PRISONS PART OF VICIOUS CYCLE

When you look at the various statistics for at-risk children, there is one
that stands out glaringly: Such youngsters usually have addicted, criminal
or dysfunctional parents who were at-risk children themselves.

That tells us that their dysfunction is largely learned behavior and that
their children follow in their footsteps. Without some form of prevention to
break the cycle, we are as certain to pay more for the programs and prisons
they perpetually inhabit as they are certain to inherit them.

It is truly tragedy, because when they grow up to use drugs or steal like
their parents did, we will hold them to standards of responsibility that
they were never taught. Because they never had enough help and love in their
lives, we will put them in a prison where there is none at all.

Like A Child is a community concept. An idea, really, for how we might
effectively make a difference in the lives of so many impoverished and
neglected children as a means to strengthen our community and future.

We have positively identified 12 significant areas of risk -- from poverty
and drugs to media violence and poor schools -- as the source of most future
anti-socials. We seek to narrow the gap between our many resources and the
children who need them most. In this way, we can build a stronger community
by redirecting the path those future misfits are on.

We call it "Reconstructing the Future."

Lately, there is increasing concern for the welfare of underprivileged
children. From "No Child Left Behind," made into law by Congress, to
concepts like Garth Brooks "Touch 'Em All" foundation, we are increasingly
aware of both our social responsibility to our disadvantaged youth and of
the long-term consequences for failing to act now. The statistical evidence
showing that it is for many of these very children that we are building
prisons is inarguable.

Few will disagree that we must do all we can for our keiki, nor that failing
to do so is why so many go astray. But when you attempt to follow that logic
to its conclusion, the picture gets a little murkier. Who wants to admit
that the many children whom we failed are crowding our backwards and abusive
prisons?

In his book, "The Perpetual Prisoner Machine: How America Profits from
Crime," Joel Dyer writes of the big business prisons have become. If he is
right, then the commodity from which they reap their profits is our at-risk
children.

Our mission statement is "To increase the community's awareness of the risk
to all youth and further a network that uses every community resource to
achieve total outreach."

We are building files that document every area of risk and have a
risk-reduction prescription for each of them. We are building a database of
every agency and resource in the community that will be widely available not
only to the families that need them but to the agencies themselves, so they
can greatly increase their effectiveness by referring to each other the
needs for which each is suited.

Whether or not you support Like A Child and what we stand for, you must
support some alternative to the endless cycle of treatment and imprisonment
that accompanies doing too little.

Read the newspaper and ask yourself why ever-younger children commit
increasingly violent crimes. Or why four out of five of them return, like
their parents, to prisons that only inflame their discontent.

There are dozens of worthy youth agencies you can support. You -- yes, you
- -- can make a difference.

We are convinced that by providing children with discipline, compassion and
an alternative to gangs and drugs that we have drastically improved the odds
that they will someday be responsible citizens instead of predictable
statistics.

Like A Child is just a model for how the whole community can make a
difference, and it is not difficult to replicate our outreach. When you and
your neighbors begin to do more for the children in your neighborhood, you
can almost see the ripples of your good will when those children grow up as
your friends and decent neighbors instead of perpetrating some theft or
murder in your family. Imagine every neighborhood following your example.

Children are not complicated creatures. Their response to poverty, despair,
abuse and neglect truly is predictable. Their response to the love and the
outreach you can provide is predictable also.