We fail to marvel at what a wonderful invention agriculture is. Before the invention of agriculture we had to search for food. If we stumbled on berries, we ate. If we found deer in the clearing, maybe we'd get an open shot. Until we learned how to grow plants and tame animals, we could only react to the environment. We followed the herd. With the invention of agriculture, we were freed. We were no longer left to simply react to the environment. We could plant seeds and grow what we wanted. Unfortunately, we are in a pre-agricultural state when it comes to preventing crime and creating the good society.

We’re used to simply reacting to the crisis de jour. We don't think much about social problems until they hit the front page of the newspaper. We respond to the latest Columbine High School, World Trade Center, Timothy McVeigh, police brutality or faces of starving children. Each monopolizes our attention for a brief time, then disappears from view. We just react. No one tries to get out in front of the problems. We still follow the herd. Talk show hosts and politicians flaunt easy answers. A few experts get their fifteen minutes of fame. We throw a collective tantrum. The judge cracks the gavel or we pass a law or bomb somebody. And we feel we have taken care of the problem. However, when we don’t understand why something happened, history is left to repeat itself. We’re left waiting for the next crisis de jour.

We don't address the roots of the problem. Most of the popular attempts to reduce social problems take the form of trying to outlaw the symptom. At best, such naive strategies drive behavior underground. At worse, they pour kerosene on the brush fires of society.

It is amazing that a society with an agricultural heritage doesn't understand about planting seeds and cultivating them. What kind of environment would nourish the human? What kinds of environments choke growth?

If we don’t plant the seeds for a good society, we shouldn’t be surprised at what we get. We squander our seed money. Much of what we do sow actually produces weeds that choke out the good stuff. But most don’t pay much attention. They figure things will take care of themselves.

Some environments grow social problems while others create a context in which people flourish. That shouldn’t be that hard to understand. When we create social resources we are planting seeds in the environment. Some nourish. Some may grow and promote community, meaning, sustenance, pleasure, and empowerment. Other ideas, like so many weeds, strangle us at our roots and crowd out the human spirit.
It would be nice if we could just order things so. We could pass laws and social problems would just go away. We could outlaw crime. We could punish the poor off welfare. But it’s more complicated than that. It’s naive to think if we just punish people enough, they won't break the law. In a quest to use strict punishment to make people behave, at one time, there were thousands and thousands of offenses for which one could get the death penalty. But when people were being executed for pickpocketing in the squares of French towns during the 16 and 17th Centuries, pickpocketing abounded among those watching the public execution.

Force doesn't work that well most of the time. You can't order problems out of existence. We wouldn't think of going out to a newly planted seed and demanding it grow. Yanking on a young stalk of corn won’t make it grow faster. You can't make the corn grow faster by force. No matter how much you curse, moan and threaten, the corn isn't going to change its behavior. If you want to change what's going on, you've got to understand its dynamics.

We may arrest criminals but the environment seems to always grow a new crop. We spend most of our time reacting to social problems. How do we prevent problems from happening in the first place? We fail to realize that most are really symptoms of a society -- a way of life -- that doesn’t meet basic human needs. So many still believe that we can neglect creating the good society and not have to pay for it later with higher prison costs, alcoholism, drug use, and other signs of alienation. This is not a matter of political belief. It is social reality. A society that doesn't pay attention to human needs is asking for trouble.

We know what seeds work to grow the good society: love, community, meaning, opportunities, empowerment. At first glance, such seeds may seem meager compared to problems such as crime, violence and terrorism. But small seeds can grow and produce healthy environments. Ironically, our reactions to social problems often end up destroying our seed money. We have plenty of money for prisons and military weapons, but no money for seeds to get at the roots of problems.

For example, we might look at what’s going on to prevent juvenile crime. Investing in our kids didn't used to be seen as a waste of money. Investing in positive youth development was common sense. Somehow, it has fallen out of fashion. There are less opportunities for youth recreation today than 30 years ago. Even swimming pools have disappeared in most innercity neighborhoods. It was expensive to get insurance and easier just to bulldoze them over. Basketball and volleyball courts are in short supply even in middle class neighborhoods. Somehow we have forgotten something that we used to know. Positive recreational opportunities make good sense. Kids need something positive to do. We spend so much effort on "just say no" campaigns without creating viable avenues to which to say yes. As people scurry after more tax cuts, most social programs are in jeopardy and most people think proposing new social programs would fall on deaf ears.

It has become popular to talk about individuals making their own destiny. However, we always act in a social context. Probabilities change in different neighborhoods. What resources would be helpful to people in their struggles? Different environments make some behaviors more likely and others less likely. The social resources one has available influences the likelihood of success. If we seed resources into the environment, we can influence behavior.

There is an impressive early intervention program coming out of Hawaii that we know reduces child abuse. A variety of programs across the nation have been modeled after it including Healthy Start and Healthy Families America. It first identifies expectant mothers who are likely to abuse their kids. They are easy to identify. What they have in common is quite simple: they have few alternatives and few places to turn. They tend to be young, uneducated, and without much social support. Their parents probably aren't talking to them and if they are, they certainly aren't willing to baby-sit or offer much of a hand. If the baby's father is still in their life, he is there more as a resident pain in the rear rather than as a help. They are poor with few job skills. When they get frustrated, there is no place to turn. There is no babysitter, no way to get away, and no new future they can imagine. In short, they are stranded and "resource poor." It is not hard to understand how they might overreact and hit more than they had intended.

Healthy Start provides a menu of potential services to the new mom: baby sitters, job training, job placement, education, conflict resolution classes, parenting training, anger management. And here is where the program gets really creative: the person who picks which resources are right for her is the mother herself. Rather than trying to force her into a program she doesn't want, it is the woman herself who decides, "Well, I really would like to learn some better parenting skills." She is a vital part of the solution. It works much better than trying to drag somebody into a program when they don't want to go.

The program is expensive. It costs $1,000 a year for the first five years of the child's life. And it virtually eliminates child abuse. By seeding resources into the environment, we are able to dramatically reduce the likelihood of child abuse. The money we spend on this program is more than recouped when we don't have to pay $25,000 a year later to house the abused children in prison after they turn to crime as adults.

We can stick around and punish people. Maybe they have it coming. Or we can break the mold. We can plant seeds that can prevent problems from developing. Why should charging a mother with child endangerment be our first step? Our culture could be sowing seeds for better lives.

Resources Make a Difference

Paying attention to the environment is a different way of thinking. We are both creatures of our environment and creators of it. Of course, individuals are responsible. However, the resources available to an individual make a huge difference. If we as a society have knowledge of how human behavior works and ignore it, aren’t we also responsible? For example, we know what factors are related to crime. We know what seeds we could sow in a neighborhood to reduce it. While we’re able to predict which particular individuals will become criminals, we can predict with considerable accuracy what proportion of people under given conditions will turn to crime . Tell us the unemployment rate, the opportunities, the meaning, the sense of community, and sociologists can give you a pretty good idea how the crime rate will compare to other neighborhoods. They can also predict what will be happening to the teen pregnancy rate, school dropouts, and the drug use. Such predictions are not a mystery. Areas where hope has been abandoned, don't fare very well. People without hope take all sorts of crazy chances. The social resources available influence what we choose. Having the right resources can also increase the chances that people are able to turn themselves around and construct new lives.

Unfortunately, we don't pay much attention to crime until after the fact. We wait for an emergency: Susan Smith killing her children or Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold at Columbine High School. By obsessing on individual acts, we miss opportunities to cultivate positive environments. Once Eric and Dylan go on a rampage at Columbine High School, there is only so much we can do. After Susan Smith drives that car into the water, there are few alternatives. Before they act, there is a whole range of possibilities.

What would have changed these lives and prevented crime from happening in the first place? What resources might have made a difference? If we never address the roots of a problem, we can only react as we move from one crisis to the next. We are left forever chasing after problems. It’s like driving a care while only paying attention to what’s in the rear view mirror. It provides no chance of thinking ahead to avoid problems before they happen.

As a society, we don't understand the concept of investment. Most Americans seem to think "a penny saved is a penny earned." But sometimes a dollar invested can save many dollars later. However, we refuse to consider such wisdom. We are much like an auto owner who only services the car by the side of the road when it breaks down. "Penny wise and pound foolish" might be the more appropriate saying.

As my friend psychologist Art Warmoth says, the only time mental health has a market value is when somebody become such a pain in the rear that their friends and neighbors are willing to pay to have something done with them. The rest of the time we hope mental health for free. We hope good mental health is contagious and we can get it by hanging out with the right people. We certainly don't want to have to invest in good community mental health. We refuse spend anything until there is a breakdown by the side of the road.

This is even more true when we turn to social problems. We hope to get things for free by just ordering people to behave and fix their own problems. People should make better choices. We spend little time thinking about how to create a healthy society and effective organizations that enable people to do better. It is only in tragedy or crisis that we reach for our wallets. It takes a Columbine or massive labor strikes or epidemic of teen suicides. And even then, our response is more likely to be more a reaction to tragedy than a willingness to talk seriously about creating the good society.

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 future health care costs. And yet many diseases thought eradicated are making a comeback today because so many children aren't getting their shots. It is one of those areas where we sought savings by cutting back government services. However, skimping on services now, can mean huge medical bills later. Unfortunately, the same is also true for so many other social problems.

Even when we are willing to throw money at a problem, we certainly don't want to have to spend time re-thinking it. We want easy answers and ready made solutions. That's why we hire experts and vote for the politicians. That’s their job. However, we need to understand that the way we think about a problem is often part of the problem. Knee jerk reactions may not take us where we want to go. If we just pour more and more money into the wrong answers, the solutions we fund won't help -- and might even make the situation worse.

We need to think about creating a healthy society. Our crisis mentality focuses only on the negative. We direct attention only at the person who committed the act and not the circumstances in which they struggle. Even police departments are beginning to realize the ineffectiveness of just reacting. They are starting to talk about problem solving policing. Officers still race to the scene of the crime on Friday night with sirens blaring. But now on Monday mornings, they sit down and ask why they keep getting to called to deal with same problem in the same area? What could we do to prevent it?

Several years ago the Minneapolis City Council tried to give then police chief Tony Bouza more money. He gave it back. More traditional police officers weren't going to be able to stop the problem. He told them to invest the money in eradicating the root causes of crime in the neighborhoods. Just adding police officers won't make a difference. Something more fundamental is needed. As we will see later, many cities in the late 1990's implemented community policing. This is a different kind of police officer and it would make a difference. It is directed at changing the social fabric. Instead of just busting people, police also worked to create community and solve neighborhood problems.

If crime comes out of a struggle, we need to look at the circumstances in which people struggle. People live in different worlds with different resources. People have very different experiences than ours and live in worlds we may be barely able to imagine. In Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation, Jonathan Kozol writes of life in the poorest Congressional district in the nation -- Mott Haven in the South Bronx, New York City. He tells how when a young neighborhood boy named Danny was taken on a trip, he wrote a huge school paper for about how great it was, and his voice trembled whenever he talked about it. He had been taken to Burger King for lunch.

It shouldn't surprise us to learn this neighborhood has one of the highest rates of crime and drug use in the nation. The point of the sociological viewpoint isn't that we should feel sorry for people. It's that we should be practical. The research is clear. Extreme poverty produces all sorts of extreme problems. If people in a neighborhood don't have adequate resources, it is not hard to predict what is going to happen. We must be realistic and look at the consequences of different environments. Treating the environment can be a much more cost effective solution to problems than focusing solely on the individual.