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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (3868)	1/29/2001 8:30:13 PM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 82486

I did a double-take when I read this. Check out the bolded paragraph. Bush Pick for Faith-Based Office Sparks Debate By Charles Babington Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, January 29, 2001; 4:42 PM President Bush's creation of a White House office for faith-based initiatives today was bound to stir debate under any circumstances. The president added an extra twist by tapping as its director a university professor whose theories on juvenile justice have inspired strong critics and defenders. Bush signed an order this morning creating the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. It will oversee his effort to have religious and community organizations, using government subsidies, assume a bigger role in combating social problems such as drug abuse and juvenile delinquency. To head the effort, Bush named University of Pennsylvania professor John DiIulio Jr. The appointment may raise eyebrows in some political and religious circles, for DiIulio is hardly a typical bureaucrat. He's a prolific, opinionated academic who has warned of an oncoming wave of juvenile crime and advocated tougher sentences for criminals. Rarely do such writers and researchers get the chance to head a federal agency where they can put some of their theories into practice. Bush lauded DiIulio today, calling him "one of the most influential social entrepreneurs in America. . . . He has a servant's heart on the issues that we will confront." While DiIulio has many other admirers, he also has numerous detractors who say his predictions of waves of "juvenile superpredators" have proven to be overheated and overstated. A 1996 article in the journal Legal Times said DiIulio "is vehemently denounced by many criminologists." It quoted Norval Morris, a law professor at the University of Chicago and co-editor of The Oxford History of the Prison, as saying: "I do not think highly of his scholarship. . . . He preaches what people want to hear in a field where myth far outruns reality." In the article, DiIulio suggested that his critics might be "intellectually bankrupt" and "full of crap." The new White House initiative, if approved by Congress, will allow religious charities to compete for government grants alongside secular organizations. Some civil libertarians and religious groups contend that the effort could erode the separation of church and state, which they consider a vital protection. Bush addressed such concerns today. "Government will never be replaced by charities and community groups," he said. "Yet when we see social needs in America, my administration will look first to faith-based programs. . . . We will not discriminate against them." Nor, it seems, will Bush discriminate against DiIulio simply because the professor sharply attacked the U.S. Supreme Court decision that sealed Bush's presidential victory. In a Dec. 25 article for The Weekly Standard, DiIulio wrote that court's 5-4 decision that halted further recounts of Florida ballots "should be rejected in its entirety. The arguments that ended the battle and 'gave' Bush the presidency are constitutionally disingenuous at best." Some of DiIulio's most controversial writings about crime appeared in the early and mid-1990s, when he was a Princeton University professor. He predicted that about 270,000 new "juvenile superpredators" would be on U.S. streets by 2010, and he called for more prison space to confine them. As crime rates fell throughout the late 1990s, several critics accused DiIulio of overzealousness. In an article for the Washington Post in August 1999, historian L. Mara Dodge called the "superpredator" prediction "a myth," and said criminologists for many decades have argued that juvenile crime was dramatically worse than in "the good old days of 30 or 40 years ago." DiIulio's supporters say his writings are more nuanced and insightful than his critics admit. In recent years he has agreed that building new prison cells is hardly the most important means of fighting crime. He has emerged as a leading advocate of tapping faith-based institutions for combatting social problems, a move that caught the eye of Bush and others. In the late 1990s, DiIulio said America's crime-fighting strategies can't turn again and again to harsher sentences. "Given the abused, neglected and otherwise severely at-risk life circumstances of most youth who go on to become serious offenders," he wrote, "it is a profound mistake to think that violent crimes by and against juveniles can be prevented or controlled simply or mainly by increasing the punitiveness of the juvenile justice system." © 2001 The Washington Post Company washingtonpost.com