Police officers and prosecutors know that when children don’t get the right start in life, all of us are endangered. Research confirms their observations.

This report contains good news: It is now clear that America can dramatically reduce crime by offering quality child care to at-risk children, parenting coaching to those of their parents who want such help, and after-school activities to school-age youngsters from kindergarten through high school. These investments have now been proven to drastically reduce the risk that children will become criminals, and to help them become the contributing citizens and good neighbors we all want them to be.

The bad news: Denying these services to at-risk children — as our nation does to millions of its children every day — may multiply by as much as five to ten times the risk that they will grow up to threaten our safety.

Quality educational child care for preschool children and after-school activities for school-age youngsters are among the most powerful weapons in America’s anti-crime arsenal. When our nation fails to use those weapons, it is fighting crime with one hand tied behind its back.

We have a tremendous opportunity to reduce crime through investments proven to yield extraordinary returns, saving lives and even saving money. If we continue to pass up that opportunity, we will pay a tragic price.

Does this mean that most kids who are "troublesome" by the time they are eight are destined for criminal careers? Absolutely not. Many children simply go through "rough spots," which they outgrow on their own. And there is solid evidence that even modest programs providing social-skills training and therapy for disruptive school-age children, and parenting skills coaching for their parents, can cut the chances of future problems by 50% or more. But it does mean that when kids don’t get the right start in their earliest years, the risk of future problems for them — and the risk that they will threaten public safety — skyrockets.

Recent breakthroughs in research, aided by sophisticated "brain scan"technology allowing researchers to actually view the brain’s physical development, help to explain why these first years — and the child care and parenting children receive during these years —are so critical.

By the time a baby is born, its brain contains about 100 billion brain cells, or neurons. Each neuron can produce up to 15 thousand synapses, i.e., the "wiring" which connect neurons to one another in a complex web of circuitry that allows development and learning to take place. In the months after birth, the number of synapses increases twenty-fold, from 50 trillion to 1,000 trillion. In the months and years that follow, the kind of stimulation and interaction the child receives— touching, holding, rocking, talking, showing — determines the permanent physical wiring of the brain, as billions of unused synapses and neurons are whittled away. While learning continues throughout life, this brain development proceeds at an astounding pace in the first three years, and is nearly complete by age ten. This brain imaging research is confirmed by behavioral research comparing children exposed in infancy to good nutrition, toys, playmates, and nurturing with others not so lucky. These factors had a measurable and substantial impact on brain function at age twelve, and an even greater impact by age fifteen. Taken as a whole, these research breakthroughs make clear that "early care and nurture have a decisive, long - lasting impact on how people develop, their ability to learn, and their capacity to regulate their own emotions." It is to our distinct advantage to put the teachings of this science to work.

This research makes clear that "quality child care" must do far more than keep children safe from immediate physical injury. Good child care stimulates and nurtures children to maximize their healthy intellectual and emotional development. The old distinction between "custodial care" and educational and developmental care has been thoroughly discredited.

We can no more afford to accept child care that is merely "custodial" than we could accept assigning some children to public schools that are "custodial" rather than "instructional". As the Committee for Economic Development, a group of business executives from major corporations, emphasizes, "All programs for children from birth to age five — whether designated as child care, early childhood education or preschool — should focus on their educational and developmental needs and take into account what children will need to succeed in school and in life."

The early childhood development programs for at-risk children which have proven most effective in preventing future delinquency and crime are those that supplement quality developmental day care with programs to involve parents, to coach them in child-rearing skills, and to help strengthen the family. This "two-generation" approach is the model that has been used in designing both the Head Start program for three-and four-year-olds, and the Early Head Start program for babies and toddlers.

A. Perry Preschool and Syracuse Studies: Early Childhood Services

Cut Chronic Offenders by 80% and Delinquency by 90%.

One of the most striking studies of the impact of such programs on crime is the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation’s Perry Preschool study, which randomly divided low-income toddlers (at ages three and four) into two groups. Those in the first group received no special services, while those in the other participated in a quality preschool program and received a 1.5 hour per week home visit designed largely to improve the parents’ childrearing practices. High/Scope’s follow-up review of arrest records, conducted when the children reached age 27, showed that the group which had received the quality preschooling and home visits averaged:

In other words, those who were denied the quality preschool and parenting education visitor program as toddlers were five times more likely to become chronic offenders in adulthood!

Similarly, the Syracuse University Family Development Research Program showed that subsequent delinquency was reduced by 90% when families were provided parenting-education home visits, early childhood education, and nutritional, health, and safety and other services beginning prenatally and continuing until children reached elementary school age. Just ten years after the children began elementary school:

Of course, the benefits of these programs are not limited to crime prevention. The Perry program, for example, multiplied participants’ chances of being able to support themselves and their families as adults. Among males, the children who received preschool and home visitors were eight times as likely to earn more than $2,000 per month.

While earnings were lower for females, nearly three times as many of the preschooled females (48%) as of the control group females (18%) were earning more than $1,000 per month. Those who received preschool and home visits as toddlers were also 25% less likely ever to have received welfare or other means-tested social services as adults.

Females who had participated in the preschool program had a substantially higher chance of obtaining a high school diploma (84% vs. 35%), were five times as likely (40% vs. 8%) to be married at age 27, and had one-third fewer out-of-wedlock births (57% vs. 83%) than the control group.

But the bottom line from a crime prevention perspective is that those denied the services were ten times more likely to become delinquent than those who had participated in the early childhood program as infants and toddlers. Providing these proven "right-start" services dramatically reduces the risk that children will grow up to become criminals. Failing to provide kids with these services sharply increases crime, and costs lives.

