administrator who is dealing with 93 Federal judicial districts and 300 or 400 Federal district judges in those districts, and in addition people scattered all around. They don't have the opportunity for promotion. They are not involved in the big agency where they have the potentials for wider horizons that they would have in the unified service. Mr. RAILSBACK. I am assuming there would have to be some changes made and streamlining done in respect to improving his office. Doesn't it boil down to the proposition that some people think that the court should retain control of this particular type of function and that you are suggesting it could more properly be carried out by your office? My question to you is, Why do you feel that you, as the Attorney General, could perform better, assuming that there was streamlining done and the court administrator or probation officer would be given more men, more power and we could help coordinate the functions in his office rather than yours? Mr. CLARK. Because ideally when a man enters prison, he would go through a lengthy period of evaluation. That is what we try to do now. He is examined, tested in many different ways. He goes into a tailored plan of programing for him and his sentence and his character are taken into account. We try to look all the way down the road to his ultimate release. But if we get half way across down the nent and the rails change gauge and everybody has to get off the train and get on another train with another conductor, I think we lose a tremendous amount of our potential. More significantly, with all of the qualities agencies have, human nature has, if one agency is responsible for institutional care in 24 major prisons around the country, and for the care of people there, how flexible do we realistically think a shift from institutional care to community supervision and care will be if it is in another agency? Not only another agency but another branch of the Government. What can the courts really contribute? Do we want our courts administering a bureaucracy of prisons, even if it is field supervision? Is that a judicial function? Can they really add to it? Does it detract from their judicial responsibility? Mr. RAILSBACK. You are kind of pinpointing what I was trying to get at earlier and that is, there is a difference between working with somebody that has been in prison and somebody that has not. Your reasoning makes sense to me in respect to possibly there being a need for some additional supervision and some different kind of supervision by your office in respect to somebody that has been in prison. It seems to me with respect to the functions of what is now known as the probation officer, that he could probably perform the functions that you are asking be delegated to your office not in respect to a presentence investigation but with respect to somebody that has been granted probation and where the responsibility of the probation officer is to check on him and continue his surveillance. Mr. CLARK. Well, I don't really think so. First, you would have greater flexibility. It may be that you could move directly to community care programs rather than through prison with some. So many are released on probation today. I think particularly misdemeanor offenders, first offenders. And we know we lose so many of those to recidivism. If we had a stepped-up program scientifically integrated into all of our corrections experience, so we could give our very best effort to these probationers, we might salvage many of them. We may have a higher potential for salvage there if we apply our best experience and technique there because this is a place where you can really make a difference. Mr. RAILSBACK. That is all I have, Mr. Chairman. Chairman CELLER. Mr. Biester. Mr. BIESTER. Are you suggesting that the courts are not capable of making that determination? Mr. CLARK. What determination? Mr. BIESTER. The determination with respect to the kind of punishment a given offender should receive. Isn't that the sentencing function? Mr. CLARK. This is another issue entirely. I think you have to think carefully about what our sentencing function means today. Look at the indeterminate sentence, which is the trend. We are now giving indeterminate sentences in about 16 percent of the cases, or something like that. Some States are much higher and they are doing a better job than we are because of it. You can see there is some question. What is it that the judge sees or knows that he can say, 10 years, here and 5 years, here? If you have the opportunity to go forward with the individual and judge him not as he may be 3 years from now but as he is today, you can do better. I don't know of anything in the background or training of judges as lawyers that gives them experience or insight into corrections. I think corrections is a science in and of itself and I think that science needs to be applied to these individuals. Mr. BIESTER. It does seem to me that the court at the time it imposes a sentence has certain choices. It can choose to send a man to prison. It can choose to give him probation to serve time, in a sense, on the street or he can serve it behind a wall. That choice, that decision, is essential, it seems to me, to the sentencing function. Now, isn't that a decision that the judge is better able to make? Mr. CLARK. That decision is the sentencing function, but once the decision has been made, why then the individual is turned over to another process, another branch of Government, where the corrections technique needs to be utilized, not the judicial technique. Mr. CORMAN. Mr. Chairman. Chairman CELLER. Mr. Corman. Mr. CORMAN. I would like to ask one question to clear up the record. This bill does absolutely nothing to diminish the right of the court in imposing sentence; is that correct? Mr. CLARK. It does not affect that at all, that is correct. Mr. CORMAN. Under this bill or at the present time we have some division between the judiciary and executive branches. At the moment the judiciary handles all those functions that involve a person that does not go to prison and the executive handles the man while he is in prison. Isn't that correct? Mr. CLARK. That is correct. Mr. CORMAN. This proposal would provide the judiciary would handle everything up to time of sentence and the executive branch would handle all postsentencing activities; isn't that correct? Mr. CLARK. That is correct. Chairman CELLER. The committee will now adjourn. We have scheduled hearings for this afternoon, Mr. Attorney General, but the supplemental appropriation bill is coming up concerning Vietnam and our Armed Forces. There probably will be three or four rollcalls. With so many interruptions, it would not be worth while to continue the hearings this afternoon. We will have to adjourn until Tuesday morning at 10 o'clock. Mr. CLARK. I think I may be scheduled to testify in the Senate at that time, Mr. Chairman, but I will check. Chairman CELLER. Will you let us know if you can't appear and we will have other witnesses. Mr. CLARK. Very good, sir. Chairman CELLER. Thank you. (Whereupon at 12:20 p.m., the hearing was recessed to reconvene at 10 a.m., Tuesday, March 21, 1967.) ANTI-CRIME PROGRAM WEDNESDAY, MARCH 22, 1967 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, The subcommittee met at 10:05 o'clock a.m., in room 2141, Rayburn Building, Hon. Emanuel Celler (chairman) presiding. Present: Messrs. Celler, Rodino, Rogers, Donohue, Brooks, Corman, McCulloch, Mathias, McClory, and Biester. Staff present: William R. Foley, general counsel; John W. Dean III, associate counsel; and Donald E. Santarelli, associate counsel. Chairman CELLER. The committee will come to order. At our last meeting I think one of our members was questioning the Attorney General. Do you have a question, Mr. Biester? Mr. BIESTER. I believe, Mr. Attorney General, at the last meeting we were discussing the Corrections Act, and I have two or three questions this morning. STATEMENT OF HON. RAMSEY CLARK, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES; ACCOMPANIED BY FRED M. VINSON, JR., ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL IN CHARGE OF THE CRIMINAL DIVISION-Continued Mr. CLARK. Go right ahead. Mr. BIESTER. Are there not possible appeals of a probationary sentence that has been imposed by a judge; and, if so, would not your Department also be engaged in both sides of an individual's sentence; that is, subsequent prosecution of an appeal, which may be successful, and also investigation of his background and personal contact with him? Mr. CLARK. Well, the investigation in background, insofar as it related to presentencing, would remain under the judiciary. I do not believe I see a difference there from the preconvention custody that we so frequently have, where people are not released on bail. Mr. BIESTER. Ought there not be some special relationship between a man who has charge of probation and the subject of probation and does not the existence of that special relationship imperil the position of the subject, in the event he is tried again? Mr. CLARK. No; I do not see that. I do not quite know what would transpire in relationship between a probation officer responsible for |