The Clinton budget provides only a marginal 1.6 percent increase in DOJ funding for FY 2000. But even this slight increase pales compared to the massive cuts President Clinton is proposing in assistance to state and local law enforcement. Let me alert my colleagues to what the President is proposing. Among the programs on the President s chopping block is the entire Violent Offender and Truth in Sentencing Incentive Grant program. This program has by any measure been a tremendous success, providing critical seed money to states for bricks and mortar prison construction and thus making our streets safer.
Incarceration deters crime.
Dramatic and historic reductions in sentence lengths and the expectation of punishment from the 1950s onward fueled steep increases in crime in the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties. Only after these incarceration trends began to be reversed in this decade, did crime rates start to fall also. The Violent Offender and Truth in Sentencing Incentive Grant program has been an important component of this effort. In response to federal assistance, states have changed their sentencing laws. The average time served by violent criminals has increased 12.2 percent since 1993.