Word: tough
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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There are no screaming sirens, no darting searchlights, but a huge prison break is going on all across the country. After a decade of tough, mandatory sentences and soaring drug arrests, U.S. prisons are overstuffed with inmates. Nearly 628,000 convicted criminals, more than the population of Milwaukee, are bursting the seams of federal and state lockups. An additional 150,000 languish in local jails, sometimes for months, awaiting trial. Some prisons are so crowded that in many states authorities have no choice but to let inmates loose just to accommodate the stream of new arrivals...
...that George Bush last week outlined a $1.2 billion federal anticrime package he promised would help put a dent in the rampant crime rate. Speaking in a driving rainstorm in Washington to an audience of uniformed police and the families of slain officers, he ticked off a series of tough-sounding proposals...
...bottom line have been getting through to legislators, who know that crime-weary voters are also taxpayers. "I have a real aversion to the idea that justice should depend on some monetary figures," says Illinois legislator Thomas J. Homer, a former prosecutor. "But there is a correlation between getting tough on crime and the revenue of the state...
...this month, at a meeting of Moscow-based members of the new legislature attended by Mikhail Gorbachev, Gdlyan delivered a 47-minute speech charging top Communists with corruption. Soviet sources say that when he finished, Gorbachev advised him to make sure he was right "because I will ask you tough questions." A few days later, Pravda disclosed that Gdlyan would be suspended from his post as prosecutor. The official reason: misconduct in a 1983 corruption investigation of Estonian scientist and nationalist Johannes Khint...
Just since November, more than 30 top officials at the Defense Department, the Internal Revenue Service and NASA have announced their resignations rather than abide by tough new ethics laws designed to block federal employees from using their jobs as a fast track to riches in the private sector. Taken aback by the departures and complaints by defense contractors, Congress last week voted to delay the new measures for 60 days...