ANTI-CRIME TECHNIQUES QUESTIONED

The DARE program in schools, gun-buy-back programs, after-school
sports and arts and dozens of other well-known crime-fighting
techniques have not been proven effective, a Romney administration
commission said on Monday, calling instead for dozens of new
"cutting-edge" crime-fighting initiatives backed by scientific evidence.

Among the dozens of recommendations by the Governor's Commission on
Criminal Justice Innovation, encompassing urban crime, corrections,
forensics, bureaucratic reform and police training, are mandatory
post-release supervision for the 20,000 inmates who leave
Massachusetts jails every year, the creation of a new state forensics
lab, and a requirement that police officers obtain two-year
associate's degrees.

In the area of urban crime, the panel of 150 law enforcement officers,
academics, social workers, legislators, and community leaders cited a
study by the National Institute of Justice in asserting that some
longstanding and high-profile crime-fighting initiatives "were not
found to be effective in preventing crime."

The initiatives questioned include: police visits to domestic abusers'
homes days after an assault; peer counseling by students; Drug Abuse
Resistance Education (DARE); after-school sports and arts; summer jobs
and subsidized work programs for at-risk youth; neighborhood crime
watches; arresting youths for minor offenses; prison boot camps and
scared straight programs; and increased drug raids.

The commission's charge was to conduct a top-to-bottom review of the
state's criminal justice system and "leave no current practice
unquestioned in searching for innovative solutions to our crime problems."

"One of the most important points that I believe we make in this
report is that you have to be extremely cold-blooded about how you
invest in social programming," said Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey, a
professional criminologist who chaired the commission. "Social
programming should not be layered one on top of the other. If
something doesn't work, you need to peel that funding away, or else
your budget for this sort of thing will only ever grow."