adapted from an article by Bill Du Bois in Utopian Thinking in Sociology: Creating the Good Society, edited by Art Shostak, American Sociological Association, 2001: pp. 123-143.

The Prevention Game

Thinking Creatively About Reducing Crime

William Du Bois, Ph.D.

Picture a game. Players are given identical neighborhoods or small towns. Each has a budget of $2.5 million which can be spent in any way over a ten year period of time. The winner is the one with the lowest crime rate over the ten year period. What would be the best strategy to win the game? How should players invest their resources to maximize their return?

Two and a half million dollars over ten years may seem like a sizable sum. However, we should remember how that money is spent today. At $25,000 per year, $2.5 million is the cost of keeping 10 people in prison for ten years. Prisons are already filled to capacity. The cost of building and housing inmates in new cells is $39,000 so that is only enough able to house 6.4 inmates a year. Or it is the cost of 7.5 juvenile beds in group homes for the same period, or 2 beds in intensive psychiatric group homes. We can spend all our money on removing a few criminals from the neighborhood, but that does not guarantee that the neighborhood will not breed new ones to take their place. The same sum will fund a typical at risk program to identify and track juveniles in one school. Or the money could be spent on boot camps or counselors or conflict resolution or positive recreation programs.

What would be the winning strategy? How might we proceed? Most of our thinking about preventing crime is not very sophisticated. Most social policy does not advance much beyond political knee jerks. Rather than just responding routinely, we need to become more creative in imagining new solutions.

A Similar Prevention Game -- Prevention in Health Care

"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking

we were at when we created them." -- Albert Einstein

Sometimes it makes sense to move to a different metaphor for a moment to gain perspective on a problem. As a way of stretching our thinking, we might simultaneously imagine a similar prevention game as it might be applied to health care. Although prevention in health care is still in its infancy, it is not in nearly as primitive a state as our thinking about crime. Particularly in the area of risk assessment, a few insurance companies have begun thinking about the cost effectiveness of preventing rather just treating diseases. Some factors have been found to relate to low sickness/disease. Exercise, healthy diet, quitting smoking, early detection, and wellness programs all reduce the risk of disease, hospitalization, and expensive treatment. Today some insurance companies offer reduced rates for customers who lead healthier lifestyles. They also substantially reduce rates for corporations willing to invest in employee wellness programs and early prevention.

We are beginning to realize we can safe money by investing in preventive health care. If we wait for a catastrophe to see a doctor, we purchase our medical care through the emergency room where it is most expensive. If we choose not to spend dollars on prevention, inoculations, and early detection, we also pay more in later health care costs. Playing a simultaneous Prevention Game as it relates to health care might help us discover insights about preventing crime that we otherwise would never have imagined.

Reacting to Crime and Delinquency

We are not accustomed to thinking about preventing crime. We wait for an emergency. We are used to simply reacting to the crisis de jour. We focus on the latest Susan Smith, Jeffrey Dohmers, Ted Bundy, Charlie Manson, Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City, or Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold at Columbine High School in Littleton. We don't think about problems until they hit the front page of the newspaper. Each monopolizes our attention for a time and then is gone: once again out of sight and out of mind. With each new crisis comes public outrage and societal condemnation. Lawmakers are likely to draft hurried legislation. Talk show hosts flaunt easy answers. A few experts get their fifteen minutes of fame. In depth analysis is hurried, if at all. When it exists, it is sandwiched between the agendas of politicians and the ready-made solutions of talk radio. Many times, we throw a collective temper tantrum of vengeance. We eliminate the problem. We execute people or throw them away in a prison where we don't have to think about them. We then wait for the next crisis de jour.

With such a strategy, it is small wonder that we don't get ahead of problems or implement comprehensive strategies. If we never address the roots of a problem, we are left simply to react. We move from one crisis to the next.

From Reaction to True Prevention

We might imagine a continuum from reaction to prevention. There are at least three components involved along this continuum. First of all, reaction takes place after the fact. It is how we respond to an act once it has occurred. Prevention takes place before something happens.

Reaction		Prevention
After		Before

Today, most of our crime strategy focuses on reaction. With such a strategy, we are forever driving while looking in the rear view mirror. However, prevention strategies focus on the road ahead: potential problems, alternative routes, better ways of traveling and new destinations.

Much of our reluctance to spend money on prevention is because we think we can avoid problems. We only spend money when we have to. Prevention on the other hand requires an investment up front. We refuse to be realistic. We are much like an auto owner who only services the car by the side of the road when it breaks down.

As a society, we don't understand the concept of investment. Most Americans seem to think a penny saved is a penny earned. However, that is not always true with health care. Skimping on services now, can mean huge medical bills later. And it is not true for most social problems. "Penny wise and pound foolish" is a more appropriate aphorism. The liberals haven't been able to get this concept across to the American people for the last thirty years. While there are certainly pork barrel, wasteful, ineffective programs, and pie in the sky extravagances, there are also some very good programs which give us a substantial return on our investment.

However, even the most simple investments in prevention seem to elude us. For example, the last figures I saw showed that for every $1 we spend on childhood vaccinations, we will save $8 in health care costs. And yet many diseases thought eradicated are making a comeback today because so many children are not getting their shots. It is one of those areas where we have sought savings by cutting back government services.

When we only are willing to invest money after the fact, expenditures are usually expensive, problems harder to remedy, and potential solutions more likely to prove ineffective. The person who waits to get their medical care at the emergency room not only pays more, but runs the risk that it is too late.

However, we put it off hoping we won't have to spend money on a problem at all. This is even more true when it comes to societal and psychological health. Psychologist Arthur Warmoth warns that the only time mental health has a market value is when somebody become such a pain in the ass that their friends and neighbors are willing to pay to have something done with them. The rest of the time we expect to get good mental health for free. We feel that we will get it by contagion if we only hang out with the right people. We certainly see no need to invest in good community mental health.

Crime is also one of those places we feel we can save money. Most don't do anything until there is a breakdown by the side of the road. And even when we are willing to throw money at the problem, we're not willing to invest our time thinking about it. We want easy answers and ready made solutions. That's why we hire experts. We certainly don't want to have to re-think a problem. However, we need to understand that our thinking is often part of the problem. If we just pour more and more money into the wrong solutions, it won't help and might even make things worse.

