We tested a different preschool curriculum to prevent juvenile delinquency. Checking it 20 years later, it worked

Recently, there has been an increased political and media focus on so-called youth crime waves, particularly in Queensland and the Northern Territory.

Unfortunately, this has led to a crackdown by governments and the police. Young people in Alice Springs have been subject to curfews.

Queensland Opposition Leader David Crisafulli (who is leading in the polls ahead of this weekend’s election) has suggested that young people found guilty of some crimes should be sentenced as adults.

But punitive youth crime policies violate children’s human rights and are an expensive way to make the community less safe. It is much better to stop youth crime before it starts by supporting children’s positive development in early childhood.

In a new evaluation released today, we found that an early childhood education program reduces the number of young people in court by more than 50%. When adequate family support was also provided, the chances of children committing crimes were even lower.

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Early community-based crime prevention strategies have been largely neglected in Australia. This is despite international evidence and the recommendations of a widely publicized 1999 Commonwealth Government report.

Scientific evidence has been accumulating for more than 50 years showing that the root causes of serious youth offending can be addressed in early childhood through prevention initiatives. The most famous example is the Perry Preschool project, implemented in a disadvantaged area of ​​Michigan in the early 1960s.

In Australia, the Pathways to Prevention project operated in a disadvantaged multicultural region of Brisbane from 2002 to 2011.

It was a collaboration between Griffith University, the Queensland Department of Education and national community agency Mission Australia.

The project aimed to improve child and youth outcomes by partnering with preschools, schools, families and local community organizations.

In 2002 and 2003, 214 four-year-olds attending two local preschools received an enhanced program focusing on communication skills. This is called an “enriched preschool program.”

It was integrated into the standard curriculum and delivered by specialist teachers who worked with the children’s classroom teachers and their parents.

Evidence at the time showed that communication skills were directly related to success in school. They were also linked to success in life through improved behavior and improved social skills.

The communication program brought children together in small groups with similar levels of language proficiency. The groups were balanced in terms of gender and cultural background. They completed carefully selected activities such as games, books and reading.

These provided children with an opportunity to expand and practice oral language skills in a way that was personally meaningful. These activities were led by specialized teaching staff with post-graduate degrees in communication and oral language development.

Specialist teachers involved parents and children in joint activities and actively supported reading and language activities at home. In the first year, children who received the communication curriculum had better language skills, social skills, classroom behavior, and academic achievement than children in the other preschools.

The children’s families could also access practical support from community workers of their own cultural background. This included parent education, advocacy with government agencies, and counseling. This continued until 2011.

what’s new

Previous evaluations showed that the enhanced curriculum helped improve children’s school readiness, among a number of other benefits. We have now assessed the long-term success of the programme.

Using anonymized data linkage procedures, we tracked students who received the enhanced curriculum in 2002 to see what has happened since then.

Children who received the enhanced curriculum had improved classroom behavior throughout elementary school. They were also 56% less likely to be involved in serious youth crime at age 17.

Read more: Is Australia suffering from a youth crime crisis? Here’s what the data says

Surprisingly, our assessment found that none of the children whose families also received support during the preschool years went on to offend.

The full Pathways program was widely implemented in the community over a ten-year period, so we felt it could have had a wider impact.

We looked at the youth crime rate in the region during the years 2008–16, when members of the 2002–03 preschool cohort were aged 10–17. It was 20% lower in this region than in other regions of Queensland at the same low socio-economic level.

How does this lead to less juvenile crime?

Programs like this work by leveling the playing field and improving the lives of children in their early stages of development. Developmental pathways are events and experiences that follow each other, or cascade, throughout life.

For example, a difficult transition to school increases the likelihood of poor engagement and academic problems. These are well-known risk factors for antisocial behavior.

Pathways to Prevention’s long-term impact on youth offending means it could be a model for similar programs in Australia.

This is especially the case given our nation’s chronic underinvestment in community-based development crime prevention. We need more programs in disadvantaged communities that are open to everyone and don’t stigmatize people.

Overwhelmingly, efforts across the country are devoted to early intervention with children identified as “at risk” in some way (such as exhibiting disruptive behavior) or treating youth who become enmeshed in the justice system juvenile

In Queensland, there is an over-reliance on youth detention, which is often very harmful to children and has no deterrent value.

Using Pathways as a model for other communities doesn’t necessarily mean replicating exactly what we did (although that’s important too). Any early prevention initiative will have the best chance of success if it includes evidence-based strategies that improve children’s life chances.

These can be cost-effectively implemented through existing systems that include preschools, schools and primary care. Ideally, they should operate through local partnerships involved in all stages of planning, data collection, implementation and evaluation.