The man who runs the nation’s largest jail system came to Washington on Monday to promote what he considers a potent tool in crime-fighting: universal pre-school.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Leroy Baca is heading a lobbying effort by more than 1,000 police chiefs, sheriffs and prosecutors to convince Congress to enact the Obama administration’s plan to expand preschool to every 4-year-old in the country.
“Either you have to pay now (for preschool), or you’re going to have to pay a guy like me later,” Baca said. He oversees a jail system with 19,000 inmates.
About 60 percent of those behind bars in Los Angeles are high school dropouts, said Baca, adding that many struggled in school because they did not have the benefit of preschool during their earliest years.
“When children go to preschool, they get to kindergarten with social confidence,” said Baca, 71, who worked as a part-time teacher in middle and high school and adult education classes for 30 years, in addition to his criminal justice career.
“They’re more sensitive about others,” Baca said. “You don’t steal from people as easily (if you attend preschool), you’re not as destructive, you acquire the skills to be socially engaged at an early age.”
Advances in neuroscience over the past decade suggest that the window between birth and age 5 is a critical period of rapid learning and brain development.
“I would rather invest in children than in jails,” said Baca, who is heading a new group known as Fight Crime: Invest in Kids. The Los Angeles County jail spends about $35,000 a year to house and feed each inmate, he said.
This guy is SO playing my song! I have been saying this for decades now!
That is one of the reasons that I advocate so hard for better schools and higher teacher pay.
Simply put you either invest in children early or you subsidize failing adults later.
The sweet spot, when working with kids, is that four to six year old age span in my opinion. At that time they are essentially absorbing everything they see, touch, and hear.
If you start them early on the path of loving to learn, and increasing their confidence in their abilities, it will see them through all kinds of challenges later on in life.
I have seen when the system fails children, and in almost EVERY case the damage had been done at the very earliest stage of their development.
Getting children access to good nutrition, a positive learning environment, and a place where they can feel safe and nurtured, does not only positively affect them, it positively affects all of us.
To put it bluntly, the Republicans are all about cutting education costs and building larger prisons, so we should all be for spending whatever it takes on education in order to tear down prison walls later. Because no matter how you slice it you are going to pay. At one end or the other.
And the later costs are substantially higher then the earlier investment. Trust me on that.
Nice thought, but you and I both know that America is going to spend its dollars throwing $1 million-a-pop Tomahawk missiles at Syria, rather than refunding Head Start or otherwise assisting preschoolers in this country. If we don't keep 'em dumb then how can we keep 'em Patriotic?
ReplyDeleteSometimes bad guys hide behind good ideas. I think he'd soon endorse scientology sponsored programs to accomplish this goal. He has a long history of this. Just search for his name and add scientology to the search.
ReplyDeleteEven without a Scientology connection, there does seem to be a good deal of graft and corruption going on in his department. That said, his push for early childhood education is to be applauded. All sorts of study prove that this early intervention is crucial for many kids from less fortunate households. I definitely support this plan.
DeleteHe already tried to push the scientology front group Narconon into the California penal system.
Deletehttp://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Stop-Narconon/Baca/
But if kids get educated, and learn to think for themselves, then how will we fill up all those for-profit, private prisons that Cheney and others are constantly building around the nation? Gov. Jerry Brown is advocating more private prisons in CA to handle the overcrowding in the current prisons. I vote for spending money on the kids to keep them out of prisons later, but unless we vote out the GOP and marginalize the religious right, this will not happen.
ReplyDeleteI don't quite understand why these brain-addled people don't realize that taking care of children IS our job as adults and that we want our kids to be educated and ready to take over from us at the appropriate time.
At least scientology didn't yell "God hates fags" at you around.
ReplyDeleteYou are right, they don't yell it at all; they do it sotto voce. They will eventually have to change that attitude though.
DeletePhelps is just as bad. I lived in Topeka and knew this girl. We never dated, but we danced the big dance at the Freshman Prom together. We lost touch, and I only recently found out what happened to her. I'll always hold Phelps responsible.
Deletehttp://antiwestboro.blogspot.com/p/debbie-valgos.html
Wow, $35,000 a year for each inmate as opposed to what? The average cost per student for Head Start is around $7000. If these FISCAL CONSERVATIVES were spending their own money you better believe they would opt for a couple of years of pre-school over lifetime incarceration!
ReplyDeleteWhen I saw your title above beginning with "LA Sheriff...", Gryphen, my first thought was, "that's great, Louisiana law enforcement is showing signs of enlightenment!"
ReplyDeleteI should know better, but that's the eternal optimist in me.
We are trying to get a small county-wide property tax increase to support Early Childhood Education. It's an uphill battle as the usual assholes are staunchly opposed.
ReplyDeleteBut the Republicans do not want to educate children. They would much rather have them commit crimes and incarcerate them; then they could be even more smug about how the only good people are very rich people. The current generation of Republicans have simply no desire to work on behalf of the common good. They see the word "common" and they just get creeped out, not understanding that it means "all of us together."