Because it is difficult and expensive to follow toddlers for ten years after their participation in an early childhood program ends (as in the Syracuse study), and even harder to follow them for the 24 years of the High/Scope Perry study, few other studies have been able to directly measure the impact of early childhood investments on delinquency and arrests. Other studies have found that quality early education programs, especially when combined with a family support/parenting education component, can have a positive impact on a child’s ability to get along with others and can work to reduce other anti-social behavior. Such programs have also been shown to have an impact in improving language skills and cognitive development at early ages, and have been linked to reducing future delinquency and criminal behavior as well as child abuse.

Unfortunately, not all child care will produce the same results as these high-quality programs. Currently, in large part because so many parents cannot afford quality care, millions of children are in child care that is so inferior in quality that it not only fails to produce these positive results but actually damages their development. Children in mediocre child care are more likely to be retarded in verbal and reading skills and to display more aggression toward other children and toward adults.

B. Impact of Parenting Education and Family Support Programs

on Child Abuse and Neglect

Parenting education and family support were an important component of the child care/child development services provided in the High/Scope and Syracuse studies, as they are today in Head Start and Early Head Start. The necessity for providing these parenting support services draws additional strength from research on their impact on child abuse and neglect.

Almost three million American children were officially reported as abused or neglected in 1995. From a law enforcement perspective, this is an unmitigated and avoidable disaster.

Each instance of physical abuse is, of course, itself a crime, as are most cases of neglect. Though these crimes are not normally included in crime statistics, most Americans would agree that they are among the nation’s most serious crimes. If we include them in our definition of serious crimes, abuse and neglect make up nearly one-fifth of all serious crimes reported each year.

As bad as that is, it is only the first chapter of a tragic story. Child abuse and neglect also substantially increase the risk that a child will grow up to become a criminal. Abuse and neglect thus begin a cycle of violence and crime which endangers all of us.

Extensive studies conducted for the National Institute of Justice concluded that being abused or neglected as a child increases by two-thirds the likelihood of a juvenile arrest for a violent crime and the likelihood of being arrested more than five times by age twenty. Earlier, the Rochester Youth Development Study had found that, compared to children who had not been maltreated, children reported abused or neglected by age twelve had nearly twice as many serious delinquencies and violent offenses four years later. It is now clear that abused children and neglected children are, on average, arrested at an earlier age, have more arrests, and are more likely to be repeat violent offenders.

These data on the impact of child abuse and neglect in isolation from any other factors clearly understate their real-life impact on crime. In the real world, child abuse most often occurs in combination with other risk factors, such as low socioeconomic status, other family problems, and dangerous neighborhoods. It is now widely understood that risk factors interact with one another; they are "multiplicative, not additive," in their impact. For example, children growing up with only one of a set of identified risk factors have social and academic outcomes no worse than those of children showing none. But children with two or more risk factors are four times as likely to develop social and academic problems.

It now seems clear that child abuse is especially potent in combination with other risk factors, and especially likely to occur in families where a number of other risk factors are present. One recent study released in 1997 by the Child Welfare League of America and Sacramento County, California, found that children between the ages of nine and twelve who had been reported abused or neglected were sixty-seven times more likely to be arrested than other children in that age group. During the study period, of all such children arrested, fully half (66) came from the among the county’s 1100 nine- to twelve-year-olds who had been reported abused or neglected; the other half came from the 73,900 children in that age range about whom there were no such reports. In other words, 6% of those reported abused and neglected had already been arrested by age twelve, compared to less than one-tenth of one percent of other children in that age group.

It appears that roughly half of all abuse and neglect among high-risk families could easily be eliminated through a modest investment in parenting-coaching visits for families.

The Prenatal and Early Childhood Nurse Home Visitation Program, sponsored by the University of Rochester Medical School, provided low-income first-time teen mothers and their babies home visits by specially trained nurses during pregnancy and for two years after the child’s birth. Nurses provided coaching for parents on child development, child-rearing skills, and children’s health needs, and helped connect them with other community health and human service agencies and with informal support networks.

Four years after the child’s birth, one-fifth of the children not receiving home visitors had been abused or neglected — compared to one in twenty of those who had received the home- visiting services. In other words, the program reduced child abuse and neglect by 80%! A follow-up study thirteen years after the visits ended showed that, for the period of childbirth to age 15, the women who had, as young mothers, received the services of the home visitor had incurred 46 percent of verified reports of abuse and neglect and 69 percent fewer arrests than the comparison group.

Hawaii’s statewide "Healthy Start" program has been shown to lower abuse and neglect among high-risk families by more than 60%. The program uses a tested checklist of predictive factors to identify high-risk new mothers immediately after delivery, and then offers families the option to enroll in a program providing preventive health care and home visits by paraprofessionals who coach in parenting skills and child development and offer family counseling. Approximately 95% of those offered the services accept. In a large and rigorous study of 2,706 families determined to be at high risk, half were randomly assigned to receive Healthy Start services. Over a four-year period, those who had not received the Healthy Start services were more than two-and-a-half times as likely to have a confirmed instance of child abuse. Moreover, cases of abuse and neglect which did occur among Healthy Start families were generally less severe than those among the control group.

The difference in abuse and neglect shown in the Healthy Start study, striking as it is, probably understates the program’s real impact on abuse and neglect, since any child maltreatment which did occur in a Healthy Start family was highly likely to be detected, while abuse and neglect in control-group families were far more likely to go unnoticed.

It is noteworthy that the U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect has recommended as a top priority the nationwide implementation of home visiting programs. And the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse, in partnership with Ronald McDonald House Charities, has launched a Healthy Families America initiative to promote high-quality home visiting programs for new parents, modeled after the Hawaii program. Two-hundred-fifty local Healthy Families America programs are now operating in 34 states. Nevertheless, these programs lack the resources they need to reach more than a small fraction of the families that would benefit from participation.

It hardly needs saying that the risk that children will go astray, and the need to help them realize their potential to become contributing adults, does not end when they start school.

While quality programs for babies, toddlers and preschoolers can play a key role in helping children get the right start, we need to finish the job.

Early childhood programs must be followed by school-age programs that fit the child’s developmental needs. Of these, after-school programs are powerful anti-crime weapons.

New data compiled from FBI reports by the National Center on Juvenile Justice and the Office for Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention make clear that the peak hours for violent juvenile crime are 3:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. When the school bell rings, leaving millions of young people without responsible adult supervision or constructive activities, juvenile crime suddenly triples and prime time for juvenile crime begins.

These are also the peak hours for youngsters to become victims of crime. Even though juvenile victimization is especially likely to be hidden from public view because crimes are not reported, it is clear that youngsters between twelve and seventeen are more likely to be the victim of a violent crime than are adults past their mid-twenties. We need to be concerned both about the suffering this means for young victims, and about the fact that being a victim of violence increases the risk that a young person will later become a perpetrator of violence. Quality after-school (and weekend and summer) programs can be expected to reduce juvenile crime in two ways:

A. Immediate "Safe Haven and Control" Effects

Immediately upon implementation, programs during times when children are not in school provide responsible adult supervision, constructive activities, and insulation from harmful pressure from peers and older children during high-risk hours. By replacing unsupervised hours spent exposed to dangerous influences with hours spent under supervision, after-school programs would eliminate all or most of the crimes participating youngsters might otherwise commit during those hours.

If the juvenile violent crime rate for the period from 3:00 p.m.- 8:00 p.m. were reduced to school-hour crime levels, one-quarter of all juvenile violent crime committed on school days would be eliminated. (Obviously, investments in weekend and summer programs could also be expected to have a major impact on crime committed on days when school is not in session.)

Of course, not all youngsters would participate in after-school programs even if a wide variety of high-quality programs were available. It is difficult to predict voluntary participation rates, much less to predict how many teens might be required to participate by their parents. But the "immediate control " impact is only the first chapter of a story that lasts a lifetime.

B. Values and Skills Effect: Beginning Quickly and Building Steadily

Recent research makes clear that the impact of after-school and other quality programs for children and youth far exceeds the "Safe Haven and Control" effect. Beginning in the first months and building steadily, quality after-school programs can be expected to have an enormous impact on the attitudes, values and skills of participating children.

Only 20% of childrens’ waking hours are spent in school. How they spend the other hours, not surprisingly, plays a major role in their development. Quality programs not only help children and teens learn the skills they need to succeed academically, but also teach concern and respect for others, honesty and the importance of working hard and being responsible.

Latchkey children are at significantly greater risk of truancy, receiving poor grades, and risk-taking behavior, including substance abuse. The more hours they spend on their own, and the earlier they begin doing so, the greater the risk. Eighth-graders who were unsupervised for eleven or more hours per week were twice as likely to abuse drugs or alcohol as those under adult supervision, and were significantly more likely to be depressed and to report other risk-taking behavior. The after-school hours are also the most common time for adolescent sexual intercourse.

Once children reach early adolescence, even the best parents may find that their influence wanes as their child seeks autonomy and independence, and aims to be approved by peers. One study of adolescents found that they spend an average of five minutes a day exclusively with their fathers, and about twenty minutes a day with their mothers. Meanwhile, insecurity and a need for peer approval and respect increase the likelihood that adolescents will take risks, or respond with violence to insults or affronts. These dangers are exacerbated by the widespread availability to our most-at risk teens of drugs and alcohol to further cloud immature judgment, and of guns to make bad judgments lethal. In one study, 23% of inner-city male high school students said they carried guns occasionally, and 12% said they carried them most of the time.

Children, especially adolescents, crave excitement and activities with their peers. If they cannot find it in programs organized by responsible adults, they become far more likely to find it in gangs. In many neighborhoods, children without after-school safe havens are easy prey; gangs may appear to offer protection, status, a sense of power, and the security of belonging to a group.

In Chicago, a leader of one of America’s biggest gangs — a criminal who is currently serving a 150-year sentence for murder — explained his strategy for recruiting kids. It includes picnics and parties and money to pay the family bills. Then, he said, "the kids look up," and they find they’ve "got more now than they ever had before, and they know they wouldn’t have anything without" the gang. Is his strategy working? That gang now has ten thousand members.

Early adolescence, as Dr. Beatrix Hamburg observes, "is a critical period of heightened vulnerability but also an important window of opportunity to set a trajectory of positive attitudes and behaviors." In fact, juvenile crime offending first begins to surge upward as children turn fourteen, and then peaks and begins dropping sharply at age eighteen. If we can provide the quality after-school programs and other constructive supports that help youngsters make it through this period without becoming involved in crime, chances are good that they will stay out of serious trouble the rest of their lives.

For parents in low-income neighborhoods, "hoping for the best" may mean, regrettably, hoping that kids come home and watch television. Much of this television viewing depicts murder and other violence—as well as sexual activity—without any realistic portrayal of consequences. Eleven-and twelve-year-old boys spend an average of 26 hours, and teens about 21 hours each, watching television each week. Children’s television viewing has been associated with lower reading achievement, behavioral problems, and increased aggression. When children watch more than three hours a day of television or watch violent programs, the incidence of these behavioral and learning risks increase.

