Who knows the best response to the waves of violent crime buffeting the state? Oregon legislators endorsed one course of action this year when they authorized a $120 million budget to expand the adult corrections system. Was this the wisest use of tax dollars? Not according to Hill Walker, director of the University of Oregon Center on Violence and Destructive Behavior. He says prisons are perhaps the most expensive way to deal with violence
"It costs $50,000 a year to keep a juvenile offender behind bars, and that doesn't include the cost of building the detention facilities," Walker says. "Compare that to the $3,000 annual cost per child for dealing with disruptive and violent five-year-olds in proven preventive programs."
Walker and his team of researchers have studied patterns of violence and antisocial behavior in children since 1965. UO researchers have worked with the Oregon Social Learning Center in Eugene for more than thirty years to study the families of these children. Their research has shown that serious disruptive, aggressive behavior can be accurately diagnosed in three-, four-, and five-year-olds.
More important, Walker's research has led to a number of University of Oregon-initiated, school-based programs that are turning these kids around before they become enmeshed in the juvenile justice system:

First Steps This program targets kindergartners who act out in the classroom. Parents of children in the First Steps program get professional help to learn better ways to deal with family conflicts. This improves the child's behavior at home and contributes to success at school. In place since 1993, First Steps has served forty-six children and families to date.
"Nearly all these children made significant gains in their social behavior and in their academic success," Walker reports. The program has been replicated in Kentucky, and plans call for First Steps to be implemented in several other school districts in Oregon and Washington during the 1995-96 school year.
Annual Cost: $3,000 per child

BASE­Building a Strong Environment­was established in 1988 as a collaboration between the university and Services to Children and Families of Lane County (formerly the Lane County branch of the Children's Services Division). The program has three goals: improving the development and emotional well-being of children form birth to six, strengthening the relationship between primary caregivers and their children, and helping families achieve stable living situations for their children.
Over the years, BASE has served 145 families, including 256 children. These families have been unable to benefit from less intensive programs such as parenting courses, drug treatment, or anger management. Parents who don't succeed in the BASE program are in danger of losing their parental rights.
Sixty percent of the families enrolled in BASE have made progress; half have established stable homes.
Annual cost: $1,400 per child

Healthy Start Funded by the Oregon Commission on Children and Families, Healthy Start provides support to parents with new babies. Healthy Start participants get information on child development that helps them understand more about raising their newborns. Counselors work with parents both before and after delivery of their baby. Fifteen Oregon counties have adopted Healthy Start programs.
Annual cost: $1,500 per family

Walker says the kind of prevention provided by these programs is not only better in the short term for the children and families but also, in the long run, for the state. And it costs far less than the $50,000-per-child-per-year cost of keeping kids in juvenile prisons.
For more information about these and other early intervention programs at the University of Oregon, call Jane Squires, at the Early Intervention Program, at (541) 346-2634.

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