
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, November 21, 1994                   TAG: 9411220035
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

AT-RISK KIDS

EAGER AS it is to build prisons for the baddest of the bad, the state should show equal enthusiasm for building bridges for kids on the fringes of society, who can try to cross into the mainstream or stumble down a path toward violence and self-destruction.

This idea, wise in its own right, becomes even more so wedded to the Allen administration's distaste for heavy-handed government and centralized bureaucracy. As a state task force on early-intervention services was told at a hearing last week in Roanoke, steady funding for local initiatives, many of them by nonprofits, is essential to head at-risk children in the right direction.

Exhortations to return to traditional family values will be of little help to a child whose mom is a crack addict or whose dad is sitting in jail. The earlier the intervention by counselors, the greater the chance of success with children who are making choices about drug and alcohol use at younger and younger ages. These children often lack the family support system to protect them from immature or ill-informed judgments.

Is this not just common sense? Treatment for alcoholism and drug addiction must be available for those who have fallen into their thrall, but by far the more effective "cure" for such malignancies is to avoid getting snared in the first place. Early intervention is the key.

If that sounds hopelessly progressive in an era of cynicism about social programs, keep in mind that society will deal with social ills - if not early, later; if not in homes and schools, in the streets and prisons.

While there may be something satisfying about catching a criminal and hearing the clank of a cell door slamming behind him, simply having more prisoners won't ease public anxiety about crime. Only fewer criminals will do that. Such is the goal of prevention and early-intervention programs.

Prisons are necessary to protect society from its meanest members. Treatment programs are necessary to protect it from the most desperate. Prevention and early-intervention programs often are seen as less urgent than incarceration, because they do not meet an immediate threat. They are needed most of all, though, if society wants to stem the growing need for protection.

As great, great-grandmother used to say, a gram of prevention is worth a kilo of cure.

by CNB