Out-of-school-time programs can provide important opportunities. For example, out-of-school academic enrichment activities can directly improve educational achievement. Formal after-school programs have helped low-income children develop social skills and learn to get along with their peers, attributes which are strongly associated with school achievement, adult success, and reduced risk of delinquency and crime. Such programs can also help children develop significant relationships with caring adults, which is one of the strongest protections against becoming involved in crime. And programs which include a community service component can help children learn the satisfaction of helping others.

In general, young people should have out-of-school options that give them opportunities for active play, academic enrichment to develop both basic skills and higher-level intellection, exposure to arts, drama and music, and, especially for youngsters who are in middle school or high school, opportunities to begin serving their communities. For high school students, after-school options specifically aimed at career development and job skills training should also be available.

Just as it is now clear that the lack of adult supervision and quality programs in the after-school hours place children at risk, it is clear that quality after-school programs provide not only immediate reductions in crime, but also positive experiences, skills and values which are important "protective factors," making children less likely to engage in crime in the future.

For example, a study of a 32-month after-school and summer skill-development program in a Canadian public housing project showed that compared to the two years prior to the program, the number of juvenile arrests declined by 75% during the course of the program. The resulting savings to government agencies came to twice the program’s cost — without even counting the financial and emotional savings for those who, but for the recreation program, would have become crime victims.

Similarly, a recent University of Wisconsin study of 64 after-school programs supported by the Cooperative Extension Service found that teachers reported that these programs had helped children become more cooperative and better at handling conflicts. These children also developed greater interest in recreational reading and received better grades. Moreover, a full third of the school principals at these sites reported that vandalism at the school had decreased as a result of the programs.

Additional evidence comes from school-enrichment, mentoring, and neighborhood-activity programs which show what a critical difference constructive use of out-of-school time can make. For example, a Public/Private Ventures study of Big Brothers/Big Sisters’ carefully designed mentoring program showed that young people randomly assigned to receive a mentor were only about half as likely to begin illegal drug use during the period of study as those randomly assigned to the control group. Among minority applicants, controls were three times as likely as participants to start using drugs. Those who received mentors were also 38% less likely to initiate alcohol use during the period of study. And, in a sign that the mentoring program had an impact on violent behavior, those in the mentoring program were only half as likely to have hit someone during the period of study.

The Quantum Opportunities Program demonstrates what can happen when after-school enrichment activities are integrated with in-school help for at-risk youngsters. Participants randomly assigned to a high school program of counseling, academic assistance, life skills support, community service activities, and financial incentives, were less than one-quarter as likely to be convicted of a crime during their high-risk high school years as those in a control group. In other words, denying kids these services quadrupled the likelihood that they would be convicted of a crime while in high school. The impact on crime was virtually immediate, and those who participated in the program were 50 percent more likely to graduate high school on time, and two-and-a-half times more likely to attend post-secondary schooling.

As we near the end of the decade, that crisis has escalated.

As of 1995, more than three out of five women with children younger than six were working outside the home. Even among mothers of one-year-olds, more than half work full- or part-time. For many of these parents, especially those at the bottom of the income ladder, debate about whether they should work or stay home ignores reality.

With full-time work at the minimum wage bringing in about $9,000 a year after social security taxes, many families find that they can’t possibly make ends meet and provide for their children unless both parents work outside the home. Meanwhile, one out of four children lives with only one parent, and half of all children can now expect to live an average of at least five years in a single-parent family.

Modest adjustments in the tax code may affect the ability of two-parent, middle-income families to forgo work outside the home. But such measures are no substitute for ensuring access to quality child care in the pre-school years, and quality after-school, summer and weekend child and youth development programs for our most at-risk population — the youngsters who must be our first crime prevention priority.

The issue for many families—and for law enforcement — is not whether parents will work. It is whether the care the children receive while their parents are working will be good enough to help the kids get a good start in life, or whether it will be care that damages their development and ultimately damages the public safety.

Today, quality child care and after-school programs are financially out of reach for millions of America’s most at-risk children and youth. Their families — mostly young and still near the lowest earning levels of their working lives — can no more afford to pay for quality child care during these years than they could afford to pay the full cost of the education we provide through public schools.

A. The Lack of Affordable Early Childhood Child Care

Half of all young families with children had family incomes below $20,000 in 1994 (the most recent year for which data is available).

The following chart shows average child care costs for selected cities:

Annual Child Care Fees Across the Nation for Children of Selected Ages

Infants (one year old) 3-year-olds 6-year-olds

Boston, MA $11,860 $8,840 $6,660

Durham, NC 5,150 4,630 2,810

Orlando, FL 4,320 3,800 1,980

Minneapolis, MN 8,370 6,030 3,740

Dallas, TX 4,630 4,210 2,650

Boulder, CO 8,580 6,240 3,430

Oakland, CA 7,540 6,500 3,640

Average annual fees charged by licensed child care centers by age group as of May 1, 1996 (full day care for infants and three-year-olds, afternoons only for six-year-olds). Source: Child Care Information Exchange, July 1996. Data collected from resource and referral agencies in each city.

Nationally, full-day child-care costs average between $4000 and $10,000 a year per child, depending upon the city and the age of the child. These are average costs. Experts estimate that quality care for infants and toddlers in many cities can rarely be purchased for less than $10,000 a year.

Especially at the lower end of the average range, the quality of much of the care provided is woefully inadequate. It is nearly impossible for child care centers to provide necessary staff-to-child ratios and group sizes, and pay enough to retain appropriately trained staff, without charging higher fees.

