Patricia Schroeder: “Mr. Chairman, it is wonderful that we finally have this bill on the floor, and I thank all of the members of the…”

“Mr. Chairman, it is wonderful that we finally have this bill on the floor, and I thank all of the members of the committee who worked so hard. Yesterday I had the opportunity to listen to the majority leader's speech at a school about crime, and he pointed out some very important things. First of all, of the crimes that have victims in America, 91 percent of those crimes there is no arrest made. The other thing that we know is that, if we do not look at the certainty of arrest, we are in real trouble. The certainty of arrest motivates people a whole lot more than the severity. And finally we looked at statistics, and we looked at prior crime bills and said, we have spent megabucks, we have spent gigabucks, we have gotten tougher, we have made it more severe. We have done all these things, and the crime rate looks worse than it did 16 years ago. So, Mr. Chairman, the good thing about this crime bill is it goes a different direction. It goes a different direction in that, while it deals with crime very firmly, it continues to tighten loopholes. It also tries to lift people up and prevent crime, prevent it before it happens, and it does this with a multitude of things. The Violence Against Women Act is a very historic bill.”