adapted
from an article by Bill Du Bois in Utopian Thinking in Sociology: Creating
the Good Society,
edited by Art
Shostak,
American Sociological Association, 2001: pp. 123-143.
The Prevention Game
Thinking Creatively
About Reducing Crime
William Du Bois, Ph.D.
Picture
a game. Players are given
identical neighborhoods or small towns.
Each has a budget of $2.5 million which can be spent in any way over a
ten year period of time. The
winner is the one with the lowest crime rate over the ten year period. What would be the best strategy to win
the game? How should players
invest their resources to maximize their return?
Two
and a half million dollars over ten years may seem like a sizable sum. However, we should remember how that
money is spent today. At $25,000
per year, $2.5 million is the cost of keeping 10 people in prison for ten
years. Prisons are already filled
to capacity. The cost of building
and housing inmates in new cells is $39,000 so that is only enough able to
house 6.4 inmates a year. Or it is
the cost of 7.5 juvenile beds in group homes for the same period, or 2 beds in
intensive psychiatric group homes.
We can spend all our money on removing a few criminals from the
neighborhood, but that does not guarantee that the neighborhood will not breed
new ones to take their place. The
same sum will fund a typical at risk program to identify and track juveniles in
one school. Or the money could be
spent on boot camps or counselors or conflict resolution or positive recreation
programs.
What
would be the winning strategy? How
might we proceed? Most of our
thinking about preventing crime is not very sophisticated. Most social policy does not advance
much beyond political knee jerks.
Rather than just responding routinely, we need to become more creative
in imagining new solutions.
"The significant problems we face cannot
be
solved at the same level of thinking
we were at when we created them." -- Albert
Einstein
Sometimes it makes sense to move to a
different metaphor for a moment to gain perspective on a problem. As a
way of stretching our thinking, we might simultaneously imagine a similar
prevention game as it might be applied to health care. Although prevention in health
care is still in its infancy, it is not in nearly as primitive a state as our
thinking about crime. Particularly
in the area of risk assessment, a few insurance companies have begun thinking
about the cost effectiveness of preventing rather just treating diseases. Some factors have been found to relate
to low sickness/disease. Exercise,
healthy diet, quitting smoking, early detection, and wellness programs all
reduce the risk of disease, hospitalization, and expensive treatment. Today some insurance companies offer
reduced rates for customers who lead healthier lifestyles. They also substantially reduce rates
for corporations willing to invest in employee wellness programs and early
prevention.
We
are beginning to realize we can safe money by investing in preventive health
care. If we wait for a catastrophe
to see a doctor, we purchase our medical care through the emergency room where
it is most expensive. If we
choose not to spend dollars on prevention, inoculations, and early detection,
we also pay more in later health care costs. Playing a simultaneous Prevention Game as it relates to
health care might help us discover insights about preventing crime that we
otherwise would never have imagined.
We
are not accustomed to thinking
about preventing crime. We wait
for an emergency. We are used to
simply reacting to the crisis de jour. We focus on the latest Susan Smith,
Jeffrey Dohmers, Ted Bundy, Charlie Manson, Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City,
or Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold at Columbine High School in Littleton. We don't think about problems until
they hit the front page of the newspaper.
Each monopolizes our attention for a time and then is gone: once again out of sight and out of
mind. With each new crisis comes
public outrage and societal condemnation.
Lawmakers are likely to draft hurried legislation. Talk show hosts flaunt easy
answers. A few experts get their
fifteen minutes of fame. In depth
analysis is hurried, if at all.
When it exists, it is sandwiched between the agendas of politicians and
the ready-made solutions of talk radio.
Many times, we throw a collective temper tantrum of vengeance. We eliminate the problem. We execute people or throw them away in
a prison where we don't have to think about them. We then wait for the next crisis de jour.
With
such a strategy, it is small wonder that we don't get ahead of problems or
implement comprehensive strategies.