Manifestly, a single parent with two children, working full-time for $10,000 a year, cannot spend $12,000 a year ($6,000 per child) for child care. For a two-parent family earning $20,000 a year, spending $12,000 on child care — let alone the larger sums often required for quality child care — would leave, for all other expenses, only about $4.50 per day for each family member. Clearly, unless government helps, quality child care is simply not an available option for most of the families whose children are most at risk.

The word "quality" is of central importance here. The programs which have been proven to have the most substantial impact in reducing antisocial behavior, delinquency, and adult crime were quality programs. Staff-child ratios in such quality educational child care programs were one adult for every three or four infants and toddlers, or one adult for every six preschoolers; staff were well-trained and supervised; and the programs included parenting-education components.

Of course, when their parents are working, nearly all preschool children will receive some kind of care, of whatever quality. Marriott Corporation executive Donna Klein reports that every day finds children of service workers in hotel lobbies and dangerous cleaning supply rooms, because the low-wage working parents are unable to find decent child care at an affordable price. Other parents may take their children to family day care homes in which a provider trying to make a living while keeping fees down is caring for too many babies and toddlers, or knows too little about child development, to provide the nurturing and stimulation they need. As children reach school age, and sometimes even before, desperate parents may reluctantly leave them to "take care of themselves."

High-quality child care and child development programs are least available to those who would derive the greatest benefit from them — poor children. This means that low-income children are at greatest risk of entering school prepared to fail. One study shows that, when they start first grade, middle-class children have been exposed to an average of 1,000 to 1,700 hours of one-on-one picture book reading — but that the average for low-income children is only 25 hours!

Even among those children from low- and moderate-income families who are enrolled in child care programs, the services they are able to afford are typically inadequate. Just as high-quality care can markedly reduce the risk of delinquency and other unhappy outcomes, low-quality care leads to increased risk of such results. In addition, when large numbers of a community’s children are reaching school unprepared to succeed, schools and teachers may be overwhelmed, jeopardizing the development and education of even those children who are adequately prepared.

From a law enforcement perspective, the child care crisis is especially severe because it strikes with greatest force at the most vulnerable children — those who are most at risk, when we shortchange their child care, of growing up to pose a threat to the rest of us.

B. The Need for Affordable After-School Care

The need for quality child care does not end when children start school. The need for after-school care has grown dramatically in recent years.

More than three out of four women with school-age children were working outside the home as of 1995. Today, an estimated 17 million school-age children have either both their parents, or their only parent, in the work force. Experts estimate that nearly one-third of these youngsters — roughly five million "latchkey" children and teens — go home alone after school. By the time they are twelve, nearly 35% of America’s children are regularly left to fend for themselves while their parents are at work. In one study, one out of six low-income parents reported that their 4- to 7-year-old children regularly spent some time alone or in the care of a sibling under age 12.

Summer and vacation time for school-age children are of equal concern. A recent National Institute of Out of School Time study of children in three low-income neighborhoods indicated that less than 10% spent any time during the previous summer in a recreation program, summer camp, or any other formal program.

While there are no current data showing the degree to which children at different socioeconomic levels participate in organized out-of-school activities, a 1988 study revealed that eighth-graders in the bottom 25% by income were nearly two-and-a-half times more likely to have no such activities as compared to their peers in the top income group. They were also twice as likely to be home alone for more than three hours after school. It is quite probable that this disparity has increased substantially since then because of cuts in funding for youth programs in low-income communities.

Only 30% of public schools offer extended day programs. Moreover, while many of the nation’s non profit youth-serving organizations are making significant efforts to expand their outreach to low-income youngsters, the young people currently served by these groups are, overall, disproportionately white and middle-class, partly because the groups have historically been concentrated in such areas, and transportation to the programs often poses a significant barrier for those outside the area, but increasingly because they charge fees for services that low-income youth can't afford.

According to one study, 83% percent of after-school programs operate exclusively on parent fees. These fees average $45 per week, or $2,340 a year, posing a substantial obstacle to low- and middle-income families.

The result is that low-income communities, especially urban communities with high-density youth populations and rural areas, "are the least likely to offer . . . an adequate array of services." Moreover, parents from higher-income groups are far more likely to be able to rely on paid lessons, clubs, sports and similar activities to enrich their children’s after school-hours.

As with early childhood care, those youngsters who are most at risk, who would gain the most from after-school youth development programs, and who pose the greatest threat to public safety if we fail to help them develop the values and skills they need, are precisely those least likely to have access to such activities. Too many American children are left to spend their out-of-school time at home alone or on a dangerous street corner.

State and local governments have long shouldered the cost of public schools, from kindergarten to high school, and much of the cost of state university systems. But when it comes to child care, parenting education, and after-school programs, government help for struggling working parents has been disastrously inadequate.

The federal government has primarily assisted families in obtaining child care through:

1. The Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), which provides states with funds which they may use to help families pay for child care, if the families’ income is below 85% of the state’s median income. Most states, in practice, choose to set an eligibility ceiling lower than 85% of median income. In some states, eligibility is capped at income levels as low as $17,000. In order to obtain their full CCDBG block grant, states are required to match a portion of the funding.

Because only $2.87 billion was appropriated for CCDBG in Fiscal Year 1997, the program is able to serve only about 1.2 million of the more than ten million children under thirteen who need care. In short, nine million children in low-income families where both parents (or the only parent) work receive no federal subsidies for child care. Moreover, since children older than twelve are ineligible for CCDBG help, the program leaves out an additional 7.6 million children between the ages of thirteen and seventeen who would be eligible if the age limits were raised.