Prevention is a matter of paying a little now rather than a lot later. Ironically, so many still believe that we can skimp on education, job opportunities, and other aspects of the good society and not have to pay for it later with higher prison costs. Prevention focuses on investing effectively in the future. Early investment works. For instance, research on youth who attended the Perry Preschool showed they were less likely to be later arrested both as juveniles and as adults (Mendel, 1995). The old saying "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" maybe even underestimate the benefits.

Secondly, prevention focuses on health while traditional approaches respond only when something is wrong. Reaction does not focus on what is healthy. It seeks to avoid sickness.

Reaction		Prevention
Sickness		Health

This is a stimulus-response dynamic. All action is in reaction to being sick. Reaction seeks to move away from sickness. Prevention, on the other hand, seeks to move towards health. What type of lifestyle makes it less likely a person will get sick in the first place? Are there factors that insulate one from sickness? What would a healthy lifestyle look like?

Psychologist Erich Fromm (1947; 1956) noted modern medicine spends most of its time focusing on sickness, and knows very little about the healthy person. The only people who show up in the doctor's office are sick people. Fromm notes that even medical students spend much more time studying dead people (cadavers) than living healthy people. Similarly, psychiatrists spend all day seeing people with problems. Before Maslow and Fromm, we knew very little about psychologically healthy people. The healthy personality was hypothesized but not explored. Health was just the absence of sickness. Freud's healthy individual would be one who had had made it successfully through all the phases without getting fixated and stuck in any phase. There was never any exploration of what the healthy personality was like.

We must realize that health is more than just not being sick. Only recently has attention in criminology been given to studying people who are not criminals. Resiliency theory asks why some people even in high crime neighborhoods don't become criminals. However, here again the focus has been on what makes people resilient to crime rather than on creating the healthy people and fully functioning communities where people flourish. A healthy life style focuses on more than just not doing crime. The healthy, happy community isn't tacitly trying to be anti-crime. The productive community just happens to produce bonus side effects which include lower alcoholism, fewer drug problems, and less crime. The path "towards a healthy community" may be a quite different journey than the path "away from crime."

Finally, reaction is a negative approach. The emphasis is on not being sick; on not being a criminal. The dynamic of reaction is to escape and repel away from the negative. We seek to push the problem away. Prevention, on the other hand, is positive. It is the force of attraction: a pull rather than a push. People are repelled away from the negative. They are drawn towards the positive.

Reaction		Prevention
Negative		Positive

Perhaps, much of our confusion and ineptitude concerning crime has to do with our focus on the negative. If we only focus on what is broken, how will we know when something is right?

By dwelling on the extreme cases which are too acute for easy remedy, we miss insights about the seeds we could have planted and tended which would have prevented problems in the first place. By obsessing about stopping negative acts, we miss opportunities to cultivate positive environments.

Prevention is effective, while reaction is often too little too late. Once the cat is out of the bag, it becomes a very expensive proposition to get it back in. And sometimes, it becomes impossible.

Once Susan Smith drives that car into the water, there is only so much we can do. After Ted Bundy has gone on a rampage, there are only so many alternative. Before the act, there is a whole range of possibilities. After a crime has been committed there are certainly some creative options, but they are more limited. But what about the conditions that breed crime? We must understand that crime comes out of a struggle. People in desperate circumstances do desperate things. What available resources might have made a difference? What would have changed lives and prevented crime from occurring in the first place? How can we create healthy conditions where people thrive and are less likely to turn to crime?

Reaction follows the problem: forever chasing but never catching it, and with no hope of ever stopping it. It is an absurd chase. Prevention gets out in front of the problem. It offers real hope.

Types of Prevention Strategies

With $2.5 million to spend in the Prevention Game, where should we invest our money? Along the continuum of prevention, there are several types of strategies players might employ. These range from traditional reactive responses to true prevention.

Continuum of Prevention
Reaction						Prevention
			\|
Traditional Responses	Early Diagnosis	At-Risk Identify & Treat	Reactive Prevention	Positive Prevention	Minimum Daily Needs	Provention Healthy Community

Strategy #1: Traditional Responses

In a health care Prevention Game, some players may take the obvious solution: more doctors and hospitals. We could spend the $2.5 million improving hospital facilities or adding hospital beds. Another traditional tactic would be physician recruitment. A recruiter could be hired to visit medical schools, new doctors' offices could be built, the neighborhood could offer income guarantees to new physicians, or the community might finance medical education in return for later service. Other traditional approaches might be to purchase better equipment or hire more nurses. More creative reactive approaches would include expanding the role of nurses and physician's assistants so we could get more health care for the same amount of money.

The traditional response to crime is to hire more police or build more prisons. $2.5 million over ten years will buy 5 more police officers including benefits. Or it will house 10 prisoners in current facilities. If we want to expand the number of prison beds, then it is enough to could build and operate facilities for an additional 8 inmates (Irwin, 1997).

Another traditional approach to crime is to provide more judges and courts so that judicial processes can be made more swift and efficient. This would mean more money for lawyers, judges, and court house staff. It also might mean finding more court rooms. $2.5 million over ten years might purchase enough personnel to run two courtrooms. [1] However, if judges are merely going to dispose of cases with prison or jail sentences then our budget for jail cells is going to have to be increased and we're out of money. If only one new courtroom is staffed, then perhaps other half of the money could be used for more creative sentencing options.

House arrest is considerably cheaper than prison confinement. Approximately 15 people can be electronically monitored for the price of a prison cell. Unfortunately, electronic monitoring has not led to less confinement. Indeed, studies show that it is being used for people who in the past would have received probation, community service or other non-custodial options. Critics refer to this as "net-widening." People who previously would have received only probation come into the clutches of the new system. Intensive supervision is another sentencing option which would theoretically lower our costs. In practice, such close scrutiny leads to more parole violations and a much higher rate of parole revocations. These higher rates of re-confinement are due largely to minor rule infractions rather than actual crimes. Intensive probation saves money but does not lower recidivism.

