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The Truth about Crime Prevention Essay

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The Truth about Crime Prevention

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 …show more content…

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

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