April 18, 2007

Early intervention by community-based workers to deter truancy and youth crime also is said to yield a solid return for taxpayers.

By Neal St. Anthony, Star Tribune

State taxpayers can expect a $2.72 return on every dollar spent on effective mentoring programs and $4.89 for every buck invested in community-based youth intervention programs, according to studies by two Twin Cities economists released Tuesday.

The studies by Paul Anton of Wilder Research, the research arm of the Wilder Foundation in St. Paul, and Judy Temple of the University of Minnesota, underscore the case for about $330,000 in funding from the Minnesota Legislature over the next two years. The money would be used for background checks on prospective mentors, many of them business people, who volunteer through nonprofits such as Bolder Options, PPL and Kinship.

The Minnesota House and Senate also are expected to approve appropriations of $3 million in their respective public-safety bills that would partly fund 62 youth-intervention programs throughout the state that assist families, schools, police and other agencies on early-intervention programming to deter truancy and youth crime.

"The point of these studies and our work is prevention and intervention," said Mai-Anh Kapanke, vice president of public policy of the Mentoring Partnership, an umbrella organization for mentoring programs. "We want to influence kids to finish high school, go on to trade school or college and a future and keep them out of trouble or jail that can cost $40,000 or $50,000 a year. That's why business is investing in mentoring and intervention programs."

The state funding of $3 million in the youth-intervention budget largely would restore cuts made over the last couple of legislative sessions.

Anton, a veteran consulting and bank economist, and Temple, who has done research in Chicago on the impact of early-age education and intervention, conducted two studies that examined the costs and benefits of mentoring and intervention.

"The results clearly show that both ... can play significant roles in reducing the economic and social costs of juvenile delinquency and helping prepare youth to become Minnesota's productive, tax-paying adults of the future," Temple said.

The mentoring studies follow on the work of early childhood education advocates, including Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank research chief Art Rolnick, who concluded in 2003 that getting kids ready for kindergarten is the highest-returning public investment government can make.

Anton said the economic returns of $2.72 for every dollar spent on mentoring and $4.89 for intervention with kids who are truant, dabbling in drinking or drugs and criminal behavior, include both the achieved annual reduction in costs of youth treatment programs and the projected increases in lifetime earnings to be attained by helping put wayward kids on the path toward a productive adulthood.

J. Scott Beaty, executive director of the Minnesota Youth Intervention Programs Association, said the programs cost about $2,000 per youth per year compared with $40,200 at a juvenile detention center and $75,300 at a residential treatment center.

The studies were commissioned by the Mentoring Partnership, the University of Minnesota, The Curtis L. Carlson Family Foundation and IWCO Direct, whose CEO, Jim Andersen, leads the Minnesota Business Partnership's mentoring initiative.

Neal St. Anthony • 612-673-7144 • nstanthony@startribune.com • nstanthony@startribune.com

©2007 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.