn't that again point up that the most important aspect of this bill should be toward the improvement of our system of rehabilitation?

Mr. GEMIGNANI. Yes, but important also is that you can't isolate the juvenile justice systems from other institutions of the community. What would happen if suddenly you divert 200 youngsters from the juvenile court of a community?

You, by necessity, have to do something with your school in that town by getting them to look at the youngsters in a different way and offer them services that they were not being offered in the first place.

You have to look at the labor market, if they are employable, If they can hold jobs you may have to get them certified by a high school diploma.

You may have to look toward the welfare and health systems in taking care of those youngsters when they are out.

Mr. BELL. My time is past.

Mr. MAZZOLI (presiding). The chairman has left, and he asked me to keep a watch on the time. Gentlemen, I have sat here this morning and I have been interested in what has been said, and I have been as frustrated as I imagine the people who are in charge of these young people are. They are as frustrated as I am today in being unable to do anything, either from lack of money or from lack of proper support. I would like to ask some fairly basic questions to clear up my mind on this thing.

I will ask Mr. Twiname, since you started off today. Do you generally agree that family insecurity and family instability have promoted to some extent juvenile delinquency; yes or no?

Mr. TWINAME. Yes.

Mr. MAZZOLI. Do you feel the same way about poverty, that the incidence of poverty has produced an exacerbated juvenile delinquency problem?

Mr. TWINAME. Yes.

Mr. MAZZOLI. Overpopulation, or overconcentration of people? Mr. TWINAME. Perhaps.

Mr. MAZZOLI. And drugs?

Mr. TWINAME. Yes.

Mr. MAZZOLI. Those things exist, yet your basic effort in YDDPA is not to look at these causes so much as to examine and study more programs to help the juvenile delinquent who is already a juvenile delinquent. Why study the delinquents further? Why not attack the

causes?

Mr. TWINAME. No. I am glad you gave us a chance to clarify it. I think we ought to talk about an example of this model system approach. We are not talking about more studies, because NIMH is doing studies and others are doing research. We are not talking about just more projects, one to address a poverty situation and one to address a drug situation, because they don't get pulled together, as has been discussed here.

What we need to do-and this is our approach-is to pull together what we have learned in isolated projects in a way in which they can properly assume an interdependent role within a community.. If one project becomes successful and diverts a youth out, it has to be picked up or addressed by another institution. What we are looking at is how can we get at the comprehensiveness of the problem, because you have named factors that are all present in many of our communities. In the model systems approach, we're saying the Youth Development Administration, and others in the department, such as education, and vocational rehabilitation effort that the most important role the Youth Development and Delinquency Prevention Administration can provide, as this committee authorizes under the act and which we will propose some amendments to, is to bring this knowledge together and to be a catalyst, to be a leader in developing a more communitywide approach.

We can give an example of what we mean by a model system. It involves bringing together those who have funds, who have expertise, who are addressing these different problems that you mentioned at the Federal level, working through those same counterparts at the State level and picking out communities where the institutions and the officials want to do something about these problems, and getting them to be able to each pick up his own responsibility in carrying them out.

We can give you an example to show how, for the first time-for the first time in government, really-we might pull that off. If we could do it, I think our frustrations would not be that we are putting all the money in and having all these projects and not having much to show for it.

Mr. MAZZOLI. That gets me to the problem I am having here. That is, if we are not treating so much the causes, that is, you are not directly concerned with the overconcentration of people, or drugs, or these other things-we have many agencies in government now that are focusing precisely on those. You are simply identifying those as causes; then you are trying to cure the ills without getting at the disease.

You say you are going to try to work with a child with vocational training, and an improved court system, and so forth. But I wonder if we have not got the cart before the horse in this agency you head?

The second part is, why should it even continue to exist at all when all it simply does is act as an umbrella. Because I for one do not think we have all wisdom and all knowledge up here in Washington.

I am quite prepared to accept my colleague from Massachusetts' feeling that in our localities we have quite qualified people who know what to do with the problem if they had the available funds.

So give me the rationale for your continued existence, if this same money you are playing around with could be diverted to local communities in the President's revenue-sharing plan?

Mr. COHEN. I will leave to Mr. Gemignani and Mr. Twiname the rationale for their continued existence, although I agree with it.

Mr. MAZZOLI. I would be surprised if you did not, since you are an employee.

- Mr. COHEN. No, I am employed in the Office of the Secretary, and I would like to address the first part of your question, which is more a departmentwide question.

You pointed to a number of things, namely family life, poverty, and drugs as just three components.

I very much appreciate your support of the revenue-sharing program, which will get that operational money down to the people who do something in the streets and in the communities, but I think it is important to realize, sir, that the comprehensive attack on these problems is reinforced by not only revenue sharing, but by the programs scattered in different government agencies. Today the President will send to the Congress his reorganization plan which will bring together in the Department of Human Resources a lot of these now scattered programs from OEO, from the Department of Agriculture, et cetera. All of them bear on this problem, and when we at the departmental level look at them, all these resources are there and we try to piece them together. I think the single biggest step that has been taken to close the poverty gap is the family assistance title of H. R. 1 now being discussed in the Ways and Means Committee to give people an economic security floor.

So in terms of defending the actual program, I will leave that to others, but in terms of the comprehensive approach, we in the Office of the Secretary are looking at precisely that problem and trying to coordinate these various programs.

I am not so sure what I was saying is worth recording, but this new Department of Human Resources will be looking at that problem.

Mr. PUCINSKI (presiding). Mr. Twiname, I appreciate your point, but I sense that would be very narrow for us. Even though we are making a point to the committee today about the administration's total activities I think we would be too narrow to say that it really, where juvenile delinquency-the President's Welfare Act which would close the remaining poverty gap by 70 percent is an important step that concerns itself with juvenile delinquency, I appreciate your taking that broad view, but I think Mr. Gemignani can give you an example of things that we think can be done and that are being done

Mr. MAZZOLI. What I want to know, and this is the final question, is, why should you continue to exist and take the money and dispense it, or organize the dispensation of it when this money could be laid in the hands of the people at home, which is certainly in the line of the philosophy of the President, and of this administration, and I think at that point the argument is would it be more efficiently used at home that way, or through you all?

Mr. GERMIGNANI. Let me try to answer that.

You asked several questions, so let me try to get at all of them. Your concerns regarding poverty and so forth concern us also. Those things contribute not only to delinquency, but to many of the social problems we have in the country. There are many ways one has to address himself to those particular problems.

We don't negate them in terms of our approach. Relating to another of your concerns I would point out that the majority of our funding is at the community level.

The model systems we are talking of are community model systems, and the programs are developed by the local people in the area.

In response to your concern for getting more money out to the community, I would agree with it.

We are not talking about a massive amount of money in this program. We are talking about the utilization of existing funds to influence the quality of programs being funded by other sources.

In the development of our programs, we intend to bring together national task forces in each of the various social settings that we have outlined.

Incidentally, when one mentions the problems of poverty, as we did earlier, as a causitive factor in delinquency-that factor becomes less important in the suburbs, or rural areas. Here you find less poverty and family disorganization, but delinquent behavior continues to persist.

The national task forces presently are composed of personnel from the various Federal agencies that fund heavily in this field. Those would be, for instance, ourselves, NIMH, Office of Education, Vocational Rehabilitation, and the Departments of Justice, HUD, OEO, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and so on. Federal staff is joined on the task force by some of the leading experts in the universities together with leading practitioners to pull together the best knowledge and skills in the field. The task forces will also assist in the transfer and utilization of knowledge.

As we go to a site location to develop a program, the task force picks up additional people. These include both State and local representatives. Youth involvement is encouraged at all levels in this process.

The task forces will assist in developing programs both to meet common needs and as a base for the utilization and transfer of knowledge.

Mr. TWINAME. Mr. Chairman, I think this is very important. This has never been done before. The fact that this administration has money that in effect brings other players to the table and which causes interest to be present at the State level, makes them willing to get together in a planning venture and select a site in which local people are willing to work together toward this problem. This is the thrust of it.

Mr. GERMIGNANI. Mr. Mazzoli, we are talking about, of course, something that we are proposing for the future, although we have gotten some headstart in trying to gear up for what we would like to do.

The task force that is presently furtherest ahead in the process of developing model systems, is our task force for rural America.

I would like to tell you a little bit about what they are doing so as to give you some idea of this and also how it is operating.

Mr. MAZZOLI. Mr. Chairman, may I suggest, I have gone over my time, and Mr. Quie is here.

Mr. QUIE. I would like to ask some questions.

Mr. PUCINSKI. Why don't we come back to that in a moment?