Editorial Memo: With Deficit Talks Ongoing, Law Enforcement Continues Campaign to Make Early Learning a Priority

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Editorial Memo: With Deficit Talks Ongoing, Law Enforcement Continues Campaign to Make Early Learning a Priority

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Budget decisions could hurt chances to prioritize effective early care and education proven to help reduce crime

New analysis from the nonpartisan New America Foundation show that across-the-board budget cuts could sharply reduce funding for early care and education programs and aid to low-income school districts through Title I funding.

As Congress and the Administration work to find a compromise on the debt ceiling and reducing the federal deficit, veteran law enforcement leaders are urging their members of Congress to make sure that any agreement to lower spending does not undermine our most effective programs for at-risk children. Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, a national organization of law enforcement leaders and crime survivors, warns that drastic reductions in funding for high-quality early care and education could increase the risk of crime, harm public safety and eliminate an opportunity to reduce corrections costs.

Earlier this year, more than 600 law enforcement leaders from all 50 states delivered a letter to all members of Congress opposing cuts to early care and education for the youngest, at-risk children as elected officials consider measures to cut the federal deficit.

New evidence published last month in the prestigious research journal Science provides new evidence that high-quality early care and education programs can prevent crime and save taxpayers millions of dollars. A decades-later follow-up of over 1,400 low-income children in Chicago found that those who did not attend the Child-Parent Center preschools were 27 percent more likely to have a felony arrest by age 26 and were 39 percent more likely to have spent time in jail.

As lawmakers work out the budget mechanisms to keep our country solvent, they also need to retain the flexibility to protect funding for the most cost-effective programs that will give our children the best chance to succeed in life, said Chief of Police Michael Szczerba from Wilmington, Del., in a letter to the News-Journal.

These programs returned $10 in savings for every $1 invested, with half of the savings coming from lower costs for corrections and crime prevention.

Slashing early care and education for the most at-risk young children will cause far greater fiscal pressures in the future as we pay for the cost of their failure, said D.A. Michael D. Schrunk of Portland, Ore., commenting in the Portland Oregonian.

For more information on how spending cuts will impact funding for early education and prison costs, please contact Fight Crime: Invest in Kids.

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