Back to School: Fight Crime, Invest in Kids

As Texas kids head back to school today, it's worth raising the question of whether too much public debate is focused on crime and punishment and too little on investments in education and mental health care that might prevent more incarceration.

That's the gist of the "Fight Crime: Invest in Kids" initiative proposed recently by a national coalition of police, prosecutors and crime victims. I agree with Doc Berman that education and crime are too seldom linked in the public discourse. That's not just a "framing strategy," as Dan Filler put it it's a valid interpretation of the data that's become unpopular in recent years because of political arguments labeling its proponents "liberal" or "soft on crime." However, that doesn't invalidate the stance or reduce its import to mere clever political posturing. From the group's press release:

Research shows that high school dropouts are three and a half times more likely than graduates to be arrested and eight times more likely to be incarcerated. Nineteen of the top 25 largest U.S. cities have school districts where 40 percent or more of students do not graduate on time. Nearly 70 percent of all inmates in our nation's prisons failed to earn a high school diploma.

The law enforcement leaders are members of Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, a national anti-crime organization made up of over 4,000 police chiefs, sheriffs, district attorneys, and violence survivors. They called on Congress and state lawmakers to expand pre-kindergarten, one of the most effective strategies to increase graduation rates.

"If kids get strong start early in life, we can cut our dropout rate and improve our communities," Lynch said. "To help more kids get that strong start, we need to fund early childhood education programs and ensure that every child that qualifies is able to enroll."

The Fight Crime: Invest in Kids members released a report called "School or the Streets," showing that increasing graduation rates by 10 percentage points will prevent 3,000 murders and 175,000 aggravated assaults in America every year.

To the extent those estimates are accurate, failures by Texas public schools on a massive scale contribute mightily to the expanding prison population.

In May, former Secretary of State Collin Powell's organization, America's Promise, issued these data regarding dropout 4-year graduation rates in the largest Texas cities:

Dallas: 44.4%
Houston: 54.6%
San Antonio: 51.9%
Austin: 58.2%
Fort Worth: 55.5%

As Grits argued in reaction to that analysis, there are particular subgroups among dropouts who account for a disproportionate amount of crime and public safety resources:

Straight-up illiteracy is a key criminogenic factor. It's long been known, for example, that while dyslexics make up about 10% of students, they make up 30% or more of those in prison.

As far as reducing crime, an even more important subcategory are kids with incarcerated parents, who tend to be 6-8 times more likely than their peers to wind up incarcerated themselves. Making sure those kids stay in school and have real opportunities to succeed might be the single most important contribution society could make to reducing future crime.

Texas' massive prison system shows it does a good job of holding its citizens accountable (one in 21 adult Texans are in prison, in jail, on probation or on parole), but these high dropout rates show there's been little progress made holding schools accountable for their frankly lousy outcomes.

I spend a lot of time on this blog looking at the back end of the system's failures and how we manage those who've already violated societal rules. But there's little question reducing those massive dropout rates would reduce crime and systemic pressure on the front end better than anything that could be done after people have already offended. Worth contemplating, certainly, as everybody heads back to school.

UK web activism on dyslexia includes focus on prisons

Having written previously about Texas' failure to target the link between illiteracy and crime, particularly for children with dyslexia, I was especially pleased to find the Dyslexia Online Magazine, a British site whose contents made me think this issue has taken hold more strongly on the political front in the UK than in America.

Dyslexia Online contained several interesting items including a December 2007 petition from dyslexics demanding that the British Prime Minister tackle the problem of their over-representation in prison. Another mentioned Scottish efforts beginning in 2001 to reduce recidivism by diagnosing and treating dyslexic prisoners:

Future inspections of Scottish prisons will report on efforts to screen inmates and offer help, pledged Clive Fairweather HM Chief Inspector of Prisons. An estimated 4-10 per cent of Scots are dyslexic, but a study at Edinburgh University by Jane Kirk, a dyslexia adviser, and Gavin Reid, a senior lecturer, found that in a random sample of 50 young offenders at Polmont Institute, half were affected. ...