For awhile, boot camps were politically popular because they fit a get tough mentality. For the money, they are cheaper than prison. This is particularly true if people are confined to the bootcamp for a few months as opposed to a more lengthy prison stay. However, although they are cost efficient, studies have consistently demonstrated that boot camps are as ineffective as prisons in decreasing future criminal behavior. The only boot camps which have been shown to be successful have been entirely because of particularly effective aftercare programs. Successful aftercare programs all have substantial job placement and job training components.

Reactive approaches that show success empower people for the future. Interestingly, those who earn college degrees while in prison have over a 90% rate of success of not returning to prison. However, such programs are controversial and have been discontinued in most states. In a society that doesn't have universal access to a college education, taxpayers do not want to "reward" people in prison. Certainly we do need to make college affordable to all citizens. We also need to understand that investing in the education of prisoners now will insure that we don't have to pay the cost of imprisoning them on an ongoing basis. It is a new way of thinking but it is hard for most people to accept the realities. If we put a calculator on the proposition, [2] the person who returns to prison will cost us $25,000 a year plus the costs of prosecution, apprehension, and the damage of their crimes. [3] The person who makes a successful life following prison, becomes a taxpayer contributing to society and a role model that one can turn their life around. However, turning your life around requires skills and opportunities.

Prisons do not work. People learn criminal skills, become more violent, gain better drug connections and gun connections, develop worse attitudes towards authority, and become more likely to commit future crimes. Furthermore, prison cuts people off from viable connections on the outside that they might use to develop a new life. Most people sent to prison will be back on the streets. Somehow we need to heal broken people. If we just concentrate on punishment, the people we release will be even more broken and incapacitated.

Providing resources is an important component to helping someone successfully change. Psychological treatment and psychotherapy where we try to fix the person have not proven to be successful. The counseling approaches which do show positive results focus on the problem, not the person. They concentrate on problem solving skills and conflict resolution. Another significant component of successful counseling is a close bond forming between the therapist and the client. Without this bonding, no real healing can take place.

Treatment is expensive. However, it is not nearly as expensive as other alternatives. Careful cost-benefit analysis by the Rand Corporation (Greenwood, 1994 Everingham, 1994; Rydell, 1994; Caulkins ,1997) shows drug treatment and prevention is seven times more effective than law enforcement to reducing the supply of drugs. For every dollar not spent on drug prevention and treatment, we would have had to spend $7 on reducing the supply to get the same effect. Treatment is also more cost effective than warehousing people in prisons. Per million dollars of taxpayer money spent, treatment reduces serious crimes 15 times as much as incarceration (Caulkins, 1997).

Creative Reactive Programs

Winning the Prevention Game requires smart investment and creative programming. The most successful reactive approaches don't dwell on punishment but use the occasion as an opportunity to equip the person with skills and resources to navigate future circumstances. Rather than rendering people impotent from a pound of punishment, effective programs recycle people into new lives. The truth about changing from a criminal path is the same as for getting off drugs or alcohol: You get a life transplant. To use the A.A. party lingo, "You get new play pens and new play pals." The same is true for those leaving prison. The most effective aftercare programs feature a heavy job component including training and job placement, and a support group that is there to hold your hand and understand what you are experiencing. Restorative justice is also a creative idea that shows real promise. Victim Offender Mediation empowers the victim and allows the offender to experience the results in a tangible way and be able to make amends directly to the victim (Zehr, 1990; Umbreit, 1994). Navaho peacemaker courts, community peacemaking circles in the Canadian Yukon, and restorative justice circles in South St. Paul, Minnesota use the crime as an opportunity to deal with the problem incident at hand, but understand why similar problems keep happening, and develop new solutions and programs (Galaway and Hudson, 1997; Stuart, 1997; Bussler, 2001). Conferencing involvement the victim, offender, and their support groups have become the law of the land in New Zealand and has been exported internationally. Police have convened this conferencing from Australia to Anoka, Minnesota.

Having frequent visits from family or friends is one of the best predictors of post-prison success. Louis Farrakan's suggestion that church groups “adopt” a prisoner is also great idea. Half of all prisoners get no visitors. No one cares enough to maintain a relationship. When they try to reenter society, they will have no buffer. In truth, most prison officials discourage visitors. It diminishes their sense of control and disrupts the routine. Visitors are not made to feel welcome but instead often experience harassment. Increasingly, prisons are being built in isolated locations where it is expensive and difficult for visitors to come. This is crazy. Anything we could do to encourage connections on the outside would make the transition to life outside of prison easier.

Most people who go to prison will be out someday. They are going to be somebody's neighbor. If don't end up living on your block, they'll end up living on mine. We need to use the time we have them in custody to make them better. For example, it is the common wisdom that we can't do anything to rehabilitate sex offenders. So we do nothing. We may keep them in prison for a long time but eventually they will be somebody's neighbor.

We need to invent better treatment options. When diseases are diagnosed as incurable many families don't give up. Although it doesn't happen often, every once in awhile someone who had been diagnosed as incurable is able to beat the odds. If science would have given up every time someone said it couldn't be done, we would still be in the Dark Ages. Most of what today passes for sex offender treatment is simply a political agenda. It happens to be a political agenda I often agree with, but as a treatment strategy, it is not very effective. We need to be inventing new programs to treat sex offenders. We certainly don't want to turn the public into guinea pigs. However, it is shameful that we accept cynicism and resignation from our social science.

Strategy #2: Early Diagnosis

Reaction is always after the fact and a day too late. A more effective strategy would be early detection, diagnosis, and treatment. In the health care arena, this involves testing and screenings to identify and treat diseases at an early stage. Early diagnosis is not only more cost effective, it produces better results. Waiting for more acute symptoms often means a disease has progressed to a state where it is untreatable or only radical approaches might work.

