Document: pub/resources/text/breakpoint: BPT.94.03.14.TXT ------------------------------------------------------ Note: Prison Fellowship has recently asked that email transmission of the BreakPoint commentaries be suspended until they decide how they wish to proceed with that matter. However, I have been given permission to email special noncommentary items like fact sheets and urgent announcements. Write me for the recent posts about transmitting BreakPoint over email. You have my permission to forward these posts ONLY if you are being sensitive to and respectful of the recipients' views and you KNOW that these posts will not be a threat to or abuse of their ideals, only if the copyright notice (if present) is retained, and only if there is no profit involved. If you've missed a post, you may get it from the USENET newsgroup bit.listserv.christia. This is an UNOFFICIAL transcript made from the radio broadcast. Mistakes in it are mine, not Mr Colson's nor Prison Fellowship's. Comments, corrections, questions are welcome; send to . * Monday, March 14, 1994 BREAKPOINT with Chuck Colson Congress has been proposing new laws faster than McDonald's flips hamburgers. They are all part of the gargantuan Omnibus Crime Bill whose sole purpose seems to be to prove that federal lawmakers are serious about fighting crime. But as columnist Joe Kline points out in Newsweek magazine, the "get tough" measures are overwhelmed by "get soft" measures. Billions of dollars in the bill are earmarked for projects that have less to do with crime than with social engineering. Nine of the $22 billion will go to a seemingly endless succession of research projects. The bill calls for the establishment of 7 national commissions, 6 task forces, 16 reports, 4 studies, 4 assessments, and a collection of advisory boards and councils. "This isn't a crime bill," Joe Kline says, "it's an employment bill for criminologists and social workers." What's more, these research projects focus less on reducing crime than on solving social problems. For example, researchers can study "the nature and prevalence of mental illness among youthful offenders." They can look into "crime against senior citizens." They can vie for millions of dollars in grants to study "racial bias in the justice system." Now, no doubt each of these categories represents a real concern to someone. But are they what you and I intended when we paid our tax dollars to keep the streets safe? And that's just the beginning. The most generous funding is allotted to studies of the war between the sexes. There are 12 commissions, studies, and reports all dealing with domestic violence or gender crimes, including campus sexual assaults. Then, there is more than $600 million for spousal violence prevention, $900 million to address crimes against women, $195 million for rape prevention education, $30 million to combat rural domestic violence, and much more. There's even $600 thousand to educate judges in how to handle gender crimes. Now, no one disputes that violence against women is a serious problem. But with feminists like Katherine McKinnon defining rape extremely broadly, as any unwelcome sexual overtures, we're not talking only about real violence. We're also talking about a highly politicized social agenda. The real purpose of all these commissions and studies was quietly admitted by a Senate staffer who told Joe Kline, "we figured this was the only piece of social legislation we'd pass this year, so we threw everything in." What a revealing statement. The social engineers on Capitol Hill couldn't leave a crime bill as just a crime bill. Instead, they played on the American people's fears about crime to sneak in a host of social programs. Tell your representatives in Congress that if we're gonna spend taxpayer money on crime, you want to know it's really going to combat crime. Tell them to earmark the funds for programs with a proven track record - alternative sentencing for nondangerous offenders, drug programs for addicts, and work programs that give prison inmates marketable skills that could keep them from falling back into a life of crime. Social problems are important in their own right. But lawmakers need to play it straight. Tell them to stop exploiting the issue, and give us a real crime bill. <> BreakPoint is copyright (c) 1994 by Prison Fellowship. To talk with Prison Fellowship about emailing BreakPoint write or call: Prison Fellowship (800) 497-0122 PO Box 17500 (703) 478-0100 Washington, DC 20041 (703) 834-3658 fax BreakPoint (800) 995-8777 ----------- David S McMeans amUous Mind Puzzles Dayton, OH BreakPoint with Chuck Colson