Investing in babies cuts crime costs

Kudos to the Sunday, May 1 Valley Voices re “Violence begins in the womb” by Candice Skrapec. The science is overwhelming that conception to age 2 is the most critical and cost-effective time to help a child have a positive, constructive and healthy future.

The irony is that Sunday’s front page story on the arrest of the leaders of the Dog Pound gang did not talk about how much money was and will be spent to investigate, arrest, try and likely incarcerate these individuals. I expect this will run into tens of millions of dollars. I also anticipate that none of these individuals had a positive conception to age 2. Indeed, this is the case with most everyone in prison, as shown in the book, “Ghosts from the Nursery: Tracing the Roots of Violence.”

The sooner we invest the relatively few tax dollars needed to educate students and young parents on why conception to age 2 is so critical to a child’s future, the sooner we can start saving literally hundreds of millions of tax dollars dealing with crime and other anti-social problems.

This story was originally published May 5, 2016 at 5:52 PM with the headline "Investing in babies cuts crime costs."