In France, pregnant mothers are paid $1,000 if they will keep five prenatal appointments with a doctor. The society calculates it will save considerable money by investing early in health care. The reason the United States leads the modern, industrial world in both infant mortality and mothers who die in childbirth, is that the first time many poor pregnant women see a doctor is when their water breaks. Not getting good prenatal care has other serious health consequences including low birth weights. Low birth weights are associated with poor development, mental retardation, infant mortality, and physical disabilities. The United States chooses to skimp on prenatal care. These children will be more likely to need special schooling or even institutionalization. It is only then that Uncle Sam takes out the checkbook.

Early diagnosis looks for early warning signs. Prevention Game money might be invested in professionals, better diagnostic equipment, and more extensive testing. Health care clinics could be made more widely accessible and early treatment more affordable to the public. Investment could also be made in advertising to promote public awareness about early detection.

In criminology, people who are anti-social at an early age may also have problems later. Violence at age eight is a good predictor of violence later in life. If we can address problems early, we can prevent them from growing into larger problems. People resort to violence when they can't get their needs met and have no other repertoire to address problems. Psychologist Carl Rogers says, "Violence is the last resort of a powerless person." In many families, people learn violence as a way of coping with problems. Their only repertoire of conflict resolution skills to deal with frustration is to hit. People need to learn problem solving skills and alternative ways of getting their needs met. Teaching conflict resolution is a promising solution.

Counseling is the most effective around a particular problem at the point of crisis. School children can be trained to assist others in dealing with situations. Playground patrols trained in conflict resolution can be available on the spot when conflicts arise to address problems. This also serves to educate the people involved how they might handle similar situations themselves in the future. People always learn best on the spot at the point of crisis. Prevention game money invested in creating such a program will pay dividends.

Other programs can address early signs of violence. Some youth attribute violent intentions to others when in fact there is none. Research shows teaching people to correctly read and interpret situations lowers violence (Mendel, 1995).

Healthy Families America is another effective early intervention program. It begins by identifying pregnant mothers who are likely to later physically abuse their child. It is not hard to accurately predict who they are. They are "resource poor." They tend to be young, poor, isolated, uneducated, and without help or support from their families or the child's father. When the frustration gets too great, they have few places to turn. Healthy Start gives these mothers a menu of potential services: job training, day care, conflict resolution skills, parenting training, anger management, job search skills, etc. The program is innovative because the "case worker" who decides which services are appropriate is the mother herself. We thus avoid a tug of war trying to get a person into parenting training or anger management when they don't want to go. The program works by providing resources and alternatives in a self directed program.

The Healthy Families America program lasts the first five years of a child's life. It isn't cheap. It costs $1,000 a year for a total of $5,000. It pays for itself in the long run. Playing our Prevention Game, we have $2.5 million for 10 Years. If we do the math:

Prisons	10 Prisoners in existing facilities (two and half year average stay)	40 people over 10 years
Bootcamps	25 people each year in Bootcamps (six month average stay)	250 people over 10 years
Healthy Families America	250 in program for five years	500 people over 10 years

In ten years, we can treat twice as many people with Healthy Families America as with bootcamps and 12.5 times as many people in Healthy Families as in prison cells. If we are really interested in having lower crime rates, we need to also look at indirect effects. Children whose parents are imprisoned are much more likely themselves to then get in trouble.

To figure the benefits, let's make the very conservative assumption that without the program 40% of these kids would have went on to a life of crime. Let's assume that Healthy Families children have the crime rate of normal cohorts of 6%: The average stay in prison is 2.2 years. Thus the comparison of cost for Healthy Families Americas and prison would look like this

40% of 500 = 200 kids @ $25,000 / year x 2.2 years	$11,000,000
6% of 500 = 30 kids @ $25,000 / year x 2.2 years	$1,650,000
Savings for Healthy Families America	$9,350,000

These figures are just for their the first stay in prison. Additional offenses will cost us even more and these are the very people most likely to be back. It also does not include costs of $35,000 for juvenile institutions which these kids are likely to experience before they graduate to adult prison. By focusing on early warning signs, Healthy Families America is able to provide a series of resources and opportunities to help people successfully navigate their circumstances.

A word a caution is needed here. Early warning signs should be used to identify people in need of help with their problems. We must then provide help and invent resources they can use in their struggles. If we use early warning signs to simply stigmatize people, we may make the situation worse. As any good counselor knows, we must separate the person from the behavior.

James Wilson's "Broken Windows" theory received quite a bit of attention nationally especially in New York City. He argued that if small crimes like breaking windows are ignored, they accelerate into larger crime. Broken windows in neighborhoods gives the sign that People may just give up in a deteriorating neighborhood where no one cares and anything goes. His strategy was to spend money cracking down on small crime as a way of reducing major crime. Such a strategy may be effective to the extent that it is informational: you are over the line and it will not be tolerated. The value of punishment is feedback.

However, we must be careful not to turn people into criminals for small offenses. Labeling can destroy self esteem, incapacitate selves, and turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy where authority figures on the lookout for crime may turn typical deviance into a sanctioned offense. For juveniles in particular, exploring the boundaries is a normal part of breaking away. Most adolescents "age out" of illegal activities. It is important that labeling doesn't turn them into criminals.

How do we avoid creating a negative self-fulfilling prophecy and still get the person help when they need it? Healing must begin early or wounds grow. Early signs of problems need to be dealt with before they become larger problems. However, if we magnify something too much under the microscope, all of our lives can look pretty distorted. The answer is that we should focus on fixing the problem rather than fixing the person. Creative solutions manage to deal with the problem without stigmatizing the person.

Strategy #3: At Risk Identification and Treatment

Traditional responses and early diagnosis both react after a problem has already occurred. At Risk programs are an attempt to get out in front before a the problem happens. The strategy is to identify people particularly susceptible and provide early detection, treatment and prevention.

For health care this translates into careful monitoring of people with a family history of certain diseases. Another strategy is community wide screenings to identify people with the preconditions which might turn into a problem.

Criminals are more likely to come from homes of childhood domestic violence. Poor reading ability is one of the best predictors of future delinquency. Children of teen moms are also more likely to become criminals -- a teen mom has fewer resources to make ends meet and has to cope with all the problems of growing up herself. Criminals are also likely to have been victims themselves. We must invent effect programs to deal with their needs.