Families receiving this assistance are free to choose child care provided by a relative or neighbor, a child care center, or someone who provides child care in the provider’s home. The average federal subsidy for the children served is about $66 per week.

States design their own programs to spend these funds as each sees fit, with virtually no federal requirements attached. All states currently have established a sliding scale, under which the parents pay a greater portion of the cost of child care as their income approaches the eligibility ceiling, but the scale itself varies widely from one state to another. For a mother with two children at the poverty line ($12,324 in 1994), fees to place one child in care ranged from zero in one state to $2,904 per year in another.

An Urban Institute study of child care for low-income families in six communities (Bath, NY; Birmingham, AL; Boulder, CO; Chicago, IL; Dallas, TX; and San Francisco, CA) found that a low-income family with no welfare history, despite eligibility for child care subsidies, would find no funds available to them in five of the six communities. Although families moving from welfare to work must be provided with transitional child care assistance, that assistance ends after one year, at which point they may be unable to get assistance from any other source.

2. Head Start. The Head Start program, which began in 1965, provides comprehensive education, social and emotional development, physical and mental health and nutrition services, and parent involvement for children whose families are below the poverty line ($13,000 a year for a family of three in 1996). It serves primarily 3- and 4-year-olds. The federal government sets minimum standards, but funds 1,400 community-based grantees — nonprofit organizations and school systems—to provide services. In FY 1997, with funding of $3.98 billion, the program served about 836,000 of 2 million eligible children.

Fifty-five percent of Head Start children come from single-parent families, and as of 1993, 33% of Head Start families had at least one parent working full-time. These numbers have undoubtedly increased, and will be increasing further, because of the passage of the new welfare laws.

Nevertheless, Head Start programs have been forced by inadequate funding to move steadily away from providing the nine-hour-a-day programs that full-time working parents typically need. In fact, the percentage of full-day programs dropped from one-third in 1972 to about 15% in 1989, and only about 6% of Head Start children are now in full-day programs.

3. Early Head Start was created to provide comprehensive child development and family support services to low-income babies and toddlers from birth to age three. Its first 68 grants to community-based service providers were awarded late in 1995. In Fiscal Year 1997, Early Head Start served 27,000 children, out of a total of nearly three million eligible youngsters.

4. Tax Credits. The Dependent Care Tax Credit (DCTC) allows parents who need child care in order to work to claim an income tax credit for a part of their child care expenses or children younger than thirteen.

For a married couple with two children and an income up to $17,900, or a single parent with an income up to $11,600, the tax credit is absolutely no help, because they would not owe any taxes in any event; and even for families with slightly higher incomes, its help is modest. This is because the credit is not "refundable;" that is, a family can subtract the credit from the amount it would otherwise owe in federal income taxes, but once its federal income tax liability reaches zero, the family gets nothing further from the credit.

Families that owe enough in federal income taxes can receive a credit for between twenty and thirty percent of the first $2,400 in expenses for one child or the first $4,800 for two or more children. Families with adjusted gross incomes over $28,000 get a 20% credit. Families with lower incomes theoretically get credit for a slightly larger percentage of their expense, but many do not get the full benefit of the credit because they do not have enough tax liability.

The upshot is that of the $2.5 billion in federal tax expenditures (forgone revenue) for the credit in tax year 1994, just under 4% (less than $96 million) went to families making less than $15,000. In contrast, about $1.4 billion went to families making between $15,000 and $50,000, and about $1 billion went to families making over $50,000.

The DCTC should not be confused with the new $500 per child tax credit which Congress passed in 1997, and which goes to all families regardless of whether they have child-care expenses. Now that this credit is becoming available, a two-parent family will have to make at least $21,233 before it would owe any taxes, so such families making less than that amount will receive no net benefit from the DCTC. In fact, a two-parent family would need to make almost $31,000 a year before it would receive the full benefit of the DCTC. In other words, even fewer low-and lower-middle-income families will be helped by the DCTC beginning in 1998 than in past years.

The other substantial federal tax provision subsidizing child care, the Dependent Care Assistance Plan, allows an employee to set aside up to $5,000 per year in non-taxed income for child care expenses. These credits, totaling $890 million in fiscal year 1998,were even more heavily tilted toward upper-income taxpayers.

Taken together then, these provisions allocate roughly $1.5 billion in child-care assistance to families with incomes above $50,000, and about one-tenth of that amount to families making under $15,000.

21st Century Community Learning Centers will provide just $40 million this fiscal year — an average of less than $1 million per state — for school/community after-school partnerships. This funding is so tiny in relation to the need that the federal commitment to after-school programs may be fairly characterized as more symbol than substance.

B. States

Some state and local governments have also recognized the importance of getting and keeping children on a track which will turn them into productive and law-abiding citizens.

As early as 1981, for example, Missouri pioneered a pilot project called the Parents as Teachers Program ("PAT"), designed to demonstrate the value of high-quality parent education and family support in enhancing the development of children from birth to age three. The program includes personalized home educational visits by certified parent educators; monthly group meetings for parents to share their experiences, insights, and concerns; early detection medical screening; and a resource network to assist parents in finding community services.

The results were so positive that, three years later, Missouri Governor Christopher Bond (R) sought and won enactment of the "Early Childhood Development Act of 1984," and the state has since then steadily increased funding of the program (from $1.7 million in 1985 to $27 million at present). There are now, by statute, PAT sites in every school district in Missouri, and the program has been replicated on at least a small scale at sites in 48 states. But even the award-winning Missouri PAT program still fails to provide coverage to more than 40 percent of eligible Missouri families.

