MONDAY, MARCH 4, 1963 CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES COMMITTEE ON THE EXECUTIVE SESSION Washington, D.C. The committees met, in joint session, pursuant to call, at 10:02 a.m., in room 207, U.S. Capítol, Representative McMillan (chairman of the Committee on the District of Columbia, House of Representatives) presiding. Present: Senators Bible, McIntyre, Prouty, and Dominick; Representatives McMillan, Smith, Williams, Dowdy, Huddleston, Whitener, Cohelan, Trimble, Sisk, Diggs, Springer, Nelsen, Mathias, Schwengel, and Horton. Also present: Chester H. Smith, staff director; Fred L. McIntyre, counsel Martin A. Ferris, assistant counsel, of the Senate committee staff; and James T. Clark, clerk; Hayden S. Garber, counsel; Clayton D. Gasque, staff director; Donald J. Tubridy, minority clerk; and Leonard O. Hilder, investigator of the House committee staff. Mr. MCMILLAN. Mr. Winters, we would like to hear from you first this morning. We expect to complete these hearings this morning and we would like to limit each of our guests to 30 minutes. I do not know how many questions members want to ask. But we will divide it up in that manner to begin with. You can speak off the cuff and state personally what you want to and put your report in the record. Mr. WHITENER. Mr. Chairman, I was wondering if it would be possible, in the interest of time, to let all the witnesses testify, if they can remain here, and after they have all testified, if anybody wants to ask questions Mr. MCMILLAN. Do you mean to let them all get around the table at one time? Mr. WHITENER. Have the folks who are questioned sit around the table. Mr. MCMILLAN. I believe Mr. Winters and Mr. Layton have prepared statements. Mr. WHITENER. I mean after they have testified. I remember the other day we did not get around to more than one witness. Mr. MCMILLAN. Well, we will keep them at the table, if that is the wish of the committee. 103 Mr. Winters, we are glad to have you with us this morning and I would like to state that I would like to put in a little statement at the beginning this morning, for the record. Members of the joint Senate and House District Committees, I would like to state, at the beginning of which we hope will be the last joint meeting necessary on crime here on the District of Columbia, it was my thought that we could frame or suggest some worthwhile legislation as a result of these meetings. My thought was that if the two District Committees having jurisdiction over legislation for the District of Columbia could meet jointly and discuss the crime problem with the law enforcement officers in the District of Columbia and the District Commissioners, and other officials concerned, we could all together get some ideas as to the type of legislation necessary to curb crime in the Nation's Capital. I don't know that these meetings have produced the results I personally expected since we have received no assistance from the press with the exception of the editor of the Star, Mr. Benjamin M. McKelway. Seemingly, some newspaper reporters and other news media have done everything possible to confuse the subject under discussion by contacting certain Senators and Commissioners in an effort to confuse them and the public. I have advised no one that I would personally offer a resolution to postpone the Commissioners' proposed regulation concerning arrests, and certainly I have talked to no reporter concerning this or any other proposal. The press, in general, and in their zeal to discredit and smear the House District Committee, and especially the chairman, have made it almost impossible for us to pass a revenue bill of any type this year. I discussed this matter with a sufficient number of House Members to know that they will not vote for any Federal payment increase under the present circumstances. In the first place, the House District Committee has no jurisdiction over appropriations, and all the columns that have been written in the Washington newspapers, in an effort to discredit the House District Committee, have been in connection with a subject not within my committee's jurisdiction. Neither I, nor my committee, have any jurisdiction over the House Appropriations Committee, and we all know that money alone cannot solve the crime problem in the District of Columbia. During the 30 years I have been in Washington, we at one time had hundreds of acres of slums which have now been cleared up. During this period we did not have one-half the crime rate we have at the present time. Living conditions do not seem to be the leading factor in the determination of whether a boy desires to be disrespectful, whether it be in local public schools, or of traffic laws, or of the laws of the Nation. As stated above, I was hoping that these meetings would prove to be a steppingstone to some worthwhile legislation. However, this seems to be impossible since some of the press and other news media have confused the public by criticizing the House District Committee about revenue matters which have not even been discussed, when it should have been trying to assist in solving the crime problem we have here in the Nation's Capital. STATEMENT OF JOHN E. WINTERS, DEPUTY CHIEF, METROPOLITAN POLICE DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D.C. Mr. WINTERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. If it is all right with you, in the interest of time, everybody has a copy of this report, and I will highlight it and be glad to answer any questions. I think on the first page, what I am trying to bring out for the information of the members of the Joint Committee is the fact that juvenile crime plays a very important part in the overall crime picture here in the District of Columbia. As I point out in this first page here, for fiscal year 1962, we had a 1.2-percent decline in overall crime and a 17.7-percent increase in juvenile crime. The No. 4 statement, I think, covers the situation in that it is the repeaters, those already known to juvenile court, who are responsible for a significant portion of the crime that occurred in the District of Columbia during fiscal 1962. I then go on to compare the number of arrests made by the entire Department on part 1 offenses and the number of juvenile arrests made by the Department in the same year, which shows that juveniles constituted 26 percent of all the arrests made by the Department in fiscal 1962 for part 1 offenses. The next statement, however, is the significant statement, because in these crimes of rape, robbery, housebreaking, and auto theft, serious offenses most frequently committed, the table will show here for the past 2 years that juveniles are responsible for approximately one-third of those crimes committed here in the District of Columbia. Therefore, it is essential that efforts to control and prevent crime in the District of Columbia must be predicated on the fact that juveniles contribute markedly to the overall crime situation in the District of Columbia. I call attention to the backlog of cases in juvenile court. There is no question that this has had an adverse effect, and we are hopeful that the addition of the two judges will in time help to overcome this problem. Then I bring out, as I did 32 years ago, Mr. McMillan, before a subcommittee of the House District Committee, and I might say now, as I said then, that juvenile crime has increased steadily since that time, are jury