|
|||||
NewsProfessor puts price on crimeTreatment deemed key to cutting costs.By JACOB LUECKE of the Columbia Tribune's staff Published Wednesday, January 17, 2007 Charles Borduin believes he can put a price tag on a life of crime in Boone County. The University of Missouri-Columbia psychology professor has spent more than 14 years following a group of 200 Boone County residents who committed crimes in their youth. While some children grew out of their problems, others became repeat offenders with multiple victims and are living their lives in and out of prison. Borduin estimates the people in his study come with a $1.5 million to $1.8 million price tag to society. That includes expenses for court, counseling and prison time as well as the costs to victims. Last night in a public lecture at the Boone County Government Center, Borduin argued that having better mental health treatment for youths could put young offenders on a more positive trajectory for their lives, lessen the likelihood they will re-offend and drastically reduce costs to society. Borduin touts a treatment model called multisystemic therapy. While more popular mental health treatment methods focus on treating individual children, the multisystemic model tries to change the child’s environment. Case workers go into a child’s home and assess problems - perhaps helping a parent end a drug addiction or trying to steer the child away from a group of friends who encourage destructive behavior. Sometimes the changes are small. Borduin shared an anecdote of a caseworker asking a mother stop telling her son he was just like his father, noting the father was in prison for murder. Years ago, Borduin tried this model on a group of young Boone County offenders. He said he has followed their progress over 14 years, comparing them to those who went through individual therapy. The differences, he said, have been dramatic. Just four years after treatment, fewer than one-fourth of the children who went through the multisystemic program had been arrested again, while close to 75 percent of those who did the other therapy had been arrested at least once. In his latest study of the group, Borduin found that the kids who went through multisystemic treatment had been incarcerated for about 580 days, compared to 1,360 days for the other group. Borduin translated those statistics into dollars to show public officials how switching treatment methods could mean monetary savings. With all the time in court and prison, he said, juveniles going through more traditional individual treatment cost society about $102,000, while those who went through the multisystemic program cost $51,000. Despite the savings and academic evidence backing up his claim, the new therapy has not caught on quickly in Missouri because the upfront cost of multisystemic treatment can be greater than upfront costs for individual-based treatment. "My point has always been that’s the one-year perspective," Borduin said. "What about if you take it out a few years and you start factoring in the re-arrest rates, whether they’re spending time in prison or not, cost to crime victims, what does that all cost?" Boone County Presiding Commissioner Ken Pearson and Northern District Commissioner Skip Elkin said after hearing Borduin’s lecture that it’s easy for elected officials to focus on upfront costs rather than long-term costs. |
   |
||||
© 2008 Evidence-Based Associates