JAMES O. EASTLAND, Mississippi EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts STROM THURMOND, South Carolina MARK H. GITENSTEIN, Chief Counsel and Staff Director CONTENTS Is held on: t I.-Restructuring the Law Enforcement Assistance Administraon August 16, 1978 gust 23, 1978 Part II.-Coreer Criminals tember 27, 1978____ 8_. 216. nt of: mes, J. Robert, Assistant Administrator, Law Enforcement ssistance Administration___. s, Harl, district attorney for Multnomah County, Portland, Oreg- ey, James F., prosecuting attorney, Marion, Ind_- ert, Earl J., U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia_ her, Andrew L., State's attorney, Montgomery County, Rockville, ce, Carol S., district attorney, Harris County, Houston, Tex---- strong, David L., Commonwealth's attorney, letter of October er criminal program in Maryland.. 80 163 ts of certain defendants compiled by the U.S. Attorney's Office the District of Columbia.. 38 ninal Careers of Habitual Felons," National Institute of Law forcement and Criminal Justice, LEAA, Department of Justice. background materials for the career criminal program__. datory Prison Sentences: Their Projected Effects on Crime 1 Prison Populations," Joan Petersilia and Peter W. Greenwood_ e) Prison Experience of Career Criminals: Current Practice Future Consideration," Paul Honig.__. ) Rand Habitual Offender Project: A Summary of Research dings to Date," March 1978__ CAREER CRIMINALS WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1978 U.S. SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL LAWS AND PROCEDURES Washington, D.C. subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:15 a.m., in room Dirksen Senate Office Building, Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr. man of the subcommittee), presiding. sent: Representative Pattison. I present: Mark Gitenstein, counsel, Subcommittee on Criminal and Procedures, and Richard Velde, chief minority counsel, ittee on the Judiciary. tor BIDEN. The hearing will come to order. ould like to begin this hearing by thanking a significant numimportant witnesses that we have this morning for making lves available. 11 warn all of you in the audience that there is more prosecualent out there than there has been assembled in any one place, areful what you say. You may be in trouble. [Laughter.] are going to proceed in a slightly unorthodox fashion because S. Senate is proceeding in an orthodox fashion. [Laughter.] are in the midst of the remaining 3 weeks of a Senate session. e a few minor pieces of legislation that are of little consequence e extension of ERA, natural gas, busing, HEW, and a whole of issues that are pulling my colleagues hither and yon in concommittees and actions on the floor which are brought without al notice. with the permission of our first panel, I will suggest that we oceed in the following way. I will make an opening statement will be relatively brief. Then we are going to proceed with our uished panel, but I would like to warn them that we may be pted if my colleagues Senator Bentsen, Senator Mathias, or entative Pattison show up. The reason I do that is not to extend ormal senatorial courtesies" but because they are in conference tees in other parts of the Capitol and are subject to being away at a moment's notice. They may not even make it this g and I wanted to alert you to that ahead of time and beg your nce. the first panel, we will proceed with Mr. Grimes, assistant adator of Law Enforcement Assistance Administration and then 1 go on to the next panel from the National District Attorneys tion. I realize that the District Attorneys panel has schedules to keep, and I will try my best to see to it that everyone is able to be accommodated. I would like to emphasize that I am here for as long as you are willing to stay. I am most anxious to build a solid record on this subject. I would appreciate it if your time will permit for you not to cut your statements short. Please try not to be phased by the confusion which surrounds you. With that introduction, I would like to go ahead with my opening statement and then we may proceed. The Subcommittee on Criminal Laws and Procedures opens hearings today on two pieces of legislation which would focus Federal resources on the development of so-called career criminal or repeat offender prosecution programs. These two bills, introduced by my colleagues from Maryland and Texas, would direct the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration to concentrate a part of its resources on programs designed to assure intensive prosecution of habitual violent street crimes. We examine these bills as a part of our continuing inquiry into the future of LEAA. In this case we look at a program which appears to have a direct and demonstrable impact on violent street crime-the single most important goal of any program of Federal assistance to State and local criminal justice agencies. What I find particularly remarkable about the development of these career criminal programs is that they are predicated upon a frank admission by prosecutors of their own failure to deal with repeat offenders. They are based in large part upon findings originally established in the District of Columbia, and later in other jurisdictions, that repeat offenders are responsible for a shocking portion of violent street crime. The U.S. attorney's office for the District of Columbia, in conjunction with the Institute of Law and Social Research, a local private research organization, found that a mere 7 percent of the arrestees accounted for almost 25 percent of the street criminals coming through the system in a given year. A 1975 White House message on crime reported that in less than a year, 10 persons committed 274 crimes in another jurisdiction: 200 burglaries, 60 rapes, and 14 murders. Certainly, the most startling documentation of this phenomenon was reflected in a recent Rand Corp. study of repeat offenders in California. The study consisted of intensive interviews with 49 admitted habitual offenders in California prisons. These 49 individuals confessed to 10,500 crimes; 1,492 auto thefts, 25 purse snatchings; 993 grand thefts; 2,331 burglaries, 855 robberies; 188 aggravated assaults; 995 forgeries: 3,620 drug sales; and 6 rapes. The average respondent committeed about 20 crimes per year. I might add parenthetically that I am not sure I believe them when they are asked these things; however, these are nice startling statistics to offer. Certainly one of the most disturbing findings in all of these studies is that many of these habitual offenders were never prosecuted. They found in the District of Columbia-which incidentally has one of the Nation's finest urban prosecutors office-the chance of a serious felony resulting in a guilty plea or guilty verdict was less than one in |