Early childhood intervention for at risk children vastly reduces criminal activity by juvenile delinquents and adulthood criminal activity.
Emily is a Sicilian woman raised in Providence RI. Emily had her first consensual sexual experience at 14 years old. Emily's first arrest was at age 13 and she was placed in a residential unit. She is now labeled as a juvenile delinquent from this point forward in her life. She was in and out of jail for many years after this episode. Emily is the youngest of eight siblings. Emily had her first child at age 15 with a man who was 27. Emily, also at the birth of her first child, experienced the loss of her father the very same day. Emily is a mother to a total of six children and has never had the opportunity to raise any of her children. Emily was married three different times to three different men. Emily dropped out of school in the eighth grade and was kept back due to poor academic performance as early as the second grade, at about nine years old. .
This is where early intervention at the prevention stage in Emily's life would have had an impact on how Emily's life from the second grade on would have changed. According to (Dryfoos, 1990: 132-133; Schweinhart, 1987), within " girls, delinquency, and juvinile justice- pp.(214- 215) by Meda Chesney-lind and Randall G. Shelden (second edition). More optimistic news seems to be coming from delinquency prevention programs that have an educational focus. Specifically, the successes of Head Start and other innovative preschool programs have been connected to later academic success and fewer contacts with the police. Although Emily's academic risk factor showed up in the second grade. She was not in a preschool program but intervention at nine years old would have helped with early intervention at least to keep Emily on track for the many years to follow academically in school. Within the crisis intervention program when Emily's grades drastically fell a Crisis Intervention clinician, would have been notified.