We know that those with a parent in prison are much more likely to become delinquent themselves. One creative program called "Girl Scouts Beyond Bars" allows girls spend a weekend a month in prison with their moms doing activities. This not only bonding for the children but motivation and connection for the mothers. It is good crime prevention.

We have chosen to make war on crime. We concentrate on punishing the offender and neglect victims. Instead we need a peacemaking approach that heals broken lives. Ironically, one of the things we know about criminals is that most of them have themselves been victims. They have been victims of child abuse and many other crimes. The child abused at home then terrorizes younger children on the playground. The person whose possessions are stolen by later steal from someone else. There is an endless cycle of victimization where crime gets passed on. As Hal Pepinsky notes, "While not every victim becomes an offender, every offender has been a victim." We need to take the opportunity to heal our victims. They themselves are at risk of turning their anger and pain on others. One of the ways we could decrease crime is by concentrating on healing victims and breaking the cycle. Restorative Justice and Victim Offender Mediation offers particular opportunities here. One restorative justice advocate can be funded for a rather modest salary.

One of crazes in delinquency prevention has been school at-risk programs. One model program which has been copied in schools throughout the country consists of hiring staff whose primary purpose is to identify and track potentially at risk children. In theory, these kids are then referred to already existing social services. In practice, existing programs are already overcrowded. A typical school at risk program that I am familiar with costs in the neighborhood of our $250,000 a year. Generally, $10,000-$15,000 goes towards developing new programs. About the same amount might be spent on program evaluation. The rest of the money is spent on identifying who is "at risk" and record keeping to track their progress. This means the vast proportion of the budget goes to professional staff, secretaries, and computers equipment for record keeping.

Precious resources are exhausted on identifying individuals when actually the problems stem from the lack of opportunities and resources for a whole range of people caught in difficult circumstances. Individualistic approaches which assume that the roots of the problems reside inside individuals will be of limited effect. If most of the money is spent on identification and tracking of at risk kids, few funds are left over for actual treatment and resources.

People need skills and resources they can use in their situations. Head Start is one of those great examples of focusing on the needs rather than the labeling the person. We do not need to pinpoint which particular individuals will become sick in order to improve community health.

"At Risk Programs" make sense to the extent they identify needs and provide resources to meet those needs. It is not cost effective to spend so much time, energy, and money on identifying and tracking who should be included and who should be excluded from programs. Instead, it would be wiser to develop resources to address unmet needs and allow all people access them.

Reaction		Prevention
The Act		The Struggle

Reaction		Prevention
Individual		Situation

Strategy #4: Reactive Prevention Programs

Today most wellness programs are really anti-sickness programs rather than full fledged positive prevention programs. They are what I call "reactive prevention." Traditional wellness programs fit this category. They focus on stopping an unhealthy behavior or activity: not gaining weight, not smoking, not drinking, not doing drugs, not having a heart attack, or in not having stress that causes diseases. They are not true prevention programs, but "anti-sickness" programs.

Reactive prevention has a foot in both worlds. It teeters at the fulcrum between Reaction and true Prevention. The focus and the motivation is clearly negative: it is a reaction against sickness. Yet there are also components of true prevention. There is a genuine investment in creating a healthy lifestyle even though the focus remains on reducing or eliminating elements that are unhealthy. It aims towards the positive moving away from sickness and towards health.

Many of today's crime prevention programs are of this type: alcohol and drug treatment, anger management, conflict resolution, parenting classes. We try to eliminate negative behaviors. At their best, reactive prevention programs can provide power skills and provide new opportunities.

We know most juvenile crime takes place after school. “Grandma Please” in Chicago is a program where latchkey kids can phone retired homework between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. to talk and get help with homework or problems. It uses the excuse of a problem to create bonding and a pseudo baby sitter.

Parent management training decreases delinquency. In Des Moines, a hospital gets parents to attend parenting classes by giving them $500 if they attend all ten sessions. Students get "paid" for taking college class -- they get 3 hours of credit. Rather than trying to force people into parenting classes, it makes more sense to attract them.

Poor reading ability is one of the best predictors of future delinquency. We could invent creative delivery systems including peer tutors. Perhaps we also could even switch roles with the older students who are poor readers being called up to read to much younger children.

Being the child of a teen mom dramatically increases your chances of being a criminal. Anything we can do to decrease teen pregnancy will decrease future crime rates. Research on lowering teen pregnancy is fairly clear: empower the girls and give them realistic hope and opportunities for the future. United States has highest teenage pregnancy rate among modern industrial nations. Despite our considerable investment in a "just say no" strategy, most girls are sexually active by the time they graduate from high school. Ironically, Scandinavian countries with their more open approach to sexuality actually have the lowest rates of teen pregnancy and the highest average age for commencing sexual activity. Our methods of repression seem foredoomed to creating more not less teen pregnancy. The truth is teen pregnancy is reduced by contraceptive knowledge and availability; healthy and realistic attitudes about sexuality and relationships; and opportunities for a meaningful life.

Most prisoners were high school dropouts. Again, anything we can do to encourage people to stay in school will lower crime. However, we need to get more creative than we have been. Schools need to become exciting places. As Charles Silberman (1970) noted so long ago in Crisis in the Classroom, most schools are boring authoritarian places than do more to contribute to increasing delinquency than to decreasing it. It doesn't have to be that way. Schools could become places than energize and enthuse. Moving beyond reactive prevention, we need to create programs that are attractive in their own right.

Strategy #5: Positive Prevention Programs

Positive prevention programs are a destination in their own right. The emphasis is on the program rather than just a movement away from sickness. They are pulls rather than pushes.

We enjoy playing basketball or racquetball over the noon hour. We look forward to the big game. However, the reason we originally started playing three times a week, and the part of the reason we continue is because it's good exercise. It's a way to stay in shape that we enjoy. The emphasis is clearly positive but there is also attention to the fact that it is a way to avoid sickness. Positive prevention programs attract for their own sake. But we are also cognizant of their preventive effects of staying fit. We invest in time and money partly for that reason. Thus we join the Y or try to find time to go swimming. Motivation remains somewhat negative, yet the program/activity is devised to be attractive. Even golf is a way our competitive culture has designed to be able to keep score while taking a walk. It keeps you in shape while chasing after your ball.

