Printer-Friendly Version (May/June 2007)

Since 2005, OJJDP, in cooperation with other Federal agencies and partners such as the Mapping and Analysis for Public Safety Program at the National Institute of Justice (also within the Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs) and the International Association of Chiefs of Police, has been developing the Socioeconomic Mapping and Resource Topography (SMART) system. SMART is a Geographic Information System (GIS) and Web-based mapping application that illustrates (1) specific geographic areas of crime and delinquency, and (2) the nearby governmental and community resources that are available to prevent and control it. Simply put, the system helps decisionmakers at Federal, State, and local levels target areas of greatest need and allocate resources accordingly.

Along with maps, SMART creates tables and graphs to illustrate a wealth of data on socioeconomic factors such as housing, population, crime, health, and mortality. Data sources include the U.S. Census Bureau and OJJDP's Statistical Briefing Book. In addition, data come from other Federal agencies, including the Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor, and Housing and Urban Development; as well as from KIDS Count, a national initiative tracking the status of children in the United States.

The following examples illustrate how different groups can benefit from using SMART:

• Federal juvenile program managers can use SMART to determine the places of greatest need in a designated geographic area (e.g., highest rates of delinquency; highest degree of risk based on household earnings, number of parents per household, and number of children not enrolled in school). Managers could also pinpoint which Federal programs (e.g., grants for afterschool activities) already exist in that area, as well as which community resources are available (e.g., Boys & Girls Club of America, YMCA). With these facts, managers can make informed decisions about what other resources are needed and where.

• State-level juvenile justice program administrators can use SMART to pinpoint areas of high juvenile crime and delinquency in a community by analyzing county-level delinquency data and then uploading incident-specific data from their State Statistical Analysis Centers. Administrators can view existing area resources and then award grants to high-priority areas that lack program resources.

• With SMART's built-in geocoding capacity, a multijurisdictional gang task force can quickly produce a map displaying the locations of known gang members by entering their home addresses and names into a list. SMART can also help the task force relate the gang member locations to various risk factors.

• Local law enforcement agencies can upload their data on vandalism incidents to SMART and see how vandalism relates to socioeconomic and resource data in the system. The resulting map could provide insights as to whether vandalism is related geographically to factors such as poverty or low high school graduation rates. The map could also provide visual evidence of whether acts of vandalism tend to cluster around schools.

• Grant writers can use SMART maps to make the case for needed resources. With the maps, they can pinpoint areas of high crime, show that Federal and local resources are not available in those areas, and justify the need for grant funding.

• The general public can use SMART to find neighborhood-specific information on socioeconomic characteristics, incidents of crime and delinquency, existing Federal resources, and available youth-serving programs and resources.

Illustrative SMART maps are presented below, in "Working With SMART Maps: Two Examples."

Over the next several months, OJJDP will add more functions and data elements to the SMART system, including the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports for the past 10 years and a comprehensive list of all public juvenile residential facilities. In the next phase, users will be able to upload and label files for their own analysis and develop and maintain individualized databases.

DOJ Observes Missing Children's Day 2007

The U.S. Department of Justice held its 24th annual commemoration of National Missing Children's Day on May 18, 2007, at the Lansburgh Theatre in Washington, DC. Regina B. Schofield, Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Justice Programs, opened the ceremony, followed by remarks from William W. Mercer, Acting Associate Attorney General.

The annual commemoration, organized by OJJDP, recognizes law enforcement personnel and private citizens for outstanding efforts on behalf of missing and exploited children. Tamara Brooks, who was herself abducted in 2002, delivered a message of hope. This year's ceremony also included a video with insights from siblings of abducted children.

In his keynote address, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said:

I am grateful for the commitment and sacrifice of people from every walk of life who have worked for the safe recovery of missing children. While many of these children return home safely, the death or disappearance of just one child is a price no parent should have to bear—and no civilized society should accept. That’s why today I’m proud to honor those who have given their time and energy to protecting our country’s most valuable resource.

The Attorney General also introduced the new OJJDP publication, What About Me? Coping With the Abduction of a Brother or Sister, which was written by the sisters and brothers of abducted children for their counterparts across the country. The Justice Department created this survival guide to ensure these children have the support and assistance they need. The guide contains information to help and support children of all ages when a sibling is abducted.

Assistant Attorney General Schofield, who is the National AMBER Alert Coordinator, introduced the Missing Children's Day award winners. She presented the AMBER Alert Citizen Award to the McArdle Family of Ashville, NC, for their assistance in identifying the vehicle of a suspect and ultimately, the rescue of two abducted young people. In addition, she presented the AMBER Alert Law Enforcement Award to Sergeant Mark Simpson of Arlington, TX, who was instrumental in helping to make the national AMBER Alert plan a reality. A full list of award recipients appears at the end of this article.