If we never address the roots of a problem, we are left simply to react. We move from one crisis to the next.
We
might imagine a continuum from reaction to prevention. There are at least three components
involved along this continuum.
First of all, reaction takes place after the fact. It is how we respond to an act once it
has occurred. Prevention takes
place before
something happens.
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Today,
most of our crime strategy focuses on reaction. With such a strategy, we are forever driving while looking
in the rear view mirror. However,
prevention strategies focus on the road ahead: potential problems, alternative
routes, better ways of traveling and new destinations.
Much
of our reluctance to spend money on prevention is because we think we can avoid
problems. We only spend money when
we have to. Prevention on the
other hand requires an investment
up
front. We refuse to be
realistic. We are much like an
auto owner who only services the car by the side of the road when it breaks
down.
As
a society, we don't understand the concept of investment. Most Americans seem to think a penny
saved is a penny earned. However,
that is not always true with health care.
Skimping on services now, can mean huge medical bills later. And it is not true for most social
problems. "Penny wise and
pound foolish" is a more appropriate aphorism. The liberals haven't been able to get this concept across to
the American people for the last thirty years. While there are certainly pork barrel, wasteful, ineffective
programs, and pie in the sky extravagances, there are also some very good
programs which give us a substantial return on our investment.
However,
even the most simple investments in prevention seem to elude us. For example, the last figures I saw
showed that for every $1 we spend on childhood vaccinations, we will save $8 in
health care costs. And yet many
diseases thought eradicated are making a comeback today because so many
children are not getting their shots.
It is one of those areas where we have sought savings by cutting back
government services.
When
we only are willing to invest money after
the fact, expenditures are usually expensive, problems harder to remedy,
and potential solutions more likely to prove ineffective. The person who waits to get their
medical care at the emergency room not only pays more, but runs the risk that
it is too late.
However,
we put it off hoping we won't have to spend money on a problem at all. This is even more true when it comes to
societal and psychological health.
Psychologist Arthur Warmoth warns that the only time mental health has a
market value is when somebody become such a pain in the ass that their friends
and neighbors are willing to pay to have something done with them. The rest of the time we expect to get
good mental health for free. We
feel that we will get it by contagion if we only hang out with the right
people. We certainly see no need
to invest in good community mental health.
Crime
is also one of those places we feel we can save money. Most don't do anything until there is a
breakdown by the side of the road.
And even when we are willing to throw money at the problem, we're not
willing to invest our time thinking about it. We want easy answers and ready made solutions. That's why we hire experts. We certainly don't want to have to
re-think a problem. However, we
need to understand that our thinking is often part of the problem. If we just pour more and more money
into the wrong solutions, it won't help and might even make things worse.
Prevention
is a matter of paying a little now rather than a lot later. Ironically, so many still believe that
we can skimp on education, job opportunities, and other aspects of the good
society and not have to pay for it later with higher prison costs. Prevention focuses on investing
effectively in the future. Early
investment works. For instance,
research on youth who attended the Perry Preschool showed they were less likely
to be later arrested both as juveniles and as adults (Mendel, 1995). The old saying "an ounce of
prevention is worth a pound of cure" maybe even underestimate the
benefits.
Secondly,
prevention focuses on health while traditional approaches respond only when
something is wrong. Reaction does
not focus on what is healthy. It
seeks to avoid sickness.
|
This
is a stimulus-response dynamic.
All action is in reaction to being sick. Reaction seeks to move away from sickness. Prevention, on the other hand, seeks to
move towards health. What type of
lifestyle makes it less likely a person will get sick in the first place? Are there factors that insulate
one from sickness? What would a
healthy lifestyle look like?
Psychologist
Erich Fromm (1947; 1956) noted modern medicine spends most of its time focusing
on sickness, and knows very little about the healthy person. The only people who show up in the
doctor's office are sick people.
Fromm notes that even medical students spend much more time studying
dead people (cadavers) than living healthy people. Similarly, psychiatrists spend all day seeing people with
problems. Before Maslow and Fromm,
we knew very little about psychologically healthy people. The healthy personality was
hypothesized but not explored.
Health was just the absence of sickness. Freud's healthy individual would be one who had had made it
successfully through all the phases without getting fixated and stuck in any
phase. There was never any
exploration of what the healthy personality was like.
We
must realize that health is more than just not being sick. Only recently has attention in
criminology been given to studying people who are not criminals. Resiliency theory asks why some people
even in high crime neighborhoods don't become criminals. However, here again the focus has been
on what makes people resilient to crime rather than on creating the healthy
people and fully functioning communities where people flourish. A healthy life style focuses on more
than just not doing crime.
The healthy, happy community isn't tacitly trying to be anti-crime. The productive community just happens
to produce bonus side effects which include lower alcoholism, fewer drug
problems, and less crime. The path "towards a
healthy community" may be a quite different journey than the path "away from
crime."
Finally,
reaction is a negative approach.
The emphasis is on not
being sick; on not being a criminal. The dynamic of reaction is to escape
and repel away from the negative.
We seek to push the problem
away. Prevention, on the other
hand, is positive. It is the force
of attraction: a pull rather than a push. People are repelled away from the negative. They are drawn towards the positive.
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Perhaps,
much of our confusion and ineptitude concerning crime has to do with our focus
on the negative. If we only focus
on what is broken, how will we know when something is right?
By
dwelling on the extreme cases which are too acute for easy remedy, we miss
insights about the seeds we could have planted and tended which would have
prevented problems in the first place.
By obsessing about stopping negative acts, we miss opportunities to
cultivate positive environments.
Prevention
is effective, while reaction is often too little too late. Once the cat is out of the bag, it
becomes a very expensive proposition to get it back in. And sometimes, it becomes impossible.
Once
Susan Smith drives that car into the water, there is only so much we can
do. After Ted Bundy has gone on a
rampage, there are only so many alternative. Before the act, there is a whole range of possibilities. After a crime has been committed there
are certainly some creative options, but they are more limited. But what about the conditions that
breed crime? We must understand
that crime comes out of a struggle.
People in desperate circumstances do desperate things. What available resources might have
made a difference? What would have
changed lives and prevented crime from occurring in the first place? How can we create healthy conditions
where people thrive and are less likely to turn to crime?
Reaction
follows the problem: forever chasing but never catching it, and with no hope of
ever stopping it. It is an absurd
chase. Prevention gets out in
front of the problem. It offers
real hope.
With
$2.5 million to spend in the Prevention Game, where should we invest our
money? Along the continuum of
prevention, there are several types of strategies players might employ. These range from traditional reactive
responses to true prevention.
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In
a health care Prevention Game, some players may take the obvious solution: more doctors and hospitals. We could spend the $2.5 million
improving hospital facilities or adding hospital beds. Another traditional tactic would be
physician recruitment. A recruiter
could be hired to visit medical schools, new doctors' offices could be built,
the neighborhood could offer income guarantees to new physicians, or the
community might finance medical education in return for later service. Other traditional approaches might be
to purchase better equipment or hire more nurses. More creative reactive approaches would include expanding
the role of nurses and physician's assistants so we could get more health care
for the same amount of money.
The
traditional response to crime is to hire more police or build more
prisons. $2.5 million over ten
years will buy 5 more police officers including benefits. Or it will house 10 prisoners in
current facilities. If we
want to expand the number of prison beds, then it is enough to could build and
operate facilities for an additional 8 inmates (Irwin, 1997).
Another
traditional approach to crime is to provide more judges and courts so that
judicial processes can be made more swift and efficient. This would mean more money for lawyers,
judges, and court house staff. It
also might mean finding more court rooms.
$2.5 million over ten years might purchase enough personnel to run two
courtrooms.
