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4 Harv. L. & Pol'y Rev. 49 (2010)
Delinquency and Daycare

handle is hein.journals/harlpolrv4 and id is 51 raw text is: Delinquency and Daycare David R. Katner* INTRODUCTION As the nation faces policy challenges over juvenile delinquency and subsequent crime,' one all-but-forgotten option remains as promising as ever despite its virtual absence in recent national discussions and debates: a com- prehensive daycare and after-school care policy.2 For decades, social scien- tists in this country have examined various designs of early educational and daycare programs, some promising tremendous alterations in the lives of participants and others offering far more modest achievements. Today, how- ever, long term studies provide a much clearer picture of how early child care programs and after-school programs offer significant benefits for com- munities. Longitudinal evidence suggests that early childhood intervention programs, which buffer the effects of delinquency risk factors, help prevent chronic delinquency and later adult offending. After-school care programs also provide healthy alternatives to otherwise unsupervised adolescent be- havior and hopefully spare children and their communities the expense, fear, and suffering which often accompanies delinquent misconduct and subse- quent adult criminal misconduct. Overall, early intervention programs help reduce risk factors that contribute to delinquent behavior and later adult of- fending, while after-school programs create activities for juveniles during the time period when many delinquent acts occur. Policy debates dating back to the 1970s have recognized the many ben- efits derived from subsidized universal child care programs. However, for decades the political climate has been less than receptive to policies that include any major federal provisions for universal access to child care.' By the late 1980s, commentators remarked that the child care problem had * Tulane University Law School, Professor of Clinical Law and Felix J. Dreyfous Teaching Fellow in Juvenile Law. Delinquency is defined in each state's statutory scheme as conduct considered crimi- nal when committed by an adult, but considered delinquent because of the age of the offender, a minor generally between ten and eighteen years old. The use of the term crime refers to and is included because of recent state statutory enactments that allow minors to be transferred to adult criminal courts for specified felony offenses, usually including homicide and other crimes of violence against persons. These legal definitions vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. See generally ANTHONY M. PLATT, THE CHILD SAVERS: THE INVENTION OF DE- LINQUENCY (expanded 40th anniversary ed. 2009); DAVID S. TANENHAUS, JUVENILE JUSTICE IN THE MAKING (2004). 2 Throughout this article, daycare and early intervention programs generally refer to child care for children under school-age, and after-school care generally refers to services for children, particularly adolescents, available after school hours. I See Heather S. Dixon, National Daycare: A Necessary Precursor to Gender Equality With Newfound Promise for Success, 36 COLUM. HUM. RTs. L. REv. 561, 562 (2005).

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