Capture Arrest and Transport Charged Fugitives Act of 2008
Floor Speech
CAPTURE ARREST AND TRANSPORT CHARGED FUGITIVES ACT OF 2008 -- (Senate - June 19, 2008)
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss legislation I recently introduced called the Capture Arrest and Transport Charged--CATCH--Fugitives Act of 2008. I am pleased that Senator Dole has joined me as a cosponsor of this bill.
The CATCH Fugitives Act addresses three important problems that undercut State and local efforts to catch fugitives. First, State and local law enforcement authorities have insufficient resources for identifying and arresting fugitives. Second, even when fugitives are arrested, they may not be prosecuted because of the high cost of extradition. Third, when fugitives flee across State lines, they frequently escape detection because law enforcement officers lack complete information about warrants issued in other States. Fewer than half of all outstanding felony warrants have been entered into the nationwide database that alerts other law enforcement officials that a person is wanted.
The act addresses these three problems by providing assistance to State and local law enforcement agencies through the U.S. Marshals Service to help them identify fugitives and transport them from one State to another for prosecution. It also creates grant programs that will encourage States to share information about warrants with each other and help them pay for the cost of additional extraditions.
This legislation is supported by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, Cook County State's Attorney Richard A. Devine, Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart, City of Chicago Police Superintendent Jody P. Weis, Peoria State's Attorney Kevin Lyons, the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police, and the Illinois Sheriffs' Association.
Nationwide, there are an estimated 2.8 million to 3.2 million outstanding warrants for the arrest of persons charged with felony crimes, and the number is growing. Fugitives often commit additional crimes while they are at-large. However, searching for and apprehending them is costly. Increasing the resources available for conducting fugitive investigations would increase the number of fugitives who are arrested, brought to trial for previous crimes, and prevented from committing new crimes.
The Marshals Service plays an integral role in the apprehension of fugitives and has a long history of providing assistance and expertise to other law enforcement agencies in support of fugitive investigations. Pursuant to the Presidential Threat Protection Act of 2000, the Marshals Service created its Regional Fugitive Task Force program. The task forces combine the efforts and resources of Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies as they work to locate and apprehend fugitives. Between 2002 and 2006, the Marshals Service established task forces in six regions of the country. Since their inception, these six task forces have arrested approximately 90,000 Federal and State felony fugitives, contributing to a significant increase in the number of fugitive arrests in those regions. The Marshals Service has developed a plan to establish 12 additional task forces--enough to serve the rest of the country--but since 2006 it has not received the resources needed to implement this plan.
The CATCH Fugitives act increases the authorization for the Regional Fugitive Task Force program from $10 million under current law to $50 million for each of fiscal years 2009-2012 and $25 million for each of fiscal years 2013-2015, in order to fully fund the existing task forces and add new ones that serve the remaining parts of the country.
In addition to strengthening fugitive-hunting capacity in general, the act also tackles the problem of capturing out-of-State fugitives and extraditing them for prosecution. Since 1967, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has operated the National Crime Information Center, NCIC, which administers a database containing criminal history information from the Federal Government and the States, including outstanding arrest warrants. The NCIC database is designed to allow a law enforcement officer who stops a person in one State to be made aware of any outstanding warrants for that person issued in another State. The database contains approximately 1.3 million felony and misdemeanor warrants, but it is missing more than half of the Nation's 2.8 million to 3.2 million felony warrants, including hundreds of thousands of warrants for the arrest of the people accused of committing violent crimes.
A State's failure to enter all of its warrants into the NCIC database enables fugitives to escape arrest even when they are stopped by an officer in another State. Many such fugitives go on to commit additional crimes. In addition, they pose a danger to the officers who encounter them but have no knowledge of their pending charges and record of fleeing law enforcement authorities.
