Is education the best way to fight crime? And why aren’t these topics linked more in political discourse?
Over at The Faculty Lounge, Dan Filler has this great new post titled “Education In A Crime Control Frame.” Here are snippets:
A national organization called Fight Crime: Invest in Kids is pushing a new study showing that a ten percent increase in the number of high schoolers earning their degrees will cut 3,000 murders and 175,000 murders in the United States. And how do we spike those graduation rates? Bigger investments in pre-K programs, of course….
What’s worth a closer look, however, is both the framing strategy, and the organization’s success in enlisting law enforcement officials as advocates for preschool education funding. The framing of crime as a education issue, and education as a crime issue, are both intriguing.
Too frequently we see crime framed as a matter of individual flaws and failures. Admittedly, progressives are less inclined to view matters this way, but law enforcement officials — who are often battling for tougher criminal laws — often invoke this individualistic rhetoric to justify their support for harsh punishments. Whatever the empirical basis for believing that harsh punishment will deter crime, it’s clear that the public cottons to more retributive explanations for tougher criminal law. And retributive explanations are grounded in some notion that crime is caused by moral depravity — rather than a lack of school funding.
On the flip side, we usually see education funding justified either as a fairness issue (“no child left behind”) or a macroeconomic concern (we need educated citizens to compete in the world market). Framing education as a crime issue is savvy, because it does a better job of tapping into voter self interest….
This crime control frame … suggests that education money will pay off for us. Pay for a poor kid to go to pre-K and you can avoid being assaulted!
I have long believed that folks from all political perspectives should see not just the policy justification for, but also the political virtues of, linking education policy/funding to crime policy/costs. Nevertheless, but for Fight Crime: Invest in Kids and a few other public-policy groups, I have seen precious few efforts by politicians to talk smartly about education/crime links and related funding realities. Indeed, as I noted in this recent post, when Reverend Rick Warren this past weekend asked both presidential candidates about the contrast between America’s investment in education and in its prisons, apparently neither candidate siezed the opportunity to talk smartly about these issues.
Some related posts on Campaign 2008: