Pubdate: Tue, 06 Apr 2004
Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Copyright: 2004 Globe Newspaper Company
Contact:  http://www.boston.com/globe/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/52
Author: Sean P. Murphy
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/dare.htm (D.A.R.E.)

PANEL CALLS RESEARCH KEY TO FIGHTING CRIME

School Programs Labeled Ineffective

A commission reviewing the Commonwealth's criminal justice system 
recommended yesterday that the state take a computerized, research-based 
approach to fighting crime while de-emphasizing some strategies that have 
been popular in the past, including school-based programs and the so-called 
scared-straight approach.

Among the recommendations are building a new forensics laboratory center, 
increasing the links between agencies for sharing data, establishing a 
central computer repository for forensic information; and mandating an 
associate's degree as the minimum education level for anyone going into law 
enforcement.

While arguing for those initiatives and changes, the report criticized as 
outdated 23 programs and strategies that the US Justice Department said had 
failed to stop crime nationally. The department's 1998 report said those 
approaches, including neighborhood watches and summer-job programs for 
teenagers, should be discarded.

Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey, who led the commission, released the 
100-page report, which she called a blueprint for changes in the criminal 
justice system, at a news conference at Boston police headquarters.

Without significant changes, Governor Mitt Romney said, the state will 
"continue to fight 21st-century criminals with 20th-century technology."

Healey said a subcommittee studying "cross-agency information sharing has 
created an integrated, criminal justice [information technology] plan that 
will allow criminal justice data not only to flow between agencies, but 
also, in the context of homeland security, to flow up, seamlessly, 
accurately, from an officer making an arrest to the state or federal agency 
that can turn that information into intelligence."

Eric Ferhnstrom, a spokesman for Romney, said later that the state has 
already stopped funding virtually all the programs the report criticized as 
ineffective.

"We don't have to fund programs just because they feel good," he said. "We 
want to fund programs because they work."

For example, Fehrnstrom said, the last time the state funded summer jobs 
was 2002; funding for neighborhood watch groups was eliminated three years ago.

"You have to be extremely cold-blooded about how you invest in social 
programming," Healey said, referring to the list of 23 programs and 
approaches. "If something doesn't work, you have to peel that funding back."

Afterward, Healey said that many recommendations could be implemented 
administratively.

However, upgrading forensic services would require millions of dollars in 
new appropriations, and Healey did not say where that money would be found.

"We hope our partners in the Legislature will look at this report and see 
that it is a strategic plan that we will be moving toward fulfilling" in 
next year's budget, Healey said. "But right now our goal is to have these 
recommendations in place for our budget season next year."

Healey said parts of some programs could be retained after a review on a 
case-by-case basis. One program that the report says has failed is DARE, or 
Drug Abuse Resistance Education.

"Maybe there are aspects of that program that did work," Healey said. 
"Should they be teaching the DARE curriculum? Apparently not. The DARE 
folks have come up with a new curriculum. . . . Let's have it evaluated."

Michael C. Mather -- chairman of DARE Massachusetts Inc., a nonprofit 
organization -- said a new DARE curriculum started last year shortens the 
program from 17 weeks to 10 weeks and reduces the role police officers play 
in the classroom, while still instructing students and pupils on the 
dangers of drug abuse.

"The DARE program does work," said Mather. "It is all in how it is 
implemented."

Mather, formerly the leader of the state's antidrug efforts, said the state 
last funded DARE in fiscal 2002, spending $4.3 million. Some municipalities 
fund the program out of their own budgets.

Superintendent Paul F. Joyce, chief of the Bureau of Operations of the 
Boston police, was one of about 150 officials, community members, and 
criminal justice specialists who participated in drafting the 
recommendations. He downplayed the list of 23 programs deemed ineffective, 
which appears near the beginning of the report. "That list was one of 
multiple resources used to generate discussion" among the commission 
members, Joyce said. "Putting it in the report, where it was located, takes 
away from some of the recommendations."

Some of the other programs cited as failed are: gun buyback, school-based 
leisure-time enrichment programs, arrests of juveniles for minor offenses, 
storefront police officers, correctional boot camps, scared-straight 
programs, and residential programs for juvenile offenders that use 
challenging experiences in rural settings.

"We don't agree with all these findings," said Mariellen Burns, the Boston 
police director of media relations. "For example, we feel very strongly 
that summer jobs offer an important alternative."

Burns said Boston police will continue to have officers work with 
neighborhood residents who organize into crime watch groups because those 
groups bring police and residents together.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom