Only Preventive Programs example essay topic

The truth about crime prevention is more complicated -less utopian than some liberals would like, but far more promising than conservatives will admit. Prevention can work and that it can be far less costly, in every sense, than continuing to rely on incarceration as out first defense against violent crimes. Instead of simply insisting that prevention is better than incarceration, then, we need to pinpoint more clearly what kinds of prevention work-and why some programs work and others do not, the most encouraging efforts share important characteristics; there are reasons why they work, whether the 'target' population is abusive families, vulnerable teens, or serious juvenile offenders who " ve already broken the law. Likewise, there are reasons why other programs fail, no matter how fashionable or popular they may be. Given what we " ve learned about crime prevention in recent years, four priorities seem especially critical: preventing child abuse and neglect, enhancing children's intellectual and social development, providing support and guidance to vulnerable adolescents and working intensively with juvenile offenders.

These aren't the preventive strategies that can make a difference, but they are the ones that offer the strongest evidence of effectiveness. And they also fit our growing understanding of the roots delinquency and violent crime. The first priority is to invest serious resources in the prevention of child abuse and neglect. The evidence is compelling that this is where much of the violent crime that plagues us begins, especially the kinds of violence we fear the most. It is known that most abused children never go on to injure others.

But the correlation between later violent crime and childhood abuse is strong and consistent, especially for the most serious kinds of violence. It turned out that being abused or neglected had little effect, if any, on minor forms of delinquency. But for serious delinquency-and violent crime in particular it mattered a great deal. The youths who had been abused were arrested almost twice as often, and reported almost twice as many violent offenses. The ideology is that if we prevent these tragedies, we can reduce violent crime. The Elmira program is amongst one of the programs that have been developed.

This program served vulnerable-mostly white, poor, young, and married-in a semi rural community with some of the highest levels of child abuse and neglect in the state. The project had several related goals: to ensure more healthful pregnancies and births, improve the quality of parental care and enhance the woman's own development. The program seem successful while in progress however, once the program ended the effects seemed to fade-a common pattern in many early intervention programs. By the end of the second year after the experiment, there were no differences in the number of abuse and neglect reports. Even so, the researchers calculated that the program, which cost only about $3000 per family served, paid for itself through the money saved in child protective and welfare costs. Curries then goes on to discuss other alternatives for prevention of child abuse and neglect.

He sums up this portion of the discussion by stating that there is more to learn about these programs. But taken together, they show that it is possible to reduce the maltreatment of children often dramatically-among troubled families. The second priority in crime prevention is to expand and enhance early intervention for children at risk of impaired cognitive development, behavior problems, and early failure in school. Once again, the 'why' is not mysterious.

The link between these troubles and later delinquency is depressingly consistent. Poor children aged three and four were enrolled in preschool for two and half hours a day. In addition, their teachers visited the children and their mothers at home once a week for about an hour and a half. Most of the children stayed in the program for two years, a few for just one. This program as called the Perry project.

It allowed children to explore the meaning of those activates with their teachers. The project was assigned to 123 neighborhoods children and the outcome was widely disseminated. But what makes them particularly striking is that they were achieved with such modest means, and with unusually high-risk children in severally disadvantaged communities. The author then goes on to mention two profound limitations on early intervention as it now practiced in United States: 1. Unlike many other advanced societies, we cannot link our early-intervention programs to national-level health care or family-support systems would allow us to provide services to children and families reliably throughout the course of childhood. The absence of those systems means that our programs for children and families are usually unstable and short term: most, indeed, never get beyond the "pilot program" stage.

It also means that the most effective programs must spend a great deal of their time and energy brokering basic support services that ought to be provided routinely through national policies. Above all, it means that most families that could benefit from such programs will never get them. The third priority that the author discusses is to invest in programs for vulnerable adolescents that build their skills and keep them on track toward higher education or training. The argument is based on a very real and much studied phenomenon: other things being equal, children who exhibit certain behavioral problems early on are more likely than others to end up as full-fledged delinquents of adult criminals. One of the earliest programs for at-risk youth to show strong evidence of success was the federal Job Corps, an enduring legacy of the 1960's that, along with Head Start, is one of the only preventive programs that has survived, with significant funding, year after year. What set Job Corps apart from less successful programs was its strong emphasis on intensive skill training, coupled with a variety of supportive services for its participants.

Evaluations showed that Job corps significantly reduced violent crime among its grates and the savings thus achieved more than repaid the costs of programs. The last priority in crime prevention is to invest time and attention in youths who have already begun a serious delinquent 'career'. All of the programs we " ve considered up to now were designed to keep young people out of trouble in the first place. But it is also critically important to halt the downward slide of youths who are already in trouble. Hence, keeping troubled youth from becoming 'chronic' offenders by addressing, early on, whatever got them into trouble in the first place should be crucial part of any serious preventive strategy against crime. The above is by no means an exhaustive list.

The author have focused on these programs because they not only offer encouraging evidence of success but also provide glimpses into the more complicated question of what it is that makes succeed likely. They reveal some themes that can help can help us design programs that work even better-and avoid wasting resources o ones that probably cannot work at all. It is nowadays often said that either we don't know how to do this or that it would make little difference to the crime create even if we did. But nowhere does the conservative depart more sharply from reality.