The overwhelming response to reducing crime in the United States has been to build more prisons and incarcerate more people (Prisons, 1994). At the end of 1997, the United States had more than one and a half million people in prisons and jails, and the money spent to keep them there is often taken from budgets that would otherwise be spent on human services programs. California, for example, spends more on prisons than it does for education. In 1996, a definitive study on different kinds of programs such as improving the quality of peopleÆs lives, increasing their chances of getting meaningful jobs, education, and better living standards and their effects o crime was published - Diverting Children from A Life Of Crime, by Peter Greenwood et al of the Rand Corporation.
The Rand researchers began with four programs that have been used previously in crime prevention:
1) Home visits by child care professionals, both before birth and extending for two years after birth;
2) Training for parents and therapy for families with children who are found to be at high risk for getting involved with the criminal justice system;
3) Incentives to induce high school students to stay in school and graduate;
4) Monitoring and supervising high school students who have already exhibited delinquent behavior (Prisons, 1994).
The study compared the impact of these four programs with the three strikes law of California to determine which of the five programs prevented the most crime. The programs were compared by computing how many crimes would be prevented by investing a million dollars in each program.
Results of the study showed that the biggest effect was produced through incentives to graduate from high school, which was four times as effective as the three strikes law (Prisons, 1994). Parent training was next in effectiveness, being roughly three times as effective, and delinquent supervision was slightly more effe...