trials in juvenile court necessary? This takes time, and it is the only juvenile court I know of that grants jury trials to juveniles. Whenever a juvenile is arrested anyplace else in the United States for a violation of a Federal law and is tried in U.S. district court, if he wishes to be tried as a juvenile, he must waive his juvenile trial and the U.S. attorney must approve. This is the only place where this is not done. Also, I can never understand why a juvenile, who is morally, physically, mentally qualified to drive an automobile and accepts the same responsibility in driving a car as any adult, has to be tried in juvenile court for a routine violation of traffic regulations. He is not a juvenile delinquent and I believe this belongs in the traffic court. I raise a question here, why should the waiver provisions of the Juvenile Court Act apply only to felonies and to the case, not the individual. The way this is interpreted by the court, it is the case that is waived on and not the juvenile, and I will point out later on in this report, some specific instances where the juvenile court has had to waive twice on the same individual. Also, the fact that the court can only waive on felonies and not misdemeanors and that some misdemeanors are, as a matter of fact, more serious than some felonies. As I point out here, it seems to me the most important aspect of a waiver is juvenile susceptibility to juvenile court procedures rather than the degree of crime. I will give specific cases to emphasize this point later on. Another point I make is that the present law requires that whenever a complaint is filed in juvenile court, it must go to the Social Service Division. They, in turn, decide whether or not this case will be presented to the judge. This can be overruled, of course, by the Assistant Corporation Counsel, but, as a matter of practice, he very seldom does. It is my belief that every juvenile who is accused of a law violation should see that judge and that the cases should be presented to the Assistant Corporation Counsel for one reason: to establish the prosecutive merit of the case. Even the mere appearance of that juvenile in a court of law before a judge will have a constructive impact on that juvenile, and I think every juvenile should have the experience of going into a courtroom. Therefore, I think the cases should be presented to the Assistant Corporation Counsel for evidentiary evaluation, and then presented to the judge for, if you like, a preliminary hearing to decide detention, whether detention is necessary or not, and to calendar the case for trial. But that appearance before the judge, I think, would have an impact on that juvenile. Then, I point out, are older juveniles, particularly the repeaters, being handled realistically? The facts I will bring out before the committee will indicate otherwise. As I point out here, the proportion of 16- or 17-year-old repeaters is out of balance with community protection; 83 percent of those 16or 17-year-old juveniles, who committed felonies last year, were treated as children. We do believe in the theory of rehabilitation that is applied to young juveniles and those juveniles should be helped and all community resources should be applied to keeping children out of trouble. But these should be applied to children who are susceptible to this approach and not those who have demonstrated, by their record, that they are sophisticated and hardened criminals to a degree that they should be treated as such. It is my opinion that the juvenile crime in this city can be attributed, to a very great extent, to the unwarranted leniency shown these juveniles by the juvenile court. I think we will prove this as we give you case histories later on. Now, the trend of juvenile crime in 1954, a total of 2,294 juveniles were referred to juvenile court on criminal and quasi-criminal complaints. As I point out here, the Youth Aid Division established in June 1955, and you can see by this table here that it went down, it leveled off in 1957 and 1958-these are fiscal years and then the trend began to rise for 1959, 1960, and 1961 and in 1962 we had the largest number of juveniles charged with criminal and quasi-criminal offenses since the Youth Aid was organized. It is continuing. To bring you up to currently, through the month of January up to the 1st of February, we have had an increase of 377 criminal and quasi-criminal cases over the same period 1 year ago, so the trend is still continuing. Go down here to dispositions. We receive dispositions from the juvenile court spasmodically. We do not get them at regular intervals. But when we receive these dispositions, of course we record them on the record of the juvenile involved. We received, during the period, the last 6 months of calendar year 1962, 936 dispositions, and as the table will show you, 176 were committed, 139 were placed on probation, 233 were dismissed, and a number of those dispositions, as I point out here, said dismissed with a warning. Three were fined, there were no petitions in the 175 cases, and this applies to the Social Service Division that did not file the petitions, as they are authorized by the law so they can handle the case there. Senator BIBLE. What does that mean, no petitions? Mr. WINTERS. When we present the case to the Social Service Division in the form of a complaint, if they decide it goes before the judge, it is called a petition in the juvenile court rather than an information, as it would be called in an adult court. Actually, it sends the case before the judge. There were 86 cases closed. I might point out here that although no explanation was given for this, it is my belief that most of those were closed because of the length of time between the time the juvenile committed the offense and the actual time that elapsed and the juvenile had not gotten into trouble again. I might say, we went along with the court on this in that I sent one of my supervisors to juvenile court to survey these old cases that were not too serious and the juvenile had not been in trouble again, more or less to help with the backlog, because I could see where no useful purpose would be served in bringing the juvenile before the court 8 or 10 months later if he had not been in trouble in the meantime. The next is waiver of jurisdiction. Let me point out here that we actually received 44 waivers during this period. But of these 936 dispositions, only 7 had the waiver, that the jurisdiction was waived, although we received 44 during the period and they have not shown up on other dispositions we haven't received yet. Seventy were sent to the Youth Guidance Clinic, which is a facility available to the juvenile court. It is staffed with two clinical psychologists; 21 were continued on probation and in 24 cases no petition was filed, because they were already wards of the Department of Public Welfare. This disposition of 21 continued on probation and 24 no petition because they were already wards of the Department of Public Welfare, is the one that intrigued us. Therefore, I took the names of the 21 continued on probation and checked their records. Their records are here. I presumed that that continued on probation meant that they committed another offense, and as a matter of fact, I know this happened in some cases, that they committed another offense while on probation and they were continued in that status. The following 21 |