Mr Fairweather pledged to "mention" how the issue of dyslexia was handled in prison inspection reports in a bid to put the problem more firmly on the agenda. Faced with challenges from suicides and drugs, education was far down the prisons needs list.
Mr Fairweather said, "and dyslexia is even further down."

But Mrs Kirk responded "Of all the problems and disadvantages facing offenders, dyslexia is one of the easiest to deal with."

According to a recent article, Dyslexia within the prison service, "Half of all [British] prisoners are at or below the level expected of an 11 year old in reading, two-thirds in numeracy and four-fifths in writing. Another piece focuses on Albert Einstein's dyslexia and his long-suffering mother's years spent helping him overcome it, wondering if "the path to Albert Einstein's Nobel Prize [was] paved with the stones of his mother's worry."

Like a lot of other preventive measures, identification and special training for dyslexic kids is more effective if it's done early on through the schools, without the stigma of resulting from punishment for behavioral problems. But inevitably the criminal justice system winds up with many such kids, and just like the schools, many juvenile justice programs failing to identify and treat dyslexia.

From dyslexics imprisoned to those, like Einstein, reaching the heights of intellectual achievement - this site provides a lot of fodder for thought on what can be done to prevent dyslexics and others with reading problems from winding up in prison for lack of better options.

Early identification, treatment of dyslexics would reduce crime, boost economy

I've argued before that expanding emphasis in public schools on combating dyslexia would reduce crime. Now we can also argue that it would be good for the economy!

Dyslexics make up 10% of Texas children who are tested but 30% of Texas prison inmates, and illiteracy is a key indicator increasing the likelihood of imprisonment. Now new research indicates that in addition to overpopulating the criminal justice system, dyslexics also overpopulate another, more socially acceptable class of people: Entrepreneurs! Who'da thought? According to the New York Times ("Tracing business acumen to dyslexia," Dec. 6):

It has long been known that dyslexics are drawn to running their own businesses, where they can get around their weaknesses in reading and writing and play on their strengths. But a new study of entrepreneurs in the United States suggests that dyslexia is much more common among small-business owners than even the experts had thought.

The report, compiled by Julie Logan, a professor of entrepreneurship at the Cass Business School in London, found that more than a third of the entrepreneurs she had surveyed — 35 percent — identified themselves as dyslexic. The study also concluded that dyslexics were more likely than nondyslexics to delegate authority, to excel in oral communication and problem solving and were twice as likely to own two or more businesses.

“We found that dyslexics who succeed had overcome an awful lot in their lives by developing compensatory skills,” Professor Logan said in an interview. “If you tell your friends and acquaintances that you plan to start a business, you’ll hear over and over, ‘It won’t work. It can’t be done.’ But dyslexics are extraordinarily creative about maneuvering their way around problems.”

The study was based on a survey of 139 business owners in a wide range of fields across the United States. Professor Logan called the number who said they were dyslexic “staggering,” and said it was significantly higher than the 20 percent of British entrepreneurs who said they were dyslexic in a poll she conducted in 2001.

She attributed the greater share in the United States to earlier and more effective intervention by American schools to help dyslexic students deal with their learning problems. Approximately 10 percent of Americans are believed to have dyslexia, experts say.

One reason that dyslexics are drawn to entrepreneurship, Professor Logan said, is that strategies they have used since childhood to offset their weaknesses in written communication and organizational ability — identifying trustworthy people and handing over major responsibilities to them — can be applied to businesses.

“The willingness to delegate authority gives them a significant advantage over nondyslexic entrepreneurs, who tend to view their business as their baby and like to be in total control,” she said.

When I proposed a "Real Public Safety Agenda for Texas," prior to the 80th Texas Legislature, one of the principal new investments called for was to "Train 10,000 new teachers to perform individual training with dyslexic children, and increase funding for early testing for dyslexia."

I considered reducing crime a powerful enough incentive by itself to focus new resources toward treating dyslexia, but this new research finding that dyslexics who receive that extra support more frequently become creative, productive entrepreneurs means that the state is wasting valuable human capital, leaving extra, home-grown economic growth on the table by channeling dyslexics more commonly into prison than into creating small businesses.

