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Early intervention for boys most at risk for becoming killers could reduce EBR homicide rate
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BATON ROUGE - Research released Thursday suggests that reducing Baton Rouge's stubbornly high murder rate might best be accomplished by identifying a relatively small group of people at the greatest risk for committing violent crimes -- and that the warning signs begin to appear as early as kindergarten.
Baton Rouge Area Foundation had Common Good Labs analyze the circumstances of 18-to-29-year-olds in East Baton Rouge Parish convicted of murder over a decade. Unsurprisingly, 70 percent of them did not finish high school and 60 percent grew up in what the study described as "neighborhoods with high levels of poverty and low opportunity."
The research examined data showing that over a 15-year period, Baton Rouge had an average homicide rate more than five times greater than the rest of the country. Most people convicted in homicides here in the last 10 years have been men between 18 and 29.
The BRAF report said that while "thousands of young boys" grow up in poor neighborhoods, "only a very small number of them become engaged in violence."
Focused attention on the educational and behavioral needs of just a few hundred boys in each elementary and middle school grade would be less expensive and could increase public safety more than waiting until some in that group kill people and then wind up in prison, the report said.
The report said that catching signals of "disengagement" from school -- which arise long before kids quit school -- could interrupt that trajectory.
It identified some of those signals: lack of readiness for kindergarten, chronic absences, behavioral problems, and inability to read and do math at basic levels.
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