North Carolina Governor James Hunt (D) has spearheaded an impressive commitment to increase support for early childhood care and development through "Smart Start" block grants to local partnerships of government, community groups and business leaders. While Smart Start funds may be used for a varied menu of services to children under six, thus far the bulk of the expenditures has been applied to provide quality early childhood care and education, immunization and health services, and family support functions. Thirty-five state-county partnerships in 43 counties are participating in the program, and 12 other counties are awaiting approval by the general assembly.

In 1991, Ohio Governor George Voinovich (R) issued an executive order establishing the "Families and Children First Initiative," aimed at ensuring access by more young Ohio children to high-quality preschool and child-care programs by the year 2000. In the brief time period since the effort was undertaken, Ohio has made as significant an increase in early childhood funding, and as determined a commitment to systemic reform of its education and youth development needs, as any state in the union.

Hawaii has also been a leader in official recognition of the need to identify and assist children at risk at an early stage and then to stay the course with them through the vulnerable years. First there was Hawaii’s highly successful and widely copied early childhood "Healthy Start" program; then, in 1990, the state adopted the "Hawaii A+" after-school child-care program for children in grades K-6, providing supervision, homework assistance, and enrichment and recreational activities. This school-based program has received strong public support and satisfaction ratings.

Other important models have also been developed and replicated. For example, "Schools of the 21st Century," designed by Professor Edward Zigler, the guiding light of Head Start, uses neighborhood public schools as the site of full-day, high-quality care for 3-to 5-year-old children, and provides a hub of network services, such as home visiting. Zigler’s model, sometimes called Family Resource Centers, has been adopted in over 500 schools in 14 states. New York’s "Beacon" schools operate public schools as community centers 365 days a year to focus and coordinate resources for children and parents.

The diverse activity in the child development field throughout the nation cannot be briefly summarized or described. Imaginative approaches are everywhere, and have been fostered by leaders of both major parties and every ideological persuasion. The ferment of activity in the field has produced inventive and high-caliber tools for assisting and safeguarding our children in the passages of life in which they most need such help and protection if they are to become responsible adults.

But while the need is obvious, it appears that public investment has fallen lamentably and tragically short of what America’s children and the public safety demand.

It is true that, in 1997, most states increased overall support for child care (probably in most cases representing a net gain, depending upon the financing structure). In 1997, a total of 21 states, led by New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, increased their investments in prekindergarten or Head Start. While such improvement is laudable, it still is a far cry from meeting the needs in this area. Moreover, in 1997, only 11 states began new after-school initiatives or expanded existing after-school programs. Although the decisions by these states to do so was commendable, their actions were not nearly sufficient to meet the increased post-welfare-reform requirements of children at home alone or stranded on street corners after school, the peak time for juvenile crime.

The needs are real, the programs are effective, and the investments produce manifold returns. It is time for states and municipalities, as well as the federal government, to turn, with serious attention, to the problem of saving kids from a life of crime, and saving their citizens from the tragedy of victimization.

Rutgers University economist Steven Barnett has estimated that the High/Scope Perry Preschool Program prevented nearly $120,000 of crime per participant (and over $163,000 per male participant) in costs to crime victims alone, and another $30,000 per participant in criminal justice system savings, for a total of nearly $150,000 in gross crime cost savings alone, without counting all its other benefits.

Even subtracting the forgone interest on financial investment of the money instead of investment in early childhood education and parenting training, the net savings are extraordinary — over $70,000 per participant in crime-related costs alone, and a total of $88,000 once welfare, tax and other savings are included.

In short, every dollar invested in the Perry program returned $7.16 to the public. These savings count only the benefits to the public at large — in reduced costs of crime, welfare and remedial education and in added revenues from taxes paid when the preschoolers became adult workers—without even taking into account the enormous direct benefits to the kids themselves.

Similarly, the Prenatal and Early Childhood Nurse Home Visitation Program found that its home visitor parenting-education program had, by the end of four years, more than paid for itself in resulting savings on welfare, food stamps, Medicaid, and child protective services. And this doesn’t even count the savings from reduced crime costs, reduced social services costs beyond four years, or added revenue when these children grow up to become taxpaying citizens instead of criminals.

Barnett estimates that the cost to society of failing to provide at least two years of quality early-childhood care and education to low-income children is approximately $100,000 per child, totalling about $400 billion for all poor children now under five.

A recent unpublished study prepared by Professor Mark A. Cohen of Vanderbilt University estimates that each high-risk youth prevented from adopting a life of crime could save the country from $1.7 million to $2.3 million.

A "conservative" cost-benefit analysis of the Canadian public housing after-school program discussed earlier concluded that the program could save more than twice its cost, without even counting court, detention, and rehabilitation costs or savings to crime victims. And the Quantum Opportunities Program, which provided enrichment activities during and after school, estimated a net benefit of no less than $3.04 for each dollar spent.

The Committee for Economic Development, a group of major corporation business executives, summed up the bottom line this way, as they called for a greater investment in child care and parent-education programs:

"The question is not whether we can afford these programs," says former U.S. Attorney General and Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Elliot L. Richardson. "It is whether we can afford to jeopardize the safety of millions of Americans and saddle future generations with the cost of failing to make these proven investments today. When child care and after-school programs save dollars and cut crime, why shouldn’t our federal and state governments provide the funding that will enable communities to get the job done?"

