Unanimous Consent Request - H.R. 5963

Floor Speech

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Mr. COTTON. Madam President, reserving the right to object, I share mutual esteem with the Senator from Iowa. I hate to find myself on the opposite side of an issue with him. We had this conversation in February as well, almost 9 months ago.

There are many fine provisions in this legislation, as the chairman of the Judiciary Committee outlined, including his legendary work on holding agencies and recipients of Federal funds accountable and working with the GAO to ferret out fraud and abuses.

My objection to this legislation is very specific. It is not, as the Senator from Rhode Island said, about the jailing of juveniles for so- called status offenses; that is, for something a juvenile would do-- such as smoking cigarettes, running away from home, skipping school-- that wouldn't be a crime if you were 18 years old. So for all these young pages down here who are not supposed to be smoking cigarettes, the law currently says you cannot put them in jail for smoking cigarettes--and you shouldn't smoke cigarettes regardless.

However, if a juvenile goes before a juvenile judge and the juvenile judge issues a valid court order and tells him ``Don't smoke any more cigarettes, don't skip school, and don't run away from home'' and that juvenile flaunts the authority of the judge, that judge needs some mechanism to enforce his orders. That is no longer a status offense; that is contempt of court. In my many conversations with Arkansans--be it judges, prosecutors, parents, or public defenders--they have said repeatedly that the judge needs that authority to get the attention of that juvenile delinquent.

I want this legislation to pass, as I said 9 months ago in a colloquy with the Senator from Rhode Island. I thought we had an agreement worked out about a provision on the inherent authority of judges. It didn't work out, but we worked together in good faith on it. On multiple occasions, I worked with the chairman of the Judiciary Committee to resolve some of these issues.

Some activists say that we shouldn't do this to kids who are so young, so I proposed an age floor in the teenage years. Some say they might be corrupted or hardened by even more hard-core juvenile delinquents in a detention facility. I said let's impose a separation requirement. Some activists have said that they could be detained indefinitely. I said that is fine too; let's put a time limit on how long they can be detained. But repeatedly we have been told this legislation cannot be changed.

I would submit to the Senate that these are all small, reasonable changes that would allow this legislation to move forward quickly in the Senate here in these final couple weeks and again on the suspension calendar in the House of Representatives. But when Arkansans have specifically passed justice reform legislation in recent years in our legislature and they retained this authority of juvenile judges not to detain delinquents for their status offenses but because they disobeyed a valid court order, I don't think we in Washington should dictate a single one-size-fits-all solution for every State in the Union.

This legislation or legislation like it has come before the Senate multiple times in recent years, and every time it is hung up on this specific issue. I want to protect Arkansas' interests. I want to ensure that judges can enforce their own orders. I want to do what is best for the people of my State and our criminal justice system. I also want to pass this legislation. So I would offer to both proponents of this legislation that we continue to try to address some of these proposals I have made, but until then, I am going to have to, regrettably, object.

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