[1]
However, if judges are merely
going to dispose of cases with prison or jail sentences then our budget for
jail cells is going to have to be increased and we're out of money. If only one new courtroom is staffed,
then perhaps other half of the money could be used for more creative sentencing
options.
House
arrest is considerably cheaper than prison confinement. Approximately 15 people can be
electronically monitored for the price of a prison cell. Unfortunately, electronic monitoring
has not led to less confinement.
Indeed, studies show that it is being used for people who in the past
would have received probation, community service or other non-custodial
options. Critics refer to this as "net-widening." People
who previously would have received only probation come into the clutches of the
new system. Intensive supervision
is another sentencing option which would theoretically lower our costs. In practice, such close scrutiny leads
to more parole violations and a much higher rate of parole revocations. These higher rates of re-confinement
are due largely to minor rule infractions rather than actual crimes. Intensive probation saves money but
does not lower recidivism.
For
awhile, boot camps were politically popular because they fit a get tough
mentality. For the money, they are
cheaper than prison. This is
particularly true if people are confined to the bootcamp for a few months as
opposed to a more lengthy prison stay.
However, although they are cost efficient, studies have consistently
demonstrated that boot camps are as ineffective as prisons in decreasing future
criminal behavior. The only boot
camps which have been shown to be successful have been entirely because of
particularly effective aftercare programs. Successful aftercare programs all have substantial job
placement and job training components.
Reactive
approaches that show success empower people for the future. Interestingly, those who earn college
degrees while in prison have over a 90% rate of success of not returning to
prison. However, such programs are
controversial and have been discontinued in most states. In a society that
doesn't have universal access to a college education, taxpayers do not want to "reward" people
in prison.
Certainly we do need to make college affordable to all citizens. We also need to understand that
investing in the education of prisoners now will insure that we don't have to
pay the cost of imprisoning them on an ongoing basis. It is a new way of thinking but it is hard for most people
to accept the realities. If we put
a calculator on the proposition,
[2]
the person who returns to prison will
cost us $25,000 a year plus the costs of prosecution, apprehension, and the
damage of their crimes.
[3]
The person who makes a successful life following prison, becomes a taxpayer
contributing to society and a role model that one can turn their life
around. However, turning your life
around requires skills and opportunities.
Prisons
do not work. People learn criminal
skills, become more violent, gain better drug connections and gun connections,
develop worse attitudes towards authority, and become more likely to commit
future crimes. Furthermore, prison
cuts people off from viable connections on the outside that they might use to
develop a new life. Most people
sent to prison will be back on the streets. Somehow we need to heal broken people. If we just concentrate on punishment,
the people we release will be even more broken and incapacitated.
Providing
resources is an important component to helping someone successfully
change. Psychological treatment
and psychotherapy where we try to fix the person have not proven to be
successful. The counseling
approaches which do show positive results focus on the problem, not the
person. They concentrate on
problem solving skills and conflict resolution. Another significant component of successful counseling is a
close bond forming between the therapist and the client. Without this bonding, no real healing
can take place.
Treatment
is expensive. However, it is not
nearly as expensive as other alternatives. Careful cost-benefit analysis by the Rand Corporation (Greenwood, 1994 Everingham, 1994; Rydell, 1994;
Caulkins ,1997) shows drug treatment
and prevention is seven times more effective than law enforcement to reducing
the supply of drugs. For every dollar not spent on drug prevention and treatment,
we would have had to spend $7 on reducing the supply to get the same
effect. Treatment is also more
cost effective than warehousing people in prisons. Per million dollars of taxpayer money
spent, treatment reduces serious crimes 15 times as much as incarceration (Caulkins, 1997).
Winning
the Prevention Game requires smart investment and creative programming. The most successful reactive approaches
don't dwell on punishment but use the occasion as an opportunity to equip the
person with skills and resources to navigate future circumstances. Rather
than rendering people impotent from a pound of punishment, effective programs
recycle people into new lives. The
truth about changing from a criminal path is the same as for getting off drugs
or alcohol: You get a life
transplant. To use the A.A. party
lingo, "You get new play pens and new play pals." The same is true for those leaving
prison. The most effective
aftercare programs feature a heavy job component including training and job
placement, and a support group that is there to hold your hand and understand
what you are experiencing.
Restorative justice is also a creative idea that shows real
promise. Victim Offender Mediation
empowers the victim and allows the offender to experience the results in a tangible
way and be able to make amends directly to the victim (Zehr, 1990; Umbreit,
1994). Navaho peacemaker courts,
community peacemaking circles in the Canadian Yukon, and restorative justice
circles in South St. Paul, Minnesota use the crime as an opportunity to deal
with the problem incident at hand, but understand why similar problems keep
happening, and develop new solutions and programs (Galaway and Hudson, 1997;
Stuart, 1997; Bussler, 2001).
Conferencing involvement the victim, offender, and their support groups
have become the law of the land in New Zealand and has been exported
internationally. Police have
convened this conferencing from Australia to Anoka, Minnesota.
Having
frequent visits from family or friends is one of the best predictors of post-prison
success. Louis Farrakan's
suggestion that church groups ÒadoptÓ a prisoner is also great idea. Half of all prisoners get no visitors. No one cares enough to maintain a
relationship. When they try to
reenter society, they will have no buffer. In truth, most prison officials discourage visitors. It diminishes their sense of control
and disrupts the routine. Visitors
are not made to feel welcome but instead often experience harassment. Increasingly, prisons are being built
in isolated locations where it is expensive and difficult for visitors to
come. This is crazy. Anything we could do to encourage
connections on the outside would make the transition to life outside of prison
easier.
Most
people who go to prison will be out someday. They are going to be somebody's neighbor. If don't end up living on your block,
they'll end up living on mine. We
need to use the time we have them in custody to make them better. For example, it is the common wisdom
that we can't do anything to rehabilitate sex offenders. So we do nothing. We may keep them in prison for a long
time but eventually they will be somebody's neighbor.
We
need to invent better treatment options.
When diseases are diagnosed as incurable many families don't give
up. Although it doesn't happen
often, every once in awhile someone who had been diagnosed as incurable is able
to beat the odds. If science would
have given up every time someone said it couldn't be done, we would still be in
the Dark Ages. Most of what today
passes for sex offender treatment is simply a political agenda. It happens to be a political agenda I
often agree with, but as a treatment strategy, it is not very effective. We need to be inventing new programs to
treat sex offenders. We certainly
don't want to turn the public into guinea pigs. However, it is shameful that we accept cynicism and
resignation from our social science.
Reaction
is always after the fact and a day too late. A more effective strategy would be early detection,
diagnosis, and treatment. In the
health care arena, this involves testing and screenings to identify and treat diseases at an early stage. Early diagnosis is not only more cost
effective, it produces better results.
Waiting for more acute symptoms often means a disease has progressed to
a state where it is untreatable or only radical approaches might work.
In
France, pregnant mothers are paid $1,000 if they will keep five prenatal
appointments with a doctor. The
society calculates it will save considerable money by investing early in health
care. The reason the United
States leads the modern, industrial world in both infant mortality and mothers
who die in childbirth, is that the first time many poor pregnant women see a
doctor is when their water breaks.
Not getting good prenatal care has other serious health consequences
including low birth weights. Low
birth weights are associated with poor development, mental retardation, infant
mortality, and physical disabilities.
The United States chooses to skimp on prenatal care. These children will be more likely to
need special schooling or even institutionalization. It is only then that Uncle Sam takes out the checkbook.
Early
diagnosis looks for early warning signs.
Prevention Game money might be invested in professionals, better
diagnostic equipment, and more extensive testing. Health care clinics could be made more widely accessible and
early treatment more affordable to the public. Investment could also be made in advertising to promote
public awareness about early detection.
