John Conyers's root causes - failure of proposed crime legislation to solve problems of crime - Editorial

THE House crime bill is the most expensive crime bill in the history of the United States--but it doesn't tackle crime. Instead, it lavishes funds upon anti-poverty programs, drug-treatment programs, education programs, and youth-activities programs (midnight basketball), totaling $28 billion. Representative John Conyers explains its rationale: "Instead of trying to figure out new ways to punish people who act illegally, we're trying to do something to prevent them from entering into and social behavior."

Very creditable. But given Washington's previous record in addressing crime's "root causes," law-abiding citizens shouldn't hurry to dismantle their own security systems or trade in their .38s for a new pair of Reeboks.

The House bill exploits the American people's legitimate concerns about violent crime in order to secure the passage of yet one more omnibus spending measure. It would direct billions of dollars to urban areas like Washington and Detroit and Atlanta with few strings attached. "This is serious money," proclaims Representative Conyers. Serious about everything but fighting crime.

The Local Partnership provisions would dole out funds for education and health programs "related to crime prevention." The Model Intensive Grant provisions would award funds to cities to carry out neighborhood programs "related to crime prevention." "Anti-gang" provisions would funnel job-training and summer-recreation grants to the same areas. The Great Society with a nightstick.

At the same time, the bill is dressed up in the camouflage of dozens of new capital offenses designed to make it resemble a real anti-crime bill. Such provisions would be harmless enough--especially to murderers--given that the procedural liturgy attached to capital punishment makes it very unlikely that anyone will actually be executed. But the bill also includes a more dangerous provision called the "Racial Justice Act." The principal law-and-order contribution of the Black Caucus, this would establish in law the premise that something is rotten in the justice system if capital sanctions are found to apply disproportionately to persons of color.

Does capital punishment fall disproportionately on them? Of the 232 criminals executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, 91 were black. This works out to 39 per cent--more than three times the percentage of blacks in the population as a whole. But in every year since 1976, the percentage of

convicted homicides who were black has ranged from 44 to 52. So if any discrimination is going on, blacks benefit from it.

Does racism lie behind the fact that murderers of whites are more likely to be executed than murderers of blacks? This statistic could be skewed by the disposition of prosecutors and juries to be harsher on cop-killers and the fact that cops are overwhelmingly white. Anyway, if we try to execute more killers of blacks, we will end up executing--more blacks.

Liberals, of course, raise the issue not to increase the number of executions, but to undermine capital punishment. So the House crime bill allows inmates on death row to challenge their convictions on the grounds of racial injustice--what Bill McCollum (R., Fla.) rightly called "a quota system for death-penalty cases." Mr. McCollum's push to eliminate the provision failed, by a vote of 217 to 212, with five Republicans providing the margin of defeat. The statistically ignorant and easily bullied were: Sherwood Boehlert (N.Y.), Constance Morella (Md.), Jack Quinn (N.Y.), Christopher Shays (Conn.), and James Walsh (N.Y), for whom the voters might want to consider their own form of termination.

The "Racial Justice Act" would further slow down a criminal-justice system that already operates at the speed of the approval processes of the Food & Drug Administration. By injecting irrelevant considerations, it would also give ACLU lawyers and their supporters on the bench further opportunity to overturn deserved criminal convictions on the basis of factors having nothing to do with guilt or innocence. The RJA does not stop at capital offenses but introduces the notion of "racial justice" (i.e., quotas) into other elements of the criminal-justice system, including narcotics offenses.

What is most tragic about all of this is the lost opportunity to do something significant about the problem of crime in the United States. The apparent national consensus on this issue is reflected in the House bill's ostensibly tough provisions on capital punishment and three-time violent offenders. The problem, however, is that Democrats on the Hill just do not join in this consensus. The influence of groups such as the ACLU, the NAACP, and the American Bar Association cannot be overstated.

The House bill will not make one city, one neighborhood, or one family any safer or more secure. But that is not its point. Rather, it is to make the re-elections of members of Congress safer and more secure. Given the usual Republican timorousness on these matters, it will probably succeed.