Child Well-Being Index Shows Improvement
WASHINGTON, March 31 – Youth violence and teen pregnancy rates have plummeted since they reached their peaks in the early 1990s, according to a study released Wednesday.
The study – called the 2005 Foundation for Child Development Index of Child Well-Being – cited the baby boomer parenting style as one of the possible contributing factors for the improvements.
The child well-being index shows that the average live birth rate of adolescents dropped from 20 births per 1,000 females from the ages of 10 to 17 in the peak year of 1991 to a projected 10.9 births in 2004. Meanwhile, the violent crime victim rate fell from 121 per 1,000 people from the ages of 12 to 17 in 1994 to a projected rate of 47 in 2003. The study also projects that the violent crime offenders rate dropped to less than 4 per 1,000 adolescents in the same age range, which is down from 51 in the peak year of 1993.
While experts attending a panel discussion on the study at the Brookings Institution Wednesday talked about programs and policies that could help these long-term improvements continue, many of them agreed that no single factor could be isolated as the cause of these trends.
“Parents who grew up during the ’70s and early ’80s saw firsthand – and possibly even experienced – the harmful effects of marijuana and cocaine use,” panelist Kenneth Land, the developer of the index and a sociologist at Duke University, said in a press release.
Because of this, they might be more willing to talk to their children about the negative consequences of such actions and perhaps be stricter when it comes to controlling their children, Land said during the panel discussion.
“Parents are scheduling their kids’ after-school hours much more regularly then in the past,” Land said. “And when the kids are not programmed into one of the after-school activities, what are they doing? Well, we all know they are likely to be playing video games inside the home, which does protect them from violent crime.and other types of risky behavior outside the household.”
Aside from the generational changes, Land said that the decline of the crack cocaine epidemic of the early 1990s, the strengthened economy of the late 1990s and an increase in community policing could have accounted for the improvements.
Gil Kerlikowske, the chief of police in Seattle, said the federally funded Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program, which distributes money to local and community police departments, significantly helps cut back on violent crimes committed by children. He said the technology and training grants given by COPS allow local police departments to find new ways of fighting crime, such as Boston’s Operation Night Light, which curbed youth crime by making surprise visits to the homes, schools and worksites of high-risk child offenders.
Under President George W. Bush’s proposed budget for 2006, appropriations forCOPS, would be cut from $499 million to $22 million. Bush, in his budget, said the program is “not able to effectively demonstrate an impact on reducing crime.”
In 2004, the Essex County Sheriff’s Department received a technology grant for $98,948 from the COPS program to implement a facial recognition program. Once finished, the program will enable more than 30 police departments in the area to access an electronic database that would include photos of people who were previously arrested or incarcerated, said Paul Fleming, the spokesman for the Essex County Sheriff’s Department. Police officers could use the program to confirm the identities of people they bring into their departments, he said.
“This is going to be a great benefit to the law enforcement community once this program is on line,” Fleming said. “We know that money is tight from the local perspective.so that any time we can secure grants that will help us construct programs that are forward-thinking and that aid in the protection and safety of residents in the region, we’re always going to push to do that.”
Rep. John Tierney helped the Essex County Sheriff’s Department secure the grant, according to Fleming. “In my district, you won’t find a community that will say it didn’t help,” said Tierney of the COPS program during an interview in February. The sheriff’s department is still trying to find additional funds to cover the cost of the project, Fleming said.
Several of the panelists also noted that participation in school readiness and pre-kindergarten programs can decrease the chances of teen pregnancy and youth violence.
“Pre-K programs are not only among the most powerful weapons against crime, but are the most powerful weapon against teen pregnancy,” said Sandy Newman, the president of Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, a bipartisan, non-profit anti-crime organization.
The federal government should invest more in such school readiness programs, which are low-level investments in time and money in comparison to putting people in jail, Kerlikowske said.
Money for the Head Start program, a federally financed pre-kindergarten program for needy children, is also in jeopardy of being reduced, Newman said.
Whenever programs at the local level receive federal grants, whether they are community block grants or other types of grants, they use the money to do something “new and different,” according to panelist Jeffrey A. Butts, the director of the Program on Youth Justice at the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan economic and social policy research organization.
“In the past few years, there’s been a decline in federal funding, which basically reduces innovation, experimentation and new ideas,” he said.
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