Public Support for Early Intervention Programs: Implications for a Progressive Policy Agenda

• NCJ Number: 170520
• Journal: Crime & Delinquency Volume: 44 Issue: 2 Dated: (April 1998) Pages: 187-204
• Author(s): F T Cullen; J P Wright; S Brown; M M Moon; M B Blankenship; B K Applegate
• Date Published: 1998
• Length: 18 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This article contends that early intervention programs which extend services to at-risk children and families are an important progressive initiative that criminologists and policy.makers should support.

Abstract

Since the early 1970s, criminologists have held the view that only broader social justice will reduce crime, which has largely surrendered criminal justice policy to conservatives. Emerging research shows, however, that early intervention programs prevent crime and are cost-effective. Based on a 1997 survey of Tennessee respondents, the article reports further that the public strongly supports early intervention and prefers it to incarceration as a strategy to reduce offending. The article defends early intervention as a progressive policy on both political and practical grounds because it diverts attention away from the narrow issue of crime per se and onto the offenders and their life circumstances, and it seeks to redistribute resources to children and families that are often struggling and disadvantaged. Tables, figure, note, references