gether with other organizations and community 
members concerned with the safety and welfare of 
children, have a strong record of demonstrated suc-
cess in reducing the impact of youth and gang-re-
lated crime and violence, as demonstrated in Boston, 
Massachusetts, Chicago, Illinois, Richmond, Vir-
ginia, Los Angeles, California, and other commu-
nities. 
(4) Investment in prevention and intervention 
programs for children and youth, including quality 
early childhood programs, comprehensive evidence- 
based school, after school, and summer school pro-
grams, mentoring programs, mental health and 
treatment programs, evidence-based job training 
programs, and alternative intervention programs, 
has been shown to lead to decreased youth arrests, 
decreased delinquency, lower recidivism, and greater 
financial savings from an educational, economic, so-
cial, and criminal justice perspective. 
(5) Criminal justice costs have become burden-
some in many States and cities, requiring reductions 
in vital educational, social, welfare, mental health, 
and related services. 
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(6) Targeting interventions at special youth risk 
groups and focusing upon relatively low-cost inter-
ventions increases the probability of fiscal benefit. 
(7) Savings achieved through early intervention 
and prevention are significant, especially when non- 
criminal justice social, educational, mental health, 
and economic outcomes are considered. 
(8) Evidence-based intervention treatment fa-
cilities have been shown to reduce youth delinquency 
and to be cost-effective. 
(9) The prevention of child abuse and neglect 
can help stop a cycle of violence and save up to 
$5.00 for every $1.00 invested in preventing such 
abuse and neglect. 
(10) Quality early childhood education pro-
grams have been demonstrated to help children start 
school ready to learn and to reduce delinquency and 
criminal street gang activity risks. 
(11) Evidence-based mentoring programs have 
been shown to prevent youth drug abuse and vio-
lence. 
(12) Evidence-based school-based comprehen-
sive instructional programs that pair youth with re-
sponsible adult mentors have been shown to have a 
strong impact upon delinquency prevention. 
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(13) After-school programs that connect chil-
dren to caring adults and that provide constructive 
activities during the peak hours of juvenile delin-
quency and criminal street gang activity, between 
3:00 and 6:00 in the afternoon, have been shown to 
reduce delinquency and the attendant costs imposed 
on the juvenile and criminal justice systems. 
(14) States with higher levels of educational at-
tainment have been shown to have crime rates lower 
than the national average. Researchers have found 
that a 5 percent increase in male high school grad-
uation rates would produce an annual savings of al-
most $5,000,000,000 in crime-related expenses. 
(15) Therapeutic programs that engage and 
motivate high-risk youth and their families to 
change behaviors that often result in criminal activ-
ity have been shown to significantly reduce recidi-
vism among juvenile offenders, and significantly re-
duce the attendant costs of crime and delinquency 
imposed upon the juvenile and criminal justice sys-
tems. 
(16) Comprehensive programs that target kids 
who are already serious juvenile offenders by ad-
dressing the multiple factors in peer, school, neigh-
borhood, and family environments known to be re-
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lated to delinquency can reduce recidivism among ju-
venile offenders and save the public significant eco-
nomic costs. 
(17) There are many alternatives to incarcer-
ation of youth that have been proven to be more ef-
fective in reducing crime and violence at the Na-
tional, State, local, and tribal levels, and the failure 
to provide for such effective alternatives is a perva-
sive problem that leads to increased youth, and later 
adult, crime and violence. 
(18) Drug- and alcohol-dependent youth, and 
youth dually diagnosed with addiction and mental 
health disorders, are more likely to become involved 
with the juvenile justice system than youth without 
such risk factors, absent appropriate prevention and 
intervention services. 
(19) Research funded by the Department of 
Justice indicates that gang-membership is short- 
lived among adolescents. With very few youth re-
maining gang-involved throughout their adolescent 
years, ongoing opportunities for intervention exist. 
(20) Excessively punitive juvenile justice poli-
cies, including over-reliance on incarceration and 
confinement of youth, particularly in the early stages 
of delinquent behavior and for non-violent delinquent 
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behavior, have been shown to increase long-term 
crime risks. 
(21) Children of color are over-represented rel-
ative to the general population at every stage of the 
juvenile justice system. 
(22) The rise in homicides in several cities in 
recent years followed declines in Federal funding 
provided for law enforcement, educational, health 
and mental health, social services, and other support 
to localities for youth, their families, and other com-
munity-oriented programs and approaches. 
(23) Direct expenditure for jails and prisons, 
correctional personnel, prosecution, and law enforce-
ment strategies that lead to increased incarceration 
have been steadily increasing. In fiscal year 2005, 
Federal, State, and local governments spent an esti-
mated $204,000,000,000 for police protection, cor-
rections, and judicial expenses, a 5.5 percent in-
crease over the previous year. 
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