KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- The Kansas attorney general and chiefs from several Kansas City metropolitan area police departments held a news conference Monday to discuss what they said was a link between low high school graduation rates and violent crimes.

They released a new report, "School or the Streets," that found that high quality pre-kindergarten helps reduce the dropout rate, and they pushed for more funding for early education in Kansas and Missouri.

Kansas Attorney General Steven Six, Kansas City, Missouri Police Chief James Corwin, Overland Park, Kan., Police Chief John Douglass, and Lenexa, Kan., Police Chief Ellen Hanson are members of Fight Crime: Invest In Kids, a national anti-crime organization.

In Kansas City area schools, more than 40 percent of students fail to graduate from high school on time, according to a news release from the organization.

High school dropouts are three and a half times more likely than graduates to be arrested and eight times more likely to be incarcerated, according to the news release.

Nearly 70 percent of all inmates in the nation's prisons failed to earn a high school diploma, according to the news release.

"When you can get the police chief of Lenexa or Overland Park to meet with their legislators and say, 'Here's the program we want, and I can tell you why it makes a difference, that connection moves the legislature forward,'" Six said.

Last year, the push for more funding resulted in $14 million being spent in Kansas on early childhood education.

Fight Crime: Invest In Kids is made up of 4,000 police chiefs, sheriffs, district attorneys and violence survivors and has 96 members in Kansas and 51 in Missouri.