Let me give an example from an investigative series of articles that appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch earlier this year. On March 21, 2001, Eloy Williams was charged with the rape of a college student in Florida. Florida authorities issued a warrant for his arrest but did not enter it into the NCIC database. On July 16, 2001, Williams skipped a hearing in Florida on a cocaine trafficking charge. Florida authorities issued a warrant for his arrest for failure to appear on that charge but again did not enter the warrant into the NCIC database. On April 11, 2002, Williams was stopped by a police officer in Decatur, GA. The officer found no record of the Florida warrants in the NCIC system and Williams was released the next day. On July 25, 2002, Williams was arrested in Decatur for speeding. Again, the police officer found no record of his Florida warrants so Williams was released the next day. On October 9, 2002, Williams raped and robbed a 14-year-old girl while she was walking home from school. In May and June of 2003, Williams raped four women in the Decatur and Lithonia, GA, areas. On June 12, 2003, officers finally tracked Williams down and arrested him. He confessed to all six of these rapes. The five rapes committed between October 2002 and June 2003 could have been prevented if the outstanding Florida warrants had been entered into the NCIC system. The officers who stopped Williams in April and July of 2002 would have learned of the warrants and made him available to Florida for extradition. If extradited, he would not have been in a position to commit those five rapes.
Improving the completeness of the warrant records in the NCIC database would enable law enforcement officers to identify and arrest a larger number of fugitives and would improve the safety of our officers. However, the challenge does not end there. Even if a fugitive is arrested, extraditing that fugitive back to the State that issued the warrant can be costly. Law enforcement agencies often lack the resources to pay for the cost of transporting fugitives. They frequently choose to forego prosecution, allowing fugitives to evade justice and commit new crimes. Reducing the cost of extradition would increase the number of prosecutions.
Let me give you another example from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch series. In the fall of 1999, Virginia law enforcement authorities issued two felony warrants for the arrest of Felipe Fowlkes. Fowlkes had a record of criminal convictions that spanned two decades and included convictions for crimes ranging from burglary to sexual misconduct. In April 2000, Fowlkes learned of the warrants and turned himself in to the local police in Schenectady, NY. The Virginia authorities, however, refused to retrieve him for prosecution. Three weeks later, Fowlkes attempted to rob a woman and was arrested. He was convicted and sentenced to prison time. In July 2003, 6 weeks after his release, Fowlkes attempted to sexually assault a woman. Hours later on the same day, he lured a 15-year-old girl behind a school and raped her. The 2000 attempted robbery and 2003 rape might have been prevented if the Virginia authorities had extradited Fowlkes in 2000.
The CATCH Fugitives Act has three provisions that address the twin challenges of identifying fugitives who have crossed State lines and extraditing them for prosecution. First, it includes a major grant program that offers States and local governments significant funding for extraditions, but builds in strong incentives to improve the entry of warrants into the NCIC database. It authorizes $50 million in grants to States for each of fiscal years 2009-2015 to help cover the costs of extraditing additional numbers of fugitives from one State to another, but it conditions eligibility for grants on improved performance in entering warrant records into NCIC. Any State or unit of local government is eligible for an extradition grant during the first 3 years after enactment. However, a State or unit of local government would lose its eligibility if after 3 years it is still transmitting less than 50 percent of its warrants to NCIC; after 5 years it is transmitting less than 70 percent of its warrants to NCIC; or after 7 years it is transmitting less than 90 percent of its warrants to NCIC.
Second, to help States and local governments improve their performance in submitting warrants to NCIC, the CATCH Fugitives Act authorizes $10 million for each of fiscal years 2009-2013 for grants to State and local governments to improve their capacity, infrastructure and processes for transmitting warrants to NCIC.
Third, in order to help States and local governments further reduce the cost of extraditing fugitives between States, the Act directs the Marshals Service to expand its Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation Service, JPATS--currently used for transporting detainees and inmates--and make it available for fugitive transports requested by States and local governments that participate in a Regional Fugitive Task Force. The act authorizes $2 million for each of fiscal years 2009-2015 for this purpose.
In summary, the CATCH Fugitives Act addresses serious problems that interfere with law enforcement efforts to bring fugitives to justice. It increases fugitive-hunting capacity nationwide. It provides resources and incentives for States to make information about outstanding warrants available to other States so that law enforcement agencies in one State can recognize when a fugitive from another State is in their grasp. And, it provides assistance that will reduce the cost of extraditing such fugitives from one State to another for prosecution. I urge my colleagues to support this important bipartisan legislation.
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