The crime debate of 1993 found many claiming federal spending on midnight basketball programs was the classic example of wasteful government spending. And yet the fact remains that investing in positive youth development is good crime prevention. Recreation and after programs work. Research shows housing projects with Boys and Girls Club recreational facilities have lower delinquency rates. Multi-dimensional school-based programs dramatically decrease delinquency.

Investing in our kids didn't used to be a waste of money. Investing in positive youth development used to just be common sense. There are less opportunities for youth recreation today than 30 years ago. Swimming pools have disappeared in many innercity neighborhoods. It is expensive to get insurance and easier just to bulldoze them over. Basketball and volleyball courts are in short supply even in middle class neighborhoods. Somehow we have forgotten something that we used to know. Positive recreational opportunities make good sense. Kids need something positive to do. We spend so much effort on "just say no" campaigns without creating viable avenues to which to say yes.

In the mid 1990's, Resiliency theory noted there are factors that make us less susceptible to delinquency even if we grow up in a high crime neighborhood. Resiliency marks a significant step in the right direction. It moves us towards prevention. However, too many who embrace the resiliency concept focus on blaming the individual rather than creating viable resources for people in their struggles. It is also strange that Resiliency Theory has retreated from Maslow because his work was a far more sophisticated version. Resiliency theory would never dream of treating the protective factors as rights. Children may need significant others, meaningful activities, and but Resiliency theorists don't see it as the social system's obligation to provide access to such things. Responsibility in Resiliency theory resides with the individual and not the society. The metaphor between health and crime is far from perfect. Ultimately crime is not a disease that we catch but a way of life that we learn. The best Resiliency approaches emphasize seeding resources into the environment rather than blaming the individual or family for shortcomings.

Reaction						Prevention
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Traditional Responses	Early Diagnosis	At-Risk Identify & Treat	Reactive Prevention	Positive Prevention	Minimum Daily Needs	Provention Healthy Community

Strategy #6: Minimum Daily Needs

A healthy society meets human needs. Otherwise we pay the cost in social problems ranging from drug use to crime. Unless we are creating social systems that meet human needs, we are in for problems. Even some business organizations are beginning to understand that you may be able to take advantage of people in the short term but in the long term you pay the price in the consequences of alienation.

A healthy person has certain needs. When these needs aren't met, a person may get sick.

If you don't take your vitamins, you will develop a deficiency. This focus on human needs moves towards a full prevention mentality. How do we create a healthy social system that meets human needs?

If something is a need, we will get one way or another. We don't have any choice. We must get our needs met. The human organism will get out one way or the other. For example, if we deny legitimate opportunities for meaning, people will find illegal and unhealthy avenues.

Carl Rogers said that even in the most bizarre behavior, the quest actualization can be found. Somehow the organism tries to get out -- to make sense of a situation no matter how bizarre. We try to get our needs met. One way or the other. If there are healthy avenues, we take those. If there are not, we invent illegal or unhealthy means.

Every list of needs is different. There is not a definitive set of needs. But we can agree that there are basic needs. Obviously we can't do without sleep, food or shelter for long. There are also higher needs: meaning, love, response, something to live for, community, connection with a significant other, empowerment, privacy, and security. We might even categorize fun and relaxation as needs. We may go without these needs for a longer time. But if we don't get them met, there are negative consequences.

Pope John XXIII noted, “If you want peace, work for justice.” This is Needs Theory in a nutshell. Lowell Hamilton a businessperson I knew when I worked at the Chamber of Commerce used to say, "If you see something is injustice with an employee, fix it now. Don't wait until it becomes a problem."

If something is a need, it is well on its way to being a right. In today's climate of individual responsibility it would be politically unpopular to treat human needs as rights. But if we are going to maintain a prevention mentality, that is exactly what we must do. If people need something in order to fully function, then there will be negative side effects of unmet needs. A healthy society provides ways for people to meet their needs. Otherwise, we are just trying to keep the lid on an untenable situation.

Most social problems are symptoms of a society that does not adequately address human needs. The emphasis in the Human Needs Approach is primarily on health However, it still retains a slight emphasis on not getting sickness rather than focusing directly on full human functioning. It still retains a somewhat negative focus: needs must be met so problems don't arise.

Strategy #7: Provention, The Healthy Community

How could you create a healthy society that didn't have as much crime in the first place A full prevention model would invest in creating healthy, fully functioning social systems. A healthy society creates an environment and organizations where people flourish. Healthy social systems do meet people's needs but the focus isn't on avoiding the negative. One of the benefits of healthy social systems is that they just happen to have fewer social problems. Healthy systems are not designed while focusing on the rear view mirror driving away from problems. They are not just going away from.. The Healthy Society is a destination in its own right. Think of the reduction in crime as a bonus.

This is true prevention or "provention" as conflict resolution expert John Burton (1993) calls it. The healthy social system is proactive. It is not reacting to sickness but creating the components for health: an atmosphere in which people can flourish. It provides the resources and context which promotes health and where negative consequences as less likely to occur.

This is similar to Maslow's work in psychology. He found that most of prior psychology focused on the "sick" individual and abnormal psychology. The assumption was always made that a healthy personality was simply one who was "not sick." However, Maslow argued that health is not just the absence of sickness. Notice the focus in resiliency: it is not on health per se. It is on being resilient to sickness. By focusing on not being sick, we miss some very important things about health. Similarly, an emphasis on not doing crime isn't the same as a focus on a healthy community.

Healthy communities function quite differently from communities which are merely non-sick. Health and sickness are not just opposites, they are quite different realms. Maslow's idea of "b motivators" and "d motivators" is meant to address this distinction. "D motivators" are "deficiency" motivators. They include the basic needs such as shelter and food. They are the needs at the foundation of his pyramid in the hierarchy of needs. These needs are experienced mainly in terms of deficiencies: one craves food when hungry, shelter when tired or exposed to the elements. "D motivators" function are pushes : a person tries repel themselves away from and avoid deficiencies.

