The latest FBI figures showing another year of reduced crime had national law-enforcement experts earlier this week wondering whether this decade-long drop could continue or if the only slight reduction seen in large cities signaled an end to the good news. An interesting report from a group called Fight Crime: Invest in Kids suggests that the experts look to day care facilities for their answer.

The Fight Crime group, which includes child-raising guru T. Berry Brazelton, looked at several long-term studies of children and found that those in high-quality child-care facilities were far less likely to commit crimes as teens and adults. Conversely, those in poor centers were more likely than average to commit crimes. Though Maine began to tighten standards on child care a couple of years ago, these conclusions are especially important to parents whose incomes make good day care difficult to obtain.

The first low-income 3- and 4-year-olds in a long-term Ypsilanti, Mich., study are now 30 and 31. For them and the many children who came after them, arrest records show that those who received high-quality care were one-fifth as likely to become chronic offenders, with four or more arrests. A decade-long Syracuse University study found that one child in five who did not receive added childhood services had been later charged with offenses; for those who did receive the services, the number was one in 20, and the level of offense was far milder.

It is easy enough to see the savings to society when the crime rate drops or a study shows good care allows a community to avoid crime. It is harder to find in the budget the entire Head Start or Early Head Start money needed to get the result 10 or 15 years later.

One of the reasons the law-enforcement experts gave for the crime-rate drop was the rise in prison population, going from 1 million Americans jailed in 1990 to approximately 2 million last year. Given the costs of crime and the cost of incarceration, support for good day care looks better all the time.