Anti-Crime Program that Actually Works

Interested in an anti-crime program that actually works? How about one that results in: 79 percent fewer cases of child abuse and neglect, 33 percent fewer subsequent pregnancies, 54 percent fewer arrests among 15-year-olds, 69 percent fewer convictions and probation violations among 15-year-olds, and 58 percent fewer sexual partners among 15-year-olds. Sound too good to be true?

It is true:

Through the Nurse-Family Partnership, nurses such as Joan DeLaney meet regularly with at-risk parents starting in early pregnancy and continuing through the first two years of the child's life. "We nurses do focus on the stress. We try to enhance the positive rather than look for problems," DeLaney said. "We try to help them work through problems. We work with other community agencies and we can make referrals."

Despite the success of the Elmira programs, early-childhood prevention programs statewide are woefully inadequate, Wiley said. Officials are also concerned that when economic conditions worsen and budgets get tight, preventive programs are often the first to get the ax. A key finding of the Elmira study was that for every $1 invested in prevention, $4 were saved in the future. That's evidence enough that preventive programs are cost-effective, Shannon said. "You are not going to defer that cost by not providing those services," he said. "Down the road, those costs are going to be much higher."

Why aren’t programs like this more popular? Perhaps it is because they sound too much like “social-engineering.” Spending money on helping low-income minorities become better parents is a tough sell; spending money on putting their teenagers in jail is an easier sell. Respectful of Otters comments:

No matter how much "compassionate conservative" rhetoric comes out of the White House, we remain a country much more comfortable with punishment than prevention. We're also more comfortable with quick fixes than with long-term social changes, and more comfortable with the rhetoric of personal responsibility than we are with creating a genuine social safety net.

How else to explain the chronic neglect of a program that effectively fights some of our most pernicious and recalcitrant social problems? We do, genuinely, deplore child abuse and adolescent promiscuity and juvenile crime - and yet there is somehow never enough money and resources for programs to prevent them, even when those programs have been proven to pay for themselves.

There is no arguing with success, unless of course you are in possession of the True Faith and an ideological set of blinders that are immune to contradictory facts.

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