Reading this new data, I couldn't help but think of a recent program I heard about at a Texas Public Policy Foundation forum in Austin a few weeks back, described thusly on their website:

November 07, 2007
Policy Primer: Jobs After Jail - Enhancing the Employment of Ex-Offenders (audio file)

Approximately 30 percent of Texas adults have a criminal conviction. Ex-offenders who are employed are three-times less likely to re-offend and much more likely to pay restitution and child support. However, one reason some are unemployed or underemployed are state regulations that can be used to exclude them from over 150 different licensed occupations. Also, hiring ex-offenders can expose an employer to civil liability, and there is a lack of vocational opportunities in state and local lockups that correspond to available jobs in the economy.

An impressive program described at that forum - the Prison Entrepreneurship Program (PEP) - trains inmates to become legitimate entrepreneurs when they leave prison. Several of their program's graduates so far have become significant success stories to tell.

I wonder what's the relationship if any of inmates with dyslexia and participation in PEP?

These are just initial thoughts from disparate research that perhaps raise more questions than answers. Would dyslexics who turn to crime be more likely to launch their own legitimate business enterprises if they received specialized education support, plus training that prepares them with entrepreneurial skills they'll likely need to cope with their disabilities throughout their lives? We can't know for sure from these data, but the possibilities are intriguing:

Dyslexics make up 10% of Texans, but 30% of prisoners and up to 35% of entrepreneurs! Whatever else these data say, they tell me that what happens with dyslexic kids has a profound impact on the future of both the criminal justice system and the economy. Perhaps Texas policymakers should begin to pay closer attention to them.

Texas failed schools generating crime

Texas has long claimed 85% graduation rates, with President Bush calling the state a model for his "No Child Left Behind" initiative. In reality, it turns out, fewer than 70 percent of Texas students graduate, including less than half of minority students in Houston and Dallas ("Experts claim Texas graduation rates inflated," Houston Chronicle, Oct. 6).

I've argued before that failure of the educational system to treat dyslexia contributes to crime. These statistics cause me to think a failed educational system in general has become its own indirect crime generator. In the modern information economy, if you can't read and have no skills what would you choose to do? Pick onions or sell drugs?

A Real Public Safety Agenda for Texas, Part I

I've been thinking a lot about how glaringly, if counterintuitively unproductive so many of our "incarcerate now, think later" policies in Texas (and the United States) have become, and how equally glaring is the lack of a clear, articulable alternative to that vacuum of ideas.

What follows is the first installment of a list of proposals, most of which would have to be enacted by the Texas Legislature, that I think would make a real, substantive difference to actually improving public safety, not just symbolic changes designed to "send a message." These ideas are aimed to actually improve the lives of Texans and reduce crime in the short and long term. In some cases, they're designed to expressly counter the criminal justice system's excesses where it has destroyed lives and corrupted civil society.

I'll be adding to this as we head toward the 80th Texas Legislature, but here's a start: What would state leaders be doing if they really cared about public safety?

1. Train 10,000 new teachers to perform individual training with dyslexic children, and increase funding for early testing for dyslexia. That's the low end of an estimate for how many are needed. Dyslexics make up 10% of children who are tested but 30% of Texas inmates, and illiteracy is a key indicator increasing the likelihood of imprisonment.

2. Create new programs to support children of incarcerated parents, including mentoring, tutoring, counseling, part-time jobs and access to social services. Without intervention, children of incarcerated parents are 6-8 times more likely than their peers to wind up in prison. Fund the programs that exist, including privately operated charities if they're effective and accountable, plus create new ones modeled on successful programs in Texas and elsewhere.

3. Cut probation lengths in half. Most probationers who re-offend do so in the first two years, the majority of those (says Tony Fabelo) within the first eight months. Texas has the longest probation lengths in the nation. Reducing them would reduce caseloads so probation officers could increase supervision during that most-important early period. (This will require revamping funding for probation departments, which are currently paid by the head.)

4. Give probationers ways to earn their way off probation early through good behavior and completion of assigned programs, reducing caseloads and giving strong, personal incentives for compliance with probation rules. HB 2193 would have this for some offenders, but the change should be made for all but so-called 3g offenders, or those who've committed more dangerous, violent crimes.

