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“DOLLAR FOR DOLLAR, CRIME PREVENTION EFFORT PAYS” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E1244-E1245 on July 11, 1996.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
DOLLAR FOR DOLLAR, CRIME PREVENTION EFFORT PAYS
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HON. BRUCE F. VENTO
of minnesota
in the house of representatives
Wednesday, July 10, 1996
Mr. VENTO. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to share with my colleagues an important article published in the St. Paul Pioneer Press on June 6, 1996
The article highlights a new crime prevention study released by the Rand Institute and features a prevention program in my district called Teens Networking Together [TNT]. The study found that, dollar for dollar, programs like TNT that encourage high-risk youth to finish school and stay out of trouble prevent five times as many crimes as stiff penalties imposed on repeat offenders. This also, according to the study, holds true for programs that teach better parenting skills to the families of aggressive children.
Nearly 2 years ago, this House debated the prevention programs included in the 1994 crime law. Many of my Republican colleagues at the time maligned these prevention provisions and mislabeled them as Government waste, insisting that they would do nothing to reduce crime. Now, however, these programs, which included the Community Schools Initiative, Youth Employment Skills [Y.E.S.] Program, midnight sports programs and the Vento/Miller at-risk youth recreation grant, are being vindicated by the facts and findings like Rand's. It seem that the old adage an ounce of prevention equals a pound of cure once again holds true.
According to the Justice Department, crimes committed by young people are growing at the fastest rate in this country. It is obvious to me if we are truly going to address our country's crime problem we must focus on prevention; we must give our young people hope and opportunity; we must give them a haven from the street where they can develop positive values such as responsibility, teamwork, leadership, and self-esteem.
I hope my colleagues will take the time to read this article and learn more about these youth crime prevention programs across the country that not only reduce future crime, but also save American tax dollars.
Dollar for Dollar Crime Prevention Effort Pays
(By Lori Montgomery)
It turns out that often-scorned crime prevention efforts aimed at disadvantaged kids may be far more effective than tough prison terms at keeping you safe.
In a new study released Wednesday, researchers with the highly respected RAND institute found that, dollar for dollar, programs that encourage high-risk youth to finish school and stay out of trouble prevent five times as many crimes as stiff penalties imposed on repeat offenders with so-called three-strikes-and-out laws.
And programs that teach better parenting skills to the families of aggressive children prevent almost three times as many serious crimes for every dollar spent.
The study--a two-year effort by researchers at RAND, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research institute in Santa Monica, Calif.--is the first to compare crime prevention programs to incarceration on the basis of cost and effectiveness at preventing future crimes.
``There has always been a `disconnect' between everybody's agreement that prevention is a good thing and some estimate of that benefit. That's what's new here,'' said Peter Greenwood, RAND's director of criminal justice programs and the study's primary author.
``In one sense, it's surprising how effective some of these things are,'' Greenwood said. ``But on the other hand, it shouldn't be surprising at all.
We all know the two institutions that socialize kids and keep them on the right track are the family and school. And our study shows that incentives for graduation and parent training are the two things that work.''
A program on St. Paul's West Side called Teens Networking Together provides a good example of how kids can be kept on the right track.
The West Side youth program is concentrated on building self esteem of high-risk youth, mostly minorities, through mentoring and anti-gang programs.
``The program showed me that there were two paths for me: One, the life of a gang member, and the other something that involves giving back to my community,'' said Roberto Galaviz Jr.
One year away from getting a degree in management from Concordia College, Galaviz is the program director of Teens Networking Together, a program he joined seven years ago to keep himself out of trouble. He still has gang members as friends, he said, but the program has made his life different from theirs.
Galaviz said critics of youth programs for high-risk kids should visit the Teens Networking Together center to see the progress it has made in the West Side community.
``The people who are doing the criticism don't know the hardships and obstacles of being minority and living in the inner city. This program gives people like me a goal and direction in life.''
The RAND study of crime prevention programs comes at a time when congressional Republicans are proposing yet again to increase penalties for juvenile offenders, and to eliminate the Office of Juvenile Justice in the Justice Department,--the primary source of leadership and funding for crime prevention.
It also comes at a time when juvenile jails are dangerously overcrowded.
The RAND study does not suggest ``that incarceration is the wrong approach'' to this rising tide of juvenile crime, the authors said in a statement. Nor that the three-strikes laws, which affect primarily adults, are not worth their high cost.
However, the current obsession with longer and tougher sentences has produced a ``lopsided allocation of resources,'' they said, that gives short shrift to preventing crime among kids who can still be saved.
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