The ceremony opened and closed with songs from the World Children's Choir.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales	Assistant Attorney General Regina B. Schofield and Tamara Brooks
The McArdle Family	Rachel Stevenson, of St. Mary's School, Elyria, OH, accepts the 2007 Art Contest Award at the event. Next year's poster will be based on her design.

Catherine Braun, a student at Our Lady of the Snows School, Eugene, OR, won the 2006 Missing Children's Day Art Contest Award. A poster, shown above, based on her winning design was featured in the 2007 event.

For more information on the award winners, go to www.ojp.usdoj.gov/whatsnew/pdfs/award_recipients.pdf

First Lady Hosts Regional HAY Conference

To make sure every child is surrounded by positive influences, even more adults must dedicate themselves to Helping America's Youth. Adults need to care—to be aware of the challenges facing children, and take an active interest in their lives. Adults, and especially parents, should be reminded that they can teach kids healthy behavior by their own good example.
—First Lady Laura Bush

First Lady Laura Bush delivers keynote address at the HAY conference.

First Lady Laura Bush delivered the keynote address at the third regional conference on Helping America's Youth (HAY), held at Tennessee State University in Nashville on April 12, 2007. The HAY Initiative is a nationwide effort to raise awareness about the challenges facing the Nation's youth, particularly at-risk boys, and to motivate caring adults to connect with youth in three key areas: family, school, and community.

The conference featured presentations on the current status of youth and successful approaches for helping to make a difference in their lives. The conference also offered training on the online Community Guide to Helping America's Youth.

In his remarks to attendees, OJJDP Administrator J. Robert Flores cited the Community Guide as an essential tool for identifying local resources and providing action plans for particular communities. He said:

The Community Guide provides strategies and interactive tools for communities to help youth. The Guide outlines a three-step process to help communities form a partnership and make it work, assess your community and connect its resources, and search for programs to help youth.

With its mapping function, the Community Guide puts information about Federal resources at your fingertips. Any one of you here today could identify your community on this system and generate maps and reports of Federal youth-serving grants that operate locally.

But as you all know, the Federal Government has little to do with most of the youth-serving programs and activities occurring in communities around the country. Some of the best resources operate under the radar. The Community Guide provides a method for storing and managing information about local youth-serving programs and other resources using a password-protected account that only you and your partners can use. To me, this is the most exciting part of the Community Guide to Helping America's Youth. It provides a powerful tool for communities to make the most of their existing resources and assets.

OJJDP Administrator J. Robert Flores addresses conference participants.

In a presentation titled "Overview of the Community Guide to Helping America's Youth," OJJDP Gang Program Coordinator Phelan Wyrick used a fictional town, Silver Beach, to illustrate how a community partnership might use the online Community Guide to help develop a coordinated and evidence-based response to a pressing youth issue: gang activity. Dr. Wyrick described a series of steps for addressing gang problems, including responding to an immediate incident of gang violence, developing a long-range plan, forming a working group, conducting a community assessment, mapping Federal resources, setting priorities, and searching for programs to help youth.

For additional information on the HAY Initiative and the conference (including the full text of the First Lady's remarks, a Webcast of proceedings, and slides from presentations by Dr. Wyrick and others), visit the HAY Web site at www.helpingamericasyouth.gov, click on "Conferences," and select the Nashville regional conference.

The National Institute of Justice (NIJ)—the research, development, and evaluation agency within the Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs—will hold its annual conference on July 23–25, 2007, in Arlington, VA. The conference brings together criminal justice scholars, policymakers, and practitioners at the local, State, and Federal levels to share the latest information on research findings and technological advances.

OJJDP coordinated with NIJ to organize several juvenile justice research panels for this year's conference:

• "Latest Findings From the OJJDP Girls Study Group" will provide an overview of the group's latest activities. The panel will highlight study results on developmental sequences of girls' delinquent behavior and on connections between sexual assault and female delinquency.

• "Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC): Competing Causal Arguments and Remedies" will review research on the sources of disproportionate representation of minority youth in the juvenile justice system and approaches to reducing DMC.

• "In Search of Evidence-Based Practices in Juvenile Corrections" will present evaluation results from STREETSmart, a reentry program that provides job placement, continuing education, and life skills mentoring to assist youth leaving the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice's Avon Park Youth Academy.

• "Recent Findings From OJJDP's Causes and Correlates Program of Research" will present the latest findings from three coordinated longitudinal research projects designed to improve understanding of serious delinquency, violence, and drug use by examining how youth develop within the context of family, school, peers, and community. OJJDP has supported the Causes and Correlates research since 1986.

Several other panels at this year's NIJ conference will address youth issues. Topics include technologies for keeping schools safe, effects of transferring juveniles to adult courts, gang control efforts, and approaches to preventing teen-dating violence.

For additional information about the conference, visit www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/events/nij_conference/welcome.html.

NIJ's annual conference showcases what works, what does not work, and what the research shows as promising