In criminology, people who are
anti-social at an early age may also have problems later. Violence at age eight is a good
predictor of violence later in life.
If we can address problems early, we can prevent them from growing into
larger problems. People resort to
violence when they can't get their needs met and have no other repertoire to
address problems. Psychologist
Carl Rogers says, "Violence is the last resort of a powerless
person." In many families,
people learn violence as a way of coping with problems. Their only repertoire of conflict
resolution skills to deal with frustration is to hit. People need to learn problem solving skills and alternative
ways of getting their needs met.
Teaching conflict resolution is a promising solution.
Counseling
is the most effective around a particular problem at the point of crisis. School children can be trained to
assist others in dealing with situations.
Playground patrols trained in conflict resolution can be available on
the spot when conflicts arise to address problems. This also serves to educate the people involved how they
might handle similar situations themselves in the future. People always learn best on the spot at
the point of crisis. Prevention
game money invested in creating such a program will pay dividends.
Other
programs can address early signs of violence. Some youth attribute violent intentions to others when in
fact there is none. Research shows
teaching people to correctly read and interpret situations lowers violence
(Mendel, 1995).
Healthy
Families America is another effective early intervention program. It begins by identifying pregnant
mothers who are likely to later physically abuse their child. It is not hard to accurately predict
who they are. They are "resource
poor." They
tend to be young, poor, isolated, uneducated, and without help or support from
their families or the child's father.
When the frustration gets too great, they have few places to turn. Healthy Start gives these mothers a
menu of potential services: job
training, day care, conflict resolution skills, parenting training, anger
management, job search skills, etc.
The program is innovative because the "case worker" who
decides which services are appropriate is the mother herself. We thus avoid a tug of war trying to
get a person into parenting training or anger management when they don't want
to go. The program works by
providing resources and alternatives in a self directed program.
The
Healthy Families America program lasts the first five years of a child's
life. It isn't cheap. It costs $1,000 a year for a total of
$5,000. It pays for itself in the
long run. Playing our Prevention
Game, we have $2.5 million for 10 Years.
If we do the math:
| Prisons |
10 Prisoners in existing facilities (two and half year average
stay) |
40 people over 10 years |
| Bootcamps |
25 people each year
in Bootcamps (six month average stay) |
250 people over 10 years |
| Healthy Families America | 250 in program for five
years |
500 people over 10 years |
In
ten years, we can treat twice as many people with Healthy Families America as
with bootcamps and 12.5 times as many people in Healthy Families as in prison
cells. If we are really interested
in having lower crime rates, we need to also look at indirect effects. Children whose parents are imprisoned
are much more likely themselves to then get in trouble.
To
figure the benefits, let's make the very conservative assumption that without
the program 40% of these kids would have went on to a life of crime. Let's assume that Healthy Families
children have the crime rate of normal cohorts of 6%: The average stay in prison is 2.2 years. Thus the comparison of cost for Healthy
Families Americas and prison would look like this
40% of 500 = 200 kids @ $25,000 / year x 2.2
years |
$11,000,000 |
6% of 500 = 30 kids
@ $25,000 / year x 2.2 years |
$1,650,000 |
Savings for Healthy
Families America |
$9,350,000 |
These
figures are just for their the first stay in prison. Additional offenses will cost us even more and these are the
very people most likely to be back.
It also does not include costs of $35,000 for juvenile institutions
which these kids are likely to experience before they graduate to adult prison. By focusing on early warning signs,
Healthy Families America is able to provide a series of resources and
opportunities to help people successfully navigate their circumstances.
A
word a caution is needed here.
Early warning signs should be used to identify people in need of help
with their problems. We must then
provide help and invent resources they can use in their struggles. If we use early warning signs to simply
stigmatize people, we may make the situation worse. As any good counselor knows, we must separate the person
from the behavior.
