I was troubled to read that budget cuts could cause many families to lose access to voluntary home visiting programs (“Parenting program faces state budget ax,” March 10).

As the article noted, young families get long-term benefits from programs that give them resources and support in facing the challenges of parenting.

The public should know that those programs can also prevent child abuse and neglect and improve community safety.

Thousands of Maine children are abused or neglected each year, and hundreds are removed from their homes as a result.

Those of us in law enforcement also know that there are thousands of other incidents of maltreatment that go unreported and undocumented each year. Many incidents result in serious injury to the child. In a few of the most severe cases, an innocent child dies.

While that alone demonstrates the need for prevention, child endangerment doesn’t just affect the children who are abused or neglected. Research shows that individuals who experience childhood abuse or neglect are more likely to commit violent offenses and also abuse their own children, creating a cycle of violence in our communities that hurts public safety.

That cycle of violence adds to future budget woes for the judicial and corrections systems in Maine.

Can Maine afford to stop a proactive effort that helps to relieve future demands on those budgets?

Being a parent is a tough job. It’s loaded with stress and doubt. There’s so much to know about babies. Unfortunately, some new young parents never got the parenting they needed or don’t have responsible adults in their lives to help them safely raise their children.

Having a trained professional guide these young at-risk parents can have an enormous effect in putting them on the right track to care for their newborns.

Home visiting programs work with individual families to help provide voluntary guidance and support for new parents. Trained professionals help at-risk parents learn about the health and developmental needs of young children and ways to manage stress without resorting to abusive behavior.

Evidence-based studies of such a program, the Nurse-Family Partnership program, showed it can cut child abuse and neglect nearly in half and significantly reduce later crime. In fact, that study tells us that at-risk kids from families left out of this quality in-home visiting program had more than twice as many convictions as the children of mothers who received in-home parent coaching.

In-home parent coaching not only saves lives, it saves money.

Child abuse and neglect costs Americans, Maine and our communities huge sums of taxpayer dollars each year. Wouldn’t it be wiser to spend much less money on prevention on the front end?

That’s why the more than 120 Maine police chiefs, sheriffs and prosecutors of Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, urge Gov. Paul LePage and state legislators to continue support for visiting programs and reject the proposed budget cuts to this vital area.

It is critical for preventing child abuse and neglect and ensuring public safety.

David Brooks is Lisbon Chief of Police.