Invest in children and save on prisons

YOUR columnist Fergus Finlay (October 19) is spot-on in his assertion that investing a little in deprived children would save a fortune on super-prisons like Thornton Hall.

His views go along with a joint Conservative/Labour party report in the Britain entitled ‘Early Intervention: Good Parents, Great Kids, Better Citizens’.

The co-authors, Graham Allen MP and Iain Duncan Smith MP, highlight the importance of new early intervention programmes targeted at boosting the life chances of deprived children from birth to age three and they call for cross-party consensus on “intervening early”.

Research indicates that the maximum return is obtained by investing in these children, bearing in mind that as they get older the graph for return on investment decreases rapidly.

In this country little money is devoted to early years and sadly it is also known that once children’s early developmental stages have been passed, the harm done by not fulfilling needs in the optimum timeframe can’t be easily corrected, if at all.

In plain English what the experts are saying is “save money by building no more prisons and invest a great deal in the early years”.

Jim Jackman

Park Drive Court

Castleknock

Dublin 15