James
Wilson's "Broken Windows" theory received quite a bit of attention
nationally especially in New York City.
He argued that if small crimes like breaking windows are ignored, they
accelerate into larger crime.
Broken windows in neighborhoods gives the sign that People may just give up in
a deteriorating neighborhood where no one cares and anything goes. His strategy was to spend
money cracking down on small crime as a way of reducing major crime. Such a strategy may be effective to the
extent that it is informational: you are over the line and it will not be
tolerated. The value of punishment
is feedback.
However,
we must be careful not to turn people into criminals for small offenses. Labeling can destroy self esteem,
incapacitate selves, and turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy where authority
figures on the lookout for crime may turn typical deviance into a sanctioned
offense. For juveniles in
particular, exploring the boundaries is a normal part of breaking away. Most adolescents "age out" of
illegal activities. It is
important that labeling doesn't turn them into criminals.
How
do we avoid creating a negative self-fulfilling prophecy and still get the
person help when they need it?
Healing must begin early or wounds grow. Early signs of problems need to be dealt with before they
become larger problems. However,
if we magnify something too much under the microscope, all of our lives can
look pretty distorted. The answer
is that we should focus on fixing the problem rather than fixing the
person. Creative solutions manage
to deal with the problem without stigmatizing the person.
Strategy
#3: At Risk Identification and
Treatment
Traditional
responses and early diagnosis both react after a problem has already
occurred. At Risk programs are an
attempt to get out in front before a the problem happens. The strategy is to identify people particularly
susceptible and provide early detection, treatment and prevention.
For
health care this translates into careful monitoring of people with a family
history of certain diseases.
Another strategy is community wide screenings to identify people with
the preconditions which might turn into a problem.
Criminals
are more likely to come from homes of childhood domestic violence. Poor reading ability is one of the best
predictors of future delinquency.
Children of teen moms are also more likely to become criminals -- a teen
mom has fewer resources to make ends meet and has to cope with all the problems
of growing up herself.
Criminals are also likely to have been victims themselves. We must invent effect programs to deal
with their needs.
We
know that those with a parent in prison are much more likely to become
delinquent themselves. One
creative program called "Girl Scouts Beyond Bars" allows girls spend
a weekend a month in prison with their moms doing activities. This not only bonding for the children
but motivation and connection for the mothers. It is good crime prevention.
We
have chosen to make war on crime.
We concentrate on punishing the offender and neglect victims. Instead we need a peacemaking approach
that heals broken lives.
Ironically, one of the things we know about criminals is that most of
them have themselves been victims.
They have been victims of child abuse and many other crimes. The child abused at home then
terrorizes younger children on the playground. The person whose possessions are stolen by later steal from
someone else. There is an endless
cycle of victimization where crime gets passed on. As Hal Pepinsky notes, "While not every victim becomes
an offender, every offender has been a victim." We need to take the opportunity to heal our
victims. They themselves are at
risk of turning their anger and pain on others. One of the ways we could decrease crime is by concentrating
on healing victims and breaking the cycle. Restorative Justice and Victim Offender Mediation offers
particular opportunities here. One
restorative justice advocate can be funded for a rather modest salary.
One
of crazes in delinquency prevention has been school at-risk programs. One model program which has been copied
in schools throughout the country consists of hiring staff whose primary
purpose is to identify and track potentially at risk children. In theory, these kids are then referred
to already existing social services.
In practice, existing programs are already overcrowded. A
typical school at risk program that I am familiar with costs in the neighborhood
of our $250,000 a year. Generally,
$10,000-$15,000 goes towards developing new programs. About the same amount might be spent on program evaluation. The rest of the money is spent on
identifying who is "at risk" and record keeping to track their progress. This means the vast proportion of the
budget goes to professional staff, secretaries, and computers equipment for
record keeping.
Precious
resources are exhausted on identifying individuals when actually the problems stem from
the lack of opportunities and resources for a whole range of people caught in
difficult circumstances.
