Martin Hoke: “when the Democrats passed their soft-on-crime bill last year, we were assured that it would be tough on criminals and…”

“when the Democrats passed their soft-on-crime bill last year, we were assured that it would be tough on criminals and attack crime's root causes. But once the American people learned what it was--dance classes and midnight basketball, what they called hugs for thugs--they issued a very different verdict at the polls. They said the Democrat crime bill was guilty of being pollyannaish, that it coddled criminals instead of incarcerating them, and they said, ``We want our streets back. We want the criminal justice system to act as a deterrent. We believe that you have got to catch, convict, and confine. That is what criminal justice is all about.'' When we take up the crime bill today, we are going to put some real teeth back into it and give our police and prosecutors the tools that they need to do their job effectively. We are going to stop frivolous appeals. We are going to end the practice of letting criminals off on technicalities and build more prisons to keep them off the streets. Our Constitution demands that we ensure domestic tranquility, a duty that we have been failing at recently. That changes, starting today.”