There's a real teen crime problem in Florida today, and our state's politicians are responsible for making the problem worse. By ignoring the vital needs of our children and families, these politicians have continued to support a broken system -- one that breeds crime, abuse, violence and mass teenage incarceration. As a result, our streets and neighborhoods have become more dangerous and our schools are no longer safe.

Here's where Florida stands nationally. Florida arrests and locks up more of its children than almost any other state -- we have the 4th highest juvenile arrest rates for violent crimes and the 4th highest percentage of teens who are incarcerated, more than 58 percent and 34 percent above the national average respectively.

Taking these figures into consideration, it is easy to understand the real crisis our schools face. Statistics show that nearly one out of 10 students will face physical violence or threats while at school and that teachers are subject to threats and violence as well.

In fact, according to one study done in 2003-04, more than 10 percent of Florida teachers were threatened by students during that particular school year, and one in 20 were actual victims of violence. Our state is second in the nation in the percentage of teachers who report being threatened by students.

Getting tough and locking up offenders is easy enough, and it sounds good in election-year speeches. The only problem is it doesn't work. Taxpayers pay more for prisons on the back end, when we could have invested a fraction of the resources on the front end to turn around young troubled lives.

Investing in kids early to keep them on the right path is smart spending; pay a little up front to avoid a huge bill down the road. Unfortunately, Florida has been moving in the opposite direction by cutting investments.

Unless we take action to change the political dynamic, Florida will continue down the path it has been traveling for years, a path strewn with neglect, where teens have slipped into criminality and been locked up behind bars instead of getting help to overcome their educational and economic challenges.

Recipe for more crime

In Florida, data show that nearly 10 percent of all teens are not attending school or working, ranking us 40th in the nation. That's a recipe for even more crime.

Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court took up a case involving states that lock up teenagers for life with no chance of parole. Most of the cases are from Florida, and Florida leads the nation in prosecuting children as adults.

Why? Florida's law makes it easy to pull children out of the juvenile justice system and funnel them into an adult court system that isn't equipped to rehabilitate them.

What if we could treat thousands of these teens in community treatment programs at a fraction of the price tag for prison?

We don't need to wait until a kid gets in trouble or gets flagged as a risk before we get them help. Investing in early learning works.

To prove the point, a study in Michigan tracked children for 27 years to see how those who attended a preschool program compared with those who did not. By age 27, the children who did not attend were five times more likely to have been arrested for drug felonies and twice as likely to have been arrested for violent crimes.

Another study in Chicago found that kids who did not get early care and education were 70 percent more likely to have been arrested by age 18 than those who did.

We can reduce juvenile crime in Florida by improving our pre-K programs and providing quality early learning programs and daycare for working families.

But that's a tough sell to a Legislature only interested in cutting. Changing the system will take vision, which is in short supply in Tallahassee. We're about to head into another budget year of across-the-board cuts, reducing and eliminating the very things that we know will help our teen crime problem the most.

We must demand better leadership in Florida -- we must find people who can see beyond shortsighted budget cuts and instead consider the impact of their decisions a generation from now.

Examine the record

Florida's people must reject the easy rhetoric of election-year politics and look at what has really been happening to the state's children over the past decade. We can no longer allow the needs of families and especially children to be ignored.

The price to lock up our young people rather than graduate them is far too high.

Lawton ``Bud'' Chiles is president of The Lawton Chiles Foundation, a nonprofit organization.