However, because the 1994 Crime Act was awash with election-year politics, debate remains as to whether it will effectively deter crime. To date, the new Republican majorities in both the House and Senate have made serious advances to re-write the act, thus striking structural discord to President Clinton's 1994 efforts. While administration and congressional supporters claim that the 1994 Violent Crime Control Act is a tough, effective piece of legislation, opponents argue that the act fails to put teeth into federal crime-fighting efforts, contains too much social spending, and provides too many discretionary funds earmarked for police officers and prisons. In addition to debate over spending and prisons, Congress dealt a swift blow to assault weapons and their lobby interests by prohibiting the manufacture, transfer, or possession of semiautomatic assault weapons. The three strikes provision requires life imprisonment for federal offenders convicted of a violent serious felony subsequent to the commission of two prior federal or state convictions.
Serious questions remain as to the validity and effectiveness of both provisions.
Despite its fundamentally simple tenet, the Racial Justice Act engendered strong debate, both for and against its passage. The Act sought to consider statistical evidence of a consistent pattern of racially discriminatory death sentences in the particular sentencing jurisdiction. While it was feared this would cause unwarranted forum shopping, proponents of the RJA asserted that the Act would merely prohibit states from carrying out death sentences that were based on racial considerations as demonstrated by evidence that the particular case in question fits an unexplained racially discriminatory pattern. Although the RJA was defeated, the issue seems certain to return. These topics and others will be explored in this Symposium, an issue devoted entirely to the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994.