Individualistic approaches which assume that the roots of the problems
reside inside individuals will be of limited effect. If most of the money is spent on identification and
tracking of at risk kids, few funds are left over for actual treatment and
resources.
People
need skills and resources they can use in their situations. Head Start is one of those great
examples of focusing on the needs rather than the labeling the person. We do not need to pinpoint which
particular individuals will become sick in order to improve community
health.
"At
Risk Programs" make sense to the extent they identify needs and provide
resources to meet those needs.
It is not cost effective to spend so much time, energy, and money on
identifying and tracking who should be included and who should be excluded from
programs. Instead, it would be
wiser to develop resources to address unmet needs and allow all people access
them.
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Today
most wellness programs are really anti-sickness programs rather than full
fledged positive prevention programs.
They are what I call "reactive prevention." Traditional wellness programs fit this
category. They focus on stopping
an unhealthy behavior or activity:
not gaining weight, not smoking, not drinking, not
doing drugs, not having a heart attack, or in not having stress
that causes diseases. They are not
true prevention programs, but "anti-sickness" programs.
Reactive
prevention has a foot in both worlds. It teeters at the fulcrum between Reaction and true
Prevention. The focus and the
motivation is clearly negative: it
is a reaction against sickness.
Yet there are also components of true prevention. There is a genuine investment in
creating a healthy lifestyle even though the focus remains on reducing or
eliminating elements that are unhealthy.
It aims towards the positive moving away from sickness and towards
health.
Many
of today's crime prevention programs are of this type: alcohol and drug treatment, anger
management, conflict resolution, parenting classes. We try to eliminate negative behaviors. At their best, reactive prevention
programs can provide power skills and provide new opportunities.
We
know most juvenile crime takes place after school. ÒGrandma PleaseÓ in Chicago is a program where latchkey kids
can phone retired homework between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. to talk and get help with
homework or problems. It uses the
excuse of a problem to create bonding and a pseudo baby sitter.
Parent
management training decreases delinquency. In Des Moines, a hospital gets parents to attend parenting
classes by giving them $500 if they attend all ten sessions. Students get "paid" for
taking college class -- they get 3 hours of credit. Rather than trying to force people into parenting classes,
it makes more sense to attract them.
Poor
reading ability is one of the best predictors of future delinquency. We could invent creative delivery
systems including peer tutors.
Perhaps we also could even switch roles with the older students who are
poor readers being called up to read to much younger children.
Being
the child of a teen mom dramatically increases your chances of being a
criminal. Anything we can do to
decrease teen pregnancy will decrease future crime rates. Research on lowering teen pregnancy is
fairly clear: empower the girls
and give them realistic hope and opportunities for the future. United States has highest teenage pregnancy
rate among modern industrial nations.
Despite our considerable investment in a "just say no" strategy,
most girls are sexually active by the time they graduate from high
school. Ironically, Scandinavian
countries with their more open approach to sexuality actually have the lowest
rates of teen pregnancy and the highest average age for commencing sexual
activity. Our methods of
repression seem foredoomed to creating more not less teen pregnancy. The truth is teen pregnancy is reduced
by contraceptive knowledge and availability; healthy and realistic attitudes
about sexuality and relationships; and opportunities for a meaningful life.
Most
prisoners were high school dropouts.
Again, anything we can do to encourage people to stay in school will
lower crime. However, we need to
get more creative than we have been.
Schools need to become exciting places. As Charles Silberman (1970) noted so long ago in Crisis
in the Classroom,
most schools are boring authoritarian places than do more to contribute to increasing delinquency than to
decreasing it. It doesn't have to
be that way. Schools could become
places than energize and enthuse.
Moving beyond reactive prevention, we need to create programs that are
attractive in their own right.
Positive prevention programs are a destination in their own right. The emphasis is on the program rather than just a movement away from sickness. They are pulls ra