ReplyDeleteBeaglemom
Unfortunately, there is a greater profit to be made from the prison system than the school system, although they're working REALLLY hard to change that. The privatization of both systems is the ultimate goal so they can profit either way. In the meantime, they want to keep them uneducated so they can use them for cannon fodder or cheap labor.
Delete"Educate 'em now or throw 'em in prison later - we'll make a pretty penny either way!"
Is there EVER a point where they have enough?
Remember that the puppet masters behind the Teabagging Party of GOoPers ™ want the kids dumb so they'll vote "properly". And they want dropouts which along with draconian drugs laws leads to a large prison population that not only serves the for-profit prison system but also, and perhaps more importantly, keeps the new slave labor of prison workers growing.
ReplyDeleteHaving grown-up in Los Angeles county in the early 1960's, I know something about this subject.
ReplyDeleteWe *had* state-funded preschools back then. It wasn't Head Start - this was long before Head Start. This was smart thinking politicians planning for the future. This was when Pat Brown, Jerry Brown's father, was Governor of California. Then, Reagan was elected. Ten years later, Proposition 13 passed - and schools in California have suffered ever since.
Prop. 13 locked-in property taxes to no higher than 1.250 percent of the PURCHASE price. There are no re-assessments. It requires 2/3rd of the vote to overturn it. Here's why it will never be put up for a vote to repeal it:
Example: my parents house was "locked-in" at the ASSESSED Value of $65K when Prop 13 passed in 1978, which resulted in property taxes in the amount of about $800+ dollars per year. Forever.
Yes, forever - AS LONG AS A FAMILY MEMBER LIVES IN, OWNS or TRANSFERRES THE PROPERTY TO ANOTHER FAMILY MEMBER, the property taxes are "locked". Even today, my brother (my parents "sold" him the house) pays about $800+ dollars a year. On a house worth $400K+
The guy next door may have bought his place 2 years ago from a stranger, and paid $350K - his property taxes will be about $4,400. dollars. FAIR? Of course not. I saw this every single day when I lived there, working in the title and lending industry.
Waaaaaay too many people are using / abusing this loophole. And, it can't be closed, or the GOP stalwarts in Orange County and all the way down to San Diego will pull their support from the GOP.
So, you've got people selling real property to "relatives" all over the place, keeping property taxes artificially low. THAT is the real problem with funding everything in California. Not "illegals..."
As I say often, in a very snarky manner. "Thank you, Ronald Reagan". The best president who led to the destruction of America.
DeleteGryphen, I'm not sure which thread to post this under, since today you're not talking about ACA today, but I thought you'd want to see this:
ReplyDeleteBill Clinton reappears to pitch Obamacare implementation
...“It seems to me that the benefits of reform can’t be fully realized and the problems certainly can’t be solved unless both the supporters and the opponents of the original legislation work together to implement it and address the issues that arise any time you change a system this complex,” he said.
“There are always drafting errors, unintended consequences, unanticipated issues. We’re going to do better working together and learning together than we will trying over and over to repeal a law or rooting for reform to fail.”
Clinton, known for his stem-winding policy talks, won laughter for saying he believed the topic was important enough for a more disciplined verbal path.
“I have done something unusual for me,” he said, waving pieces of paper in each hand. “I actually wrote this whole thing out. I am going to try to use very few adjectives [and] explain how this works, what’s been done, and what has to be done.”
In his remarks, Clinton delved into the details of the policies, reading out the toll-free numbers available for those who want to enroll in the exchanges and explaining the tiered system offered through the Affordable Care Act.
And he punctuated his remarks with statistics, pronounced carefully from notes – offering figures from the rates of hospital readmission to historical percentages of uninsured low-income Americans.
http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/09/04/20327255-bill-clinton-reappears-to-pitch-obamacare-implementation?lite
Full video is nearly an hour:
http://www.c-span.org/Events/Pres-Clinton-Defends-Health-Care-Law/10737441245-1/
When Chris Christie was running for Governor, he called universal preschool education government funded "babysitting." Of course, he claimed his remarks were "taken out of context." Nevertheless, this should earn him some points with the teabaggots. Probably won't totally wipe out his complimenting the President after Sandy, but every little bit helps.
ReplyDeleteSteve Jobs on Education:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dULN8WbMb3M
I've been on the same bandwagon since before I even had kids. The incentives have been wiped away for early education. People have built mega businesses in the vacuum left when early education programs got defunded.
ReplyDeleteWe have "Learning Centers" that charge big $$$$'s to provide "catch up" remedial education/ day care. And we have the mega bucks for profit prison system where we warehouse criminal with little or no hope of reform, education and a high recidivism rate, a good number for minor first time drug offenses. And overcrowded prisons cause sentences to get cut, and the revolving doors cost taxpayers their money, property and lives.
We need to invest today in early education and nutrition, or pay through the nose tomorrow.
so obvious. Education IS a public safety issue!
ReplyDelete