Click here to go back to Reports Page
From America's Front Line Against Crime:
A School and Youth Violence Prevention Plan
As an organization of 400 police chiefs, sheriffs, prosecutors and crime survivors, we are determined to see that dangerous criminals are put behind bars. But anyone who thinks that jailing a criminal undoes the agony crime leaves in its wake hasn't seen crime up close.
America's anti-crime arsenal contains no weapons more powerful than the proven programs that help kids get the right start &emdash like quality educational child care, youth development programs for the after-school and summer hours, child abuse prevention, and intervention programs proven to help get troubled kids back on track.
Yet today, inadequate funding for Head Start, child care, after-school youth development programs and counseling for troubled kids leaves millions of children at needless risk of becoming violent or delinquent teens and adult criminals &emdash and every American at needless risk of becoming a victim.
We call on all public officials to adopt a four-part plan to dramatically reduce youth violence and adult crime, and help young people learn the skills and values they need to become good neighbors and responsible adults. While no plan can prevent every violent act, this common sense plan &emdashbased on our experience and the latest research about what really works to fight crime &emdash can make all of us safer.
Four Steps to Dramatically Reduce School and Youth Violence
1. Assure all of America's school-age children and teens access to after-school, weekend and summer youth development programs to shut down the "Prime Time for Juvenile Crime".
In the hour after the school bell rings, juvenile crime suddenly triples and prime time for juvenile crime begins.On school days, the peak hours for such crime are from 3:00 PM to 6:00 PM. These are also the hours when kids are most likely to become victims of crime.1 They are the peak hours for teen sex, and being unsupervised after school doubles the risk that 8th-graders will smoke, drink alcohol or use drugs.2
Quality youth development programs can cut crime immediately and transform this Prime Time for Juvenile Crime into hours of academic enrichment, wholesome fun and community service. They protect both kids and adults from becoming victims of crime, and cut teen pregnancy, smoking, and drug use, while they help youngsters develop the values and skills they need to become contributing citizens. For example:
• When a public housing project intensively recruited youths to join in a new after-school program, arrests among its teen residents plummeted to one-fourth of their previous level, while those among the teens who lived in a nearby comparison project were actually going up by two-thirds.3
• High school freshmen boys randomly selected from welfare households to participate in the Quantum Opportunities after-school program were only one-sixth as likely to be convicted of a crime 5during the high school years as those not selected. Together, the boys and girls who participated in the program were 50% more likely to graduate high school on time.4
• Young people who received a Big Brothers/Big Sisters mentor were half as likely to begin illegal drug use or to hit someone as applicants randomly assigned to a waiting list.5
In short, failing to provide programs like these can multiply by as much as four times your family’s risk that at-risk kids will become delinquent.
2. Assure all babies and preschool children access to the quality educational child care programs proven to cut crime.
Rigorous studies, hard experience, and brain pictures from modern medical equipment tell the same story: In the first few years of life, children’s intellects and emotions, and even their ability to feel concern for others — a prerequisite to “conscience”— are being permanently shaped. When parents are at work trying to make ends meet, programs providing nurturing, stimulating, educational child care for babies and toddlers can not only prepare children to succeed in school but also dramatically reduce crime.6 For example:
• In Ypsilanti, Michigan, low-income three- and four-year-olds randomly assigned to be in the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation’s preschool program were only one-fifth as likely to have become chronic lawbreakers at age 27, compared to similar children who did without this educational child care.7
• In Syracuse, at-risk infants and toddlers enrolled in a quality child development program, with parenting support for their mothers, were only one-tenth as likely as similar children to be delinquent ten years later.8
In other words, failing to make sure that at-risk kids have access to quality child care and development programs like these can multiply by five to ten times the risk that they will grow up to lead a life of crime. When millions of struggling parents are forced to leave their children in inadequate child care, we all pay a terrible price.
3. Help schools identify troubled and disruptive children at an early age, and provide children and their parents with the counseling and training that can help kids get back on track.