Buffalo Police Commissioner R. Gil Kerlikowske sums up the choice this way: "We can make ourselves and our children safer by investing in child care and after-school programs for America’s most vulnerable kids, instead of waiting to spend far more —in money and lives — on those who become America’s ‘Most Wanted’ adults."

The bottom line: investments in quality child development and after-school programs are money-savers, not budget-busters.

The people on the front lines fighting crime are less concerned with political ideology than with hard-nosed practical solutions. They insist on doing what really works to fight crime.

Everyone agrees, of course, that dangerous criminals need to be locked up. But the people who work day in and day out to track down, arrest, and prosecute criminals know that this vital defense is only a stop-gap measure. In the words of Baltimore Police Commissioner Thomas C. Frazier, "Police know that we cannot just arrest our way out of the crime problem."

It is now clear that crime fighters have reached a nearly unanimous conclusion: We need to go on the offense by investing in the child-care, parenting-education and after-school programs that can keep kids from becoming criminals in the first place.

A poll conducted for Fight Crime: Invest in Kids by Northeastern University criminologist Jack McDevitt tells the story:

"Ignoring prevention investments leaves us stuck on a treadmill," says former Attorney General Richardson, "running harder and harder to put people in jail while more kids are turned into criminals about as fast as we can lock them up."

Many crime victims agree. Their tragedies have given them a first-hand understanding that back-end punishment approaches are too little, too late. The voices of crime survivors speak eloquently of the need for a comprehensive and aggressive "invest-in-kids" prevention strategy:

"What happened to me didn’t have to happen. If we as a nation were investing in programs like good schools and after-school programs, and the even earlier interventions we know can give kids the right start, I probably wouldn’t have needed those 600 stitches and all those surgeries to repair the damage."

— Ellen Halbert, former Vice-Chair, Texas Board of Criminal Justice. Ms. Halbert, of Austin, was brutally raped, beaten and stabbed by an intruder in her home in 1986.

"To make America safe, we need to be as willing to guarantee our kids space in an after-school or job-training program as we are to guarantee a criminal room and board in a prison cell. If we want to do more than flex our muscles and talk about crime — if we want to really keep Americans safe — we must start investing in the programs we know can steer kids down the right path."

— Jean Lewis, President, National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children

"Polly’s murderer has been sentenced to death — but that won’t bring Polly back. No punishment can undo what was done to her and to our family. Saying we can cure crime by building more prisons is like saying we can cure death by building more cemeteries."

— Marc Klaas, President, Klaas Foundation for Children.

Mr. Klaas’ 12-year-old daughter Polly was kidnapped and murdered in 1993.

1. Provide for all infants, toddlers and preschool children access to quality child care at a price their parents can afford.

That means child care in which staffing levels are high enough and training good enough to assure that children receive the nurturing and stimulation they need to start school ready to succeed and to learn the core values which begin to develop in the first years of life. To be most effective in reducing crime, quality child care and development programs for our most at-risk families should be linked to parenting education and family support.

At the federal level, it means we should be assuring through Early Head Start and other quality programs that our most at-risk babies and toddlers receive the care they need from birth to age three. It means we should be assuring that Head Start has enough funding to serve all the low-income children who need it, and provide full-day, high-quality, year-round care for the children of working parents. And it means sufficient increases in funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grants to states so that all families will have the help they need to access quality care.

For states, it means that more should follow the lead of states like North Carolina and Ohio, which have sharply increased their own investment in quality child care and development programs to help their children get the right start.

2. Strengthen families and reduce child abuse, neglect and delinquency by offering all parents "parenting coaches" through proven home-visiting programs, as well as access to community-based family resource programs.

States like Missouri and Hawaii have led the way in showing that they can implement large-scale, effective, parenting-education and family-resource programs, including coaching by home visitors for those who want them. And, as shown by the fact that 95% of at-risk parents who were offered home-visiting services accepted these services, many parents desperately need — and want — more knowledge about normal child development and coaching in parenting skills.

When at-risk parents who want to learn more about parenting — including many young parents who may never have seen healthy parenting in their own homes — are denied that help, their children and all of us are endangered.

3. Provide for all of America’s school-age children and teens access to after-school, weekend and summer programs that offer recreation, academic support and community service experience.

Neither the risk that children will go astray, nor the opportunity to help them realize their potential to become good neighbors and contributing adults, ends when they start school. Early childhood programs must be followed by school-age child care and child and youth development programs. Of course, the after-school options needed for a first-grader, an eighth-grader, and a high school junior differ markedly. But all our youngsters, and especially those in low-income or high-crime areas who are most at risk of delinquency or of becoming crime victims, need access to programs that can help them develop the skills and values they need to succeed as adults.

For the federal government, that will require a major increase in a commitment currently so small that it barely begins to be noticed. For states and localities, it may mean implementing programs like New York’s Beacon schools, through which community groups provide after-school programs in coordination with schools. Other states and localities may choose models which enable children and teens to access the services of community organizations off the school premises or choose models like the Schools of the 21st Century, now in over 500 schools, which uses public schools as the hub of a network of services, such as parenting education, full-day, high-quality care for 3-5 year-olds, and child care before and after school.

Our federal and state governments are falling far short of the investment in child care, parenting-education, and after-school programs needed to meet their responsibility to protect the public safety. That shortfall is part of a gaping crime-prevention deficit that jeopardizes the safety of every American.

It is time that leaders at the state and federal levels lay out a plan to eliminate that deficit.

No responsibility of federal and state governments is more fundamental than protecting the public safety.

That responsibility simply cannot be met without providing communities with the resources to assure that all families, and especially those whose children are most at risk of going astray, have access to quality child care, parenting education, and after-school programs at a price they can afford.