NEW WAYS TO FIGHT CRIME

The long-awaited report from the Governor's Commission on Criminal Justice
Innovation was released Monday and it will not make some people happy. But
too bad; this is a landmark, top-to-bottom review of how Massachusetts
deals with crime and criminals and needs to be taken seriously. It has the
backing of the Romney administration and state Attorney General Thomas
Reilly. The public also should get behind it.

One of the more interesting aspects of the report is the identification of
programs that just don't work and are, in many cases, very expensive. These
include gun buybacks, storefront police officers, neighborhood watch
groups, "scared straight" visits and last, but most sacred, DARE.

The Drug Abuse Resistance Education program is the cops' favorite sacred
cow. It is a feel-good program that brings police officers in touch with
young kids to tell about the dangers of drugs. The problem is that the
program doesn't work. This has been well-known for years and other states
abandoned it completely. But, in Massachusetts, it still holds a special
status, even though it is a costly failure. That is confirmed by the
commission's report and should finally provide impetus to dump it.

The other "failures" also are high-visibility programs that provide good
public relations -- and little else. Gun buybacks and storefront police
officers make a mark in the community, but they don't put a dent in crime.
The only real surprise in the report was the dismissal of neighborhood
watches as effective crime-fighting tools.

Our anecdotal evidence is that, in Brockton at least, neighborhood watch
groups have rid many streets of crime. Maybe it is an anomaly in this city,
or maybe the statistics don't support what we believe to be true. But we
would be reluctant to give up neighborhood watch groups as a piece of the
crime-fighting package.

The report is not just critical, it also recommends more than 150 ways to
fight crime, with a strong focus on the rehabilitation of criminals. It
calls for legislation that would mandate post-release supervision for all
convicts and would beef up forensic technology, sharing of information
across agencies, build a new state crime lab, and increase training and
education for prosecutors and police.

All of this costs money -- a lot of it -- and the report doesn't make any
funding recommendations. Some of the moves will save money while some will
not cost all that much. But it is a good beginning and should be embraced
by prosecutors, communities and police forces who, all too often, have been
reluctant to try new ideas.