Statement of Richard C. Wertz, Executive Director Governor's Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice State of Maryland on behalf of The National Conference of State Criminal Justice Planning Administrators before The Subcommittee on State, Justice Commerce and Judiciary Committee on Appropriations United States House of Representatives Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the Committee: On behalf and as Chairman of the National Conference of State Criminal Justice Planning Administrators* and as Executive Director of the Governor's Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice of the State of Maryland, I appreciate the opportunity you have extended to me to address you on the matter of the FY 1980 appropriation to implement the soon to be reauthorized Crime Control Act program and the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act program. In the professional judgment of the members of the National Conference, Congress should appropriate $650 million to LEAA for FY 1980, of which $50 million should be for the funding of state, regional and local administration, and not more than $75 million should be for funding of the Juvenile Justice Act. The National Conference would like to see LEAA stabilized at its FY 1979 level of $657,845,000, a total which includes the National Institute of Corrections. II Crime Control As a Priority The control of serious street crimes and the upgrading of the efficiency, effectiveness and fairness of this nation's criminal justice system is our The National Conference of State Criminal Justice Planning Administrators represents the directors of the fifty-seven (57) State and territorial criminal justice Planning Agencies (SPAs) created by the states and territories to plan for and encourage improvements in the administration of adult and juvenile justice. The SPAS have been designated by their jurisdictions to administer federal financial assistance programs created by the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 as amended (the Crime Control Act) and the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 (the Juvenile Justice Act). During Fiscal Year 1979, the SPAS have been responsible for determining how best to allocate approximately 63 percent of the total appropriations under the Crime Control Act and approximately 64 percent of the total appropriations under the Juvenile Justice Act. In essence, the states, through the SPAS, are assigned the central role under the two Acts. -2 top domestic priority. Recent public opinion polls clearly indicate that the American people are fed up with the violence and property loss caused in every community in this country by our lawless elements. They are fed up with the inability of our society to prevent or control crime and delinquency and the inability of our police, courts, corrections, and juvenile justice agencies to deal adequately with the criminal offender. No other domestic issue not health care, not the energy problem, not even inflation is of greater concern to most of our citizens. For example, Time Magazine in its October 23, 1978 issue published a poll, conducted by Yankelovich, Skelly and White, which asked a nationally representative sample of registered voters how they felt about government spending. The following chart graphically displays the people's priorities: In January, a poll of American men conducted for another national magazine by Louis Harris and Associates asked respondents to rate our national priorities. They did so as follows: In 1967 the President's Crime Commission identified a litany of needs of the criminal justice system. Many of these problems still exist today. An indication of the need is the fact that public expenditures for criminal justice increased 9.3 percent in 1977 (the last year for which figures are available) to a record $21.5 billion. State governments increased expenditures by 11.7 percent and local governments by 7.9 percent. Congress should realize that the percentage of federal grant-in-aid support for improving the state and local criminal justice system is decreasing as compared to state and local expenditures. At one point, LEAA appropriations represented almost 6 percent of the total state and local criminal justice expenditures, -4 but under the Administration's budget request for FY 1980, LEAA's appropria- of total state and local criminal justice expenditures to only about 2.5 percent, a level at which the possible impact of the federal funds might come into question. While the Administration has proposed a cut of 4.4 percent in the total budget of the Department of Justice and 16.9 percent in the LEAA program, it has also proposed a 7 percent increase for HUD, and 11.5 percent increase for HEW, a 3 percent increase for the Department of Transportation and a 16 percent increase for the Defense Department. Over 99 percent of the Department of Justice's proposed budget cut is taken from LEAA. We must question the fairness of this apportionment, particularly, in view of the importance of crime control and criminal justice improvement efforts and the obvious intention of the federal government to disengage from law enforcement activity in areas of concurrent jurisdiction. These figures indicate that the federal government is placing too low a priority on the federal government's only criminal justice and crime control program while public concern and state and local investments continue to increase. For over a decade now, the federal crime control program has been the single most important factor in crime control and criminal justice reform efforts in the United States. It has provided the seed money needed by the states and local units of government to develop coordinated and comprehensive responses to the problems confronting our criminal justice system and to initiate expanded and improved criminal justice services. |