5. Use offenders' employment status and recidivism rates as outcome measures by which probation and parole officers are judged, as well as two of several factors for how probation and parole department funding is determined.

6. Hire 3,000 more guards to staff current prisons before building anymore.

7. Allow local governments to operate syringe exchange programs to promote personal responsibility, reduce the spread of HIV and Hepatitis C and provide greater opportunities for outreach to hardcore drug users.

8. New money for border law enforcement should first go either to Internal Affairs Bureaus (instead of for patrols and equipment) or to a new AG-run investigative squad aimed at cleaning up law enforcement corruption.

9. Force pardon and parole board to adhere to its own guidelines and release more low-risk non-violent offenders to make way for more dangerous ones.

10. Fund re-entry programs designed to help ex-offenders get and keep a job, housing and stay out of trouble when they get out of prison, especially for the first 1-2 years.

It sounds like a lot of new money, but it's all a lot lot cheaper than building and staffing three new prisons.

Failure to treat dyslexia increases crime

Crime is neither random nor inevitable. It always occurs in a context, in particular the context of the individual who engages in it. While some bad people will choose to commit crimes no matter what, for others, changing the context of their lives early on could prevent them from ever entering the system.

That's the implication of a recent study that found the incidence of dyslexia in Texas prisons is triple the rate on the outside. Dyslexia is a reading disorder that causes a person to read letters on the page as though they're out of order, in a jumble. The Comptroller's Fiscal Notes publication says dyslexia directly contributes to hopelessness for many Texas youth and, ultimately, to their overincarceration.

[Dyslexia Research Foundation of Texas Chairman Bill] Hilgers said the incidence level is 10 percent or higher in Texas schools and about 30 percent or higher in prisons. The students either fall behind or get put in special education classes, Hilgers said.

"They drop out or get into other problems," he said. "Some end up in the criminal justice system. It creates a psychological problem. They feel stupid because they can't read. It's psychologically deadening--children and parents are very affected by that."

McCreary said it's better if dyslexia is diagnosed early, though some students with the disorder aren't identified until after third grade.

"Sometimes it takes a long time to find out a student is struggling to read if he or she is smart enough to find ways to compensate for the disability," she said.

The ones who don't learn to read because they are "smart enough" to "compensate for their disability" perhaps consitute the greatest tragedy of all -- that's the state's talent pool falling through the cracks. Think about it: One in ten Texans, but three out of ten Texas prisoners are dyslexic?! Horrifying. That's a direct result of the failure of our schools. This is obviously an area where greater investment in education would directly lead to lower incarceration rates and improved public safety. The folks diverted from prison would be people who otherwise would only have turned to crime out of frustration and a lack of opportunities because of a learning disorder that's not their fault.

As usual, though, the issue is mainly about money, or, rather, the values behind decisions to spend it: Texas just isn't investing enough to help these kids. Reports the Comptroller:

Hilgers said students need a lot of one-on-one training to overcome dyslexia. Students need to spend an extra hour a day for two years concentrating on reading skills to offset the disability, he said. ...

"The problem with dyslexics is that kids aren't able to sound out words or decode the sounds in words effectively," [Scottish Rites Children's Hospital medical director Dr. Jeffrey] Black said. "The intensive phonics system overrides that in many cases."

"We have a really good handle on what the condition is, how to identify it and intervene," he said. "The challenge now is scaling up, preparing more teachers and identifying more children so that fewer fall through the cracks." ...

Hilgers said the problem is that many school districts don't have the funding to implement comprehensive dyslexia programs.

"Schools just don't have the funding to do that, and teachers aren't trained to teach it," he said. "We need at least 10,000 to 15,000 more teachers trained, and nobody has seen fit to provide them."

Training 10,000 teachers would take big bucks, but not nearly so much as would be saved by diverting so many otherwise non-criminally inclined dyslexics away from prison. Legislators have an opportunity to do just that. They're in a special session right now on the subject of schools, and they could easily decide to pass the needed legislation under the Governor's current "charge." Somebody needs to step up.

See Dyslexia Texas for more.