IOWA -- Cedar Rapids Law Enforcement Leaders: Invest in Early Education or Foot Bigger Prison Bill Later
Sep 21st 2009
CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA (Sept. 21, 2009) -- At a news conference today, Cedar Rapids Chief of Police Greg Graham and Linn County Sheriff Brian Gardner released a research brief indicating that high-quality early learning programs for at-risk children ages birth to five can significantly reduce crime and ultimately cut corrections costs by a quarter or more.
Currently in Iowa, there are over 14,000 incarcerated adults in jails, state and federal prisons, with corrections costs exceeding $356 million every year. A year of state lock-up costs taxpayers $31,000 a year in Iowa-more than twice the cost of a year's tuition, room, and board at the University of Iowa, which costs close to $14,000 a year. The chief and sheriff said that Iowa would save about $89 million in taxpayer dollars if it cut prison costs by a quarter by investing in early learning.
With kids heading back to school, Iowa law enforcement leaders are urging U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin to champion new federal legislation to implement the administration's proposed Early Learning Challenge Fund, which will provide $1 billion per year in grants for states to expand access to high-quality early childhood development initiatives. Harkin is the new chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which is developing the early learning bill. Law enforcement leaders are also asking the state legislature to continue to support quality early education efforts at the state level.
"Giving an at-risk kid access to early learning can open doors of opportunity for the rest of their lives. Without early learning, those opportunities are limited and often the only doors they end up walking through have bars on them," Chief Graham said.
A long-term study of the high-quality Perry Preschool in Michigan found that by age 40, the kids left out of the program were 85 percent more likely to be sentenced to jail or prison. A study of Chicago's Child-Parent Centers, detailed in the report, showed that at-risk kids who did not attend the program were 24 percent more likely to be incarcerated than similar kids who did attend.
The Linn County law enforcement officials emphasized the cost-saving benefits of investing in high-quality early childhood education and care, especially for at-risk young children. Research indicates that investing in early learning cuts crime and incarceration rates and delivers a substantial return to taxpayers. The Child-Parent Centers, for example, cut later crime, welfare and other expenses so effectively that they saved more than $10 for every $1 invested.
"Budgets are tight, and states have been forced to make painful cuts, but we can't afford to skimp on the education of our youngest children," Sheriff Gardner said. "It makes a lot more sense to pay now for quality early learning than to pay much more later for a prison sentence."
The proposed Early Learning Challenge Fund will support state-funded early education programs, such as kindergarten or quality child care, similar to federally-funded Head Start and Early Head Start, which offer constructive environments for the healthy growth and development of young children in the first five years of life. The Education and Labor Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill in July that includes support for the Early Learning Challenge Fund.
The law enforcement leaders said that more support is needed at the state and federal level to ensure that quality early childhood programs are available and affordable to more families. Costs for enrolling young children in early learning programs can run as high as $7,300 a year, which many families are unable to afford.
The need for increased access to high-quality early learning opportunities is great. For example, the federally-funded Head Start program for children in poverty serves only half of eligible children nationwide due to inadequate funding. And the youngest children, from birth to age 3, are even more dramatically underserved. In fact, Early Head Start serves only about three percent of eligible infants and toddlers nationally.
The research shows that quality is essential to getting the crime and incarceration reduction benefits of early learning. The Early Learning Challenge Fund legislation will enable states to adopt best practices, including higher qualifications for teachers and caregivers, smaller class sizes, and early screening and treatment of mental, emotional and behavioral problems, and could also incorporate parent coaching, which teaches at-risk families ways to promote their children's development.
Gardner and Graham are members of FIGHT CRIME: INVEST IN KIDS, an anti-crime organization led by 5,000 police chiefs, sheriffs, state attorneys general, prosecutors, other law enforcement leaders and violence survivors nationwide, including 155 in Iowa.
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