Rather than being repelled from, people are attracted towards "b motivators." They function as pulls rather than pushes. B motivators, the Being motivators, attract and invite. They are preferred. The realm of d motivators is Needs Theory. B motivators are very different. Health and sickness are completely different paradigms with different actors, roles, themes, and experiences.

If we focus on sickness, we fund hospitals, doctors, heroes, mechanics and other fixers of problems. Focusing on crime we hire a crew of cops, counselors, prison guards, and probation officers. If you change the focus, it changes everything. Focusing on health we fund vacations, dreams, new ideas for businesses, positive opportunities.

We should hire more matchmakers and fewer counselors. A married two-pack-a-day cigarette smoker has the same lung cancer rate as a single one-pack-a-day smoker. Being connected to someone will make you live longer. Maslow found healthy people are involved with others and with a greater cause. The truth is the way people get out of mental institutions is by getting interested in someone or something. Can you imagine an Academy of Matchmaking? It has become a lost art. We could matchmake not only lovers but mentors and significant others. Funding matchmakers could pay dividends. Creating networks and sites designed for effective mingling could introduce and match people to each other.

Falling in love will lower your crime rate. Someone cares. Having a significant other whether it is a coach, teacher, or a great aunt can make all the difference in a child's life. Research shows deterrence is effective mainly because family and friends would be disappointed in you. "It would kill mom if I went to prison." If it is having a close bond with significant others that is the crucial variable, then we need to invest in improving relationships rather than building prisons. Today, we blame families much like we blame individuals. However, both individuals and parents are often doing the best they can. What resources would be helpful to families in their struggles?

Parental homeownership for instance, is related to lower delinquency. If parents own their own home, it provides roots, a sense of community, and a commitment to the area. We know crime rates are highest in transitional neighborhoods. Even in suburban areas, the more frequently parents move, the higher their child's delinquency. Investing in parental home ownership will decrease crime.

Motivation is a reason to get up in the morning and a reason to stay up. Purpose and a reason to live is related good health. The implication is to create real interests and help people actualize their dreams. Medical researchers have found a reason to live is related to how fast your recover from disease and whether you get sick in the first place. Effective organizations empower people and build on natural interests and motivations. Intuitively, I'd suggest empowered people probably live longer. The also invariably commit less crimes and delinquency. As Jane Fonda says with teen pregnancy, "Hope is the best contraceptive."

The greatest factor in stress is not having control over your situation. Empowering people can reduce the negative consequences of stress and the destructive mechanisms people use to cope with it. The good society develops healthy resources and activities.

Motivation and Social Control

We can try to force people to do something or we can entice them. The problem with pushes is the old story about the boy scout who reported having trouble helping an old woman across the street because she didn't want to go. It is not only hard to oppose people's needs and purposes, but it is expensive.

We need to understand people are motivated by aims and desires as well as by pushes. The early sociologists sought to discover the social forces and then build a science of human behavior around. We must recognize that these social forces are none other than human desires and purposes. Pulls work better than pushes.

All the research from behavioral psychology says rewards work better than punishments. Wild horse trainer Marty Roberts who was featured in "The Man Who Listens to Horses," applies his techniques to delinquent youth as well as horses. His wisdom his to "reward early and reward often."

Rewards are not only more effective but also more efficient. Designing a society which focuses on investing in rewards rather than punishments will safe us both human suffering and money.

The value of punishment is feedback. It is informational -- you are over the line and it won't be tolerated. We need just enough volume to get the message across. If we turn up the volume too much, the effect can be deafening. People don't hear the message, they just are incapacitated. It is small wonder that informational feedback too often just becomes noise against a prison backdrop of brutality, heartache, bureaucracy, boredom, loneliness, and depression. A little punishment is a dangerous thing. Instead we have turned punishment into an all purpose club that we use for every occasion. We should use it selectively.

When people are on the wrong path that harms others, society needs to stop them. We need to get their attention. However, force can only do so much. To use an old metaphor, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. We need to take advantage of natural interests and motivation.

We’ve got to learn that negatives don’t work very well. They’re extremely costly and they’re ineffective. It does not work to try to force somebody not to do something they are determined to do. We’ve got to concentrate on positive motivators. It’s effective and it’s much less costly.

Forcing people with prison, with cops... is just a fools game. We’re spending millions and we’re accomplishing nothing. Water doesn’t flow up hill. You’ve either got to pump it up hill or hire someone to carry it. It makes more sense to follow natural motivations. No place is the conservative ignorance more evident than in the midnight basketball debate. I had 12 and 13 year old gang members come to my Intro to Criminal Justice class. When Melvin who had shot his gun at people before and missed said he liked to play ball his eyes lite up. That’s the one thing that would attract him. Then we could teach him about discipline, caring, opportunities etc. Water flows down hill.... Melvin’s attracted to basketball. It would keep him off the street on Friday and Saturday nights. And we could build positive programs around his natural basketball interest. We should take advantage of natural interests and motivations.... Otherwise we waste money trying to force programs on him he doesn’t care about. Or we can spend money on police, trials, juvenile homes, and finally prisons. It’s not a matter of catering to potential criminals. It’s a matter of understanding human behavior. We need to give children something to say “yes” to.

What are Our Values?

Gloria Steinem notes that if you want to see someone's values, look at their checkbook register. We need to see where we spend our money: what we really value. For example, we say we care about our kids, but look at society's checkbook.

It costs $35,000 to put one person in a juvenile facility for a year. What could you get with $35,000 worth of basketball tickets and travel money so youth could see their favorite stars? How could you leverage that into motivation that makes a difference? We have plenty of money. We are just spending it foolishly. We are building prisons rather than lives.

We are give huge sums as tax breaks to the rich. Large corporations make massive profits on the tax incentives we use to motivate their behavior. The rich get tax incentives while the lower economic classes are left to fend for themselves. We believe in incentives for the rich, and punishments for the poor. Money by itself won't solve our problems. But we do need money to invest wisely.

According to psychologist Gerald Jampomsky, we only have a choice between two paradigms: love and fear. We only get one choice. The decision we make colors everything we else do. How do we manage behavior? Maybe this is the meaning of B.F. Skinner's odd statement that "Love is the use of positive reinforcement."

The lesson of sociology is that human nature appears to be very much a self fulfilling prophecy. Inner city children who are higher achievers in school tend to have mothers who "trust the child's judgment and self direction" rather than focusing on "controlling the child." If we respect others and allow them freedom, we introduce indeterminacy into the world If a children only do what their parents want them to do, their freedom is hypothetical and untested.

Ernest Becker says evil stems from constrictions on behavior and from a shallowness of meanings. The good society provides a stage for the human spirit and the wholeness of experience. Real hope and meaningful roles lower crime, teen pregnancy, and even depression.

Winning the Game -- Imagining Solutions to Crime

A sociological approach to reducing crime would be to seed opportunities and alternatives in the environment. What kinds of resources would be helpful to people in their struggles? We need to become social architects inventing new resources.

Human Recycling Centers

You will probably get more bounce for your buck the closer your solutions are towards the provention end of the continuum. However, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't still invest in creative reactive solutions. We must get better at the art of correction.

People often come to prisons with many wounds. We must learn how to heal broken lives. Dostoyevski said that if you want to judge the degree of civilization of a country, you should visit its prisons. He probably won't think much of the United States.

Ironically, we could sow the seeds of prevention with those who are already in prison. Teaching people how to live productively now while they are in our clutches might prevent them from committing more crimes in the future when they are released. Unfortunately, we typically squander this opportunity. It is sad but true that most people leave prison worse off than when they entered. We are certainly wasting both our tax dollars and an opportunity if we don't rehabilitate people while we have their attention. When people are first arrive in prison, they are the most ready to change. Most people want to turn their lives around, stop violating the law and prepare themselves for conventional careers while in prison. We should take advantage of this. Instead, this is when they first arrive is when the system is at its most vengeful. By the time the prison gets around to offering anything constructive, inmates have already hardened and adapted to the prison culture. We must help people construct new lives.

Synergy

The ideal society creates win-win situations. We're all in this together. We either all win or we are in trouble. Management can't get ahead at the expense of labor for long. There are always paybacks in terms of low productivity, sagging morale, and turnover. Unfortunately losers are part of the American dream. We know we are winners by beating out someone else. But losers are dangerous. They are always waiting for next season to get even. How much income is enough? We certainly need some level of income motivation even for the richest people. But much excessive income for luxuries do some need while others are struggling for the most basic of needs?

Reducing poverty lowers crime. Countries with lower income difference between the rich and poor tend to have lower crime rates. Eliminating poverty is good crime fighting. Unemployment and underemployment are also culprits. It is easy to understand how unemployment might be related to property crimes but it is even more related to violent crime. The explanation can be found in the frustration people experience when they are unemployed. This also explains why underemployment is even more related to crime than unemployment.

In societies with high violence, individuals are taught to sacrifice the sake of the community. However, you can compromise self forever. Ultimately, the way we treat others is intimately tied to the way we treat ourselves. In some societies, individuals willingly sacrifice their own happiness and rewards for the good of the group. Ruth Benedict (1970) found that it is precisely these societies where crime and violence are the highest. On the other hand, societies with low aggression create social arrangements where both the community and the individual benefit at the same time. We must learn that we cannot successfully surrender ourselves for the sake of relationship without negative consequences. Freud and all the psychology that follows shows that if you deny self in one form, it resurfaces in other.

Corporate understandings of synergy have been misguided. Mergers of large corporations which then close plants and lay off workers to realize short term stock profits is not synergy. Synergy is a win-win situation for all. These supposed corporate "synergies" are merely opportunism. The wreck communities suffering plant closing and breed distrust among even continuing employees. In the long term, they often produce no new wealth. The promised effective combinations are often more hypothetical than real.

Synergy is wealth. It is creating something more than was there in the first place. It is not just taking advantage and selling off your resources. That is more similar to the old practice of a "bust out" where the mafia bought companies and then sold off their assets as a way to launder money.

Synergy is not just matchmaking or compromising so we get along or an effective trade. Synergy is about inventing effective social arrangements and institutions. Synergy gives us a concrete way to view the ideal society. We must create a win-win situation between people, between the individual and the organization, and between the person and the society. Synergy must be our evaluative mechanism. We need to create win-win situations or we must return to the drawing board. Synergy gives us a concrete way to view the ideal society. We must create a win-win situation between people, between the individual and the organization, and between the person and the society.

Community building lowers crime and delinquency. Being connected to others lowers your suicide rate and it lowers your crime rate. Anything we can do to create community will lower crime. Being isolated presents a health risk. If no one hears your call for help, if you can't compel the system to attend to your needs, you are more apt to not receive medical attention in time (Gunderson, 2001). The same is true of social problems. If the individuals cannot get society to listen at early stages of their personal struggles, problems may multiply. Connectedness and caring about each other lowers crime. As Hal Pepinsky (2001) notes, you are probably safer if you carry a friend than a gun.

Humanistic psychology needs a companion humanistic sociology which focuses on creating the social resources and the context in which healthy personalities are more to occur. We must also invest in healthy relationships, healthy communities, and the healthy society. Such an investment is not a luxury, it is good prevention.

Creative Solutions

We need to invent viable alternatives and resources. Conservatives run on an endless agenda of lower taxes, lower taxes, lower taxes. But you get what you pay for. We still don't invest as a society in common resources. Most Europeans pay much higher taxes than Americans. However, they look at it in a different way. What is important is not how much taxes you pay, but your disposable income is after expenses. Europeans pay more taxes but they also receive more services. Unless we invest in prevention, we will undoubtedly pay the price later.

We need to look at some creative ways to win the Prevention Game. Please do not take my ideas as sacred. I am very serious about these suggestions but they should be a springboard and not a final destination. I want this article to stimulate you to invent new solutions. We need new programs and social inventions. Unfortunately the only ones imagining bold new social programs today are the morons on the political right. We can do better than that. If we begin with want we know about crime and delinquency we can create new imaginative new programs. Without a vision, you're left to simply react. If we begin with a vision of the ideal society, we can build with it in mind.

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