When elementary school children display disruptive behavior, it is a warning signal that it is time to start looking for the causes of the problem, andto provide the proven social skills training, counseling, and other help for the children and their families that can lead them back to a healthier path. For example:
• A Montreal study showed that providing disruptive first- and second-grade boys with services like these cut in half the odds that they would later be in special classes, rated highly disruptive by a teacher or by peers, or have been required to repeat a grade in school — all signs that the risk of future violence has been sharply reduced.9
• Five years after randomly selected disruptive, low-achieving seventh-grade students completed a three-year program involving behavioral therapy and rewards, they were only one-third as likely to have a juvenile record as those who did not receive these services.10
4. Prevent child abuse and neglect by: a) Providing enough well-trained child protective services staff to protect endangered children; and b) Offering all high-risk parents the in-home parenting-coaching programs that have been proven to cut in half both abuse and neglect and subsequent teen delinquency.
Being abused or neglected multiplies the risk that a child will grow up to be a violent teen or adult. With almost three million American children reported as abused or neglected in 1995, we need to make sure that child protective services staff have sufficient resources to identify and treat abused or neglected children. We also must act before children are hurt by expanding the programs proven to reduce cases of abuse and neglect. For example:
• The Prenatal and Early Infancy Project randomly assigned half of a group of at-risk mothers to receive visits by specially trained nurses who provide coaching in parenting skills and other advice and support. Rigorous studies show the program not only reduced child abuse by 80% in the first two years, but that fifteen years after the services ended, these mothers had only one-third as many arrests, and their children were only half as likely to be delinquent.11
The Bottom Line: Investing in Kids Saves Lives and Money
When America fails to invest in its children and youth, we pay far more later — not just in lives and fear, but also in tax dollars. The federal treasury will actually have more money to dedicate to other uses a few years from now — whether for social security, paying off the accumulated national debt, or tax cuts — if we invest today in programs to help kids get the right start. For example:
• Economist Steven Barnett found that the High/Scope Foundation’s Perry Preschool study saved $150,000 per participant in crime costs alone. Even after subtracting the interest that could have been earned by investing the program’s funding in financial markets, the project produced a net savings of $7.16 — including more than six dollars in crime savings — for every dollar invested.
• Barnett estimates that the cost, including increased crime and welfare costs, of failing to provide at least two years of quality educational child care to low-income children is approximately $100,000 per child. That’s a total of about $400 billion for all poor children now under age five.12
• A recent study by Professor Mark A. Cohen of Vanderbilt University estimates that for each high-risk youth prevented from adopting a life of crime, the country would save $1.7 million.13
• A recent Rand Corporation report shows that, even without counting the savings to crime victims and society, the resulting savings to government alone from effective early childhood programs exceeds by two to four times the cost of the programs.14
Law Enforcement United in Calling for Crime-Prevention Investments in Kids
Who says these four steps are among our most powerful weapons to fight crime?
• The hundreds of law enforcement leaders and crime victims who make up Fight Crime: Invest in Kids.
• Over the last six months, virtually every major national law enforcement organization -- including the Major Cities [Police] Chiefs' Organization, the Police Executive Research Forum, the National Sheriffs' Association, and the National District Attorneys' Association — have adopted forceful calls for boosting critical crime prevention investments like these.
• In a George Mason University poll, 86 percent of police chiefs nationwide said, "expanding after-school and child care programs like Head Start will greatly reduce youth crime and violence." Nine out of ten chiefs agreed with the statement, "If America does not make greater investments in after-school and educational child care programs to help children and youth now, we will pay far more later in crime, welfare and other costs.15
Fight Crime: Invest In Kids
Launched in 1996, Fight Crime is led by hundreds of America's leading police chiefs, prosecutors, sheriffs, crime victims, and leaders of police officer organizations. Major funding for its operations is provided by:
William T. Grant Foundation* • Edna McConnell Clark Foundation • John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation • DeWitt Wallace Reader's Digest Fund* • David and Lucille Packard Foundation • Ford Foundation • Public Welfare Foundation • Naomi and Nehemiah Cohen Foundation • Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation • Rockefeller Family Fund • Woods Fund of Illinois • McCormick-Tribune Found-ation • The Stern Family Fund • Nathan Cummings Foundation • Butler Family Fund • Irving B. Harris Foundation • Institute for Civil Society • Neisser Fund. • American Income Life Insurance Co. • New Prospect Foundation • William C. Graustein Memorial Fund
Footnotes:
1. Fox, J.A., Newman, S.A., “After-School Programs or After-School Crime”, Fight Crime: Invest in Kids (September 1997), based on data from Sickmund,M., Snyder,H.N., Poe-Yamagata, E., “Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 1997 Update on Violence,” National Center for Juvenile Justice (Washington, D.C.: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention). This was based on data reported to the FBI from eight states: Alabama, Colorado, Iowa, Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, South Carolina, and Utah.
2. Richardson, J.L., et al., “Substance Use Among Eighth-Grade Students Who Take Care of Themselves After School,” Pediatrics 84 (3), pp. 556-566.
3. Jones, M.A., Offord, D.R., “Reduction of Antisocial Behavior in Poor Children by Nonschool Skill-Development,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines 30:737-750 (1989).
4. Taggart, R., Quantum Opportunities Program, Philadelphia: Opportunities Industrialization Centers of America, 1995, p.4.
5. Tierney, J., Grossman, J., and Resch, N., “Making a Difference: An Impact Study of Big Brothers/Big Sisters,” Public/Private Ventures (November 1995), p. 33.
6. Yoshikawa, H. (1994) Prevention as Cumulative Protection: Effects of early family support and education on chronic delinquency and its risks. Psyhcological Bulletin 115, 28-54; Zigler, E. and Styfco, S. J. (in press). Can early childhood intervention prevent delinquency? In Constructive and Destructive Behavior: Implications for family school and society: A Festschrift in honor of Seymour and Norma Fesbach.
7. Schweinhart, L. J., Barnes, H.V., Weikart, D.P., Significant Benefits: The High/Scope Perry Preschool Study Through Age 27 (Ypsilanti, MI: High/Scope Press, 1993).
8. Lally, J.R., Mangione, P.L., and Honig, A.S., “The Syracuse University Family Development Research Program: Long-Range Impact of an Early Intervention with Low-Income Children and Their Families.” In D.R. Powell (Ed.), Parent Education as Early Childhood Intervention: Emerging Directions in Theory, Research and Practice (pp. 79-104), Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corp (1988). For this purpose, “delinquency” means conduct which would be considered criminal if committed by an adult.
9. Tremblay, R.E., McCord, J., LeBlanc,M., Boileau, H., Charlebois, P., Gagnon, C., and Larivee, S., “Can Disruptive Boys Be Helped to Become Competent? “ (1992).
10. Bry, B.H., “Reducing the incidence of Adolescent Problems Through Preventive Intervention: One- and Five year Follow-Up”, American Journal of Community Psychology Vol. 10, No. 265-276, 1982. and Bry, B.H., George, F.E. “The Preventive Effects of Early Intervention on the Attendance and Grades of Urban Adolescents.” Professional Psychology, Vol. 11, pp. 252-260, 1980.
11. Olds, D.L., et al., “Long-term Effects of Home Visitation on Maternal Life Course and Child Abuse and Neglect: Fifteen-year Follow-up of a Randomized Trial,” Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 278, No. 8, August 27, 1997, pp. 637-652. and Olds, et al., “Long-term Effects of Nurse Home Visitation on Children's Criminal and Antisocial Behavior: 15-Year Follow-up of a Randomized Controlled Trial,” Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 280, No. 14, October 14, 1998, pp. 1238-1244.
12. Barnett, W.S., Cost Benefit Analysis, in Schweinhart, L.J., Barnes, H.V., Weikart, D.P., Significant Benefits: [The High/Scope Press, 1993], pp. 161-162.
13. Cohen, M.A., "The Monetary value of Saving a High Risk Youth," July 1997 (unpublished). (Permission for use granted by Professor Cohen).
14. Karoly, L.A., Investing In Our Children (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1998),.p.86.
15. Mastrofski, Stephen D. and Keeter, Scott, poll conducted by George Mason University for Fight Crime: Invest in Kids October 1999