A couple of weeks ago, a researcher from the RAND corporation (a Santa Monica-based think tank) spoke to an audience of social workers and policy makers in Seattle. His talk was about troubled kids and how the criminal justice system fails them. To the surprise of all present (but, surely, not to you and me) he pointed out that the popular, repressive methods of dealing with child criminals have all failed. The DARE program (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), which is used in school districts all over the country, has largely failed to effect any change in drug use. The same is true for "scared straight" programs. Boot camps, in particular, are a highly expensive flop. While kids are forced to toe the line in wilderness camps run by psychotic goons, their homes are nothing like a backwoods boot camp (although life in a street gang may sometimes resemble it--only with a lot more fun stuff going on, like drugs, booze, and sex).

In fact, the programs that have the most impact on juvenile crime are the relatively inexpensive programs that target early childhood education and provide services to the family as a whole. For example, in-home nurse visits to young mothers cost only about $7,400 per client, but they rate very high in reducing crime in the children whose mothers participate. For every dollar spent on the mother, $1.54 in criminal justice costs are saved later down the road. Other programs that come in for high marks include the Perry Preschool model, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, and the Bullying Prevention Program. In short, punishing kids after the fact doesn't work at all, versus providing rewarding service to them and their families when they're very young.

Notably, funding for many of these early childhood education and parental service programs were cut from state and federal budgets during the Reagan years and the Clinton/Gore "Welfare Reform" drive. At the same time, increasingly larger pots of money have been poured into punitive programs like DARE, boot camps, and other crap that should be ditched as soon as possible.

For teenagers already in the criminal justice system, the RAND researcher had encouraging news. Intensive family counseling has proved to be 85% successful at preventing repeat crimes. The cost is about $4,540 per family, a savings of about $13.45 in future criminal justice costs for every dollar spent on therapy. Once again, the peaceful, reasonable, "let's talk about it" approach that includes the whole family is preferable to locking kids up.

When the family is impossible to deal with or is nonexistent--and they often are--kids respond very well to court-ordered foster care with a foster family that is trained to cope with teenagers who have committed crimes. The foster programs are astoundingly cost effective, saving taxpayers $22.58 in criminal justice costs for every dollar spent. The recidivism rate is very low. In comparison, group homes (where kids are locked up with other teenagers in a glorified juvenile prison) fail pitifully to keep kids from re-offending.

The danger is that local governments often fund the programs that are most popular and most superficial. Having a cop visit a middle school and give a lecture to students will have minimal impact, especially when the kids already distrust the police. On the other hand, whole-family counseling will confront the source of the problem head-on--whether it's a kid's bad choice in friends, lack of self-esteem, need to rebel, or the parents' inattentiveness or incompetence. The non-glamorous, labor-intensive stuff is what works.