Bill Clinton: “Perhaps the best thing about this crime bill from that point of view is that this is the first crime bill in my lifetime…”

“Perhaps the best thing about this crime bill from that point of view is that this is the first crime bill in my lifetime that--as far as I know, anyway--that has a huge amount of money allocated to crime prevention, to programs that work in the neighborhoods, for example, before and after school programs, programs to keep young people active, programs to give young people jobs in the summertime or after school, programs to give people something to say yes to, not just tell them something to say no to. There's also a huge amount of money in this crime bill for drug and alcohol education and prevention, as well as treatment. And there's some money in there that can be--for example, suppose in your community you've got an innovative project that you want to try. Under this crime bill, the States and the localities will be able to have the flexibility to try some things that they know work and expand them. One other thing I want to say--just to put a plug in because it hadn't come up yet--I believe that a lot of the violence that happens among young people your age and younger, where people just pull out knives or guns and shoot each other because they've been fighting over something--I think people can be educated out of that. There's a lot of evidence that you can teach young people who grow up in tough environments that there are other ways to solve their problems other than shooting or cutting up each other or beating each other. And there's some money in this crime bill to do that in schools all across this country. I also think that's very, very important. Prisons [A participant about changing the correctional system so that petty criminals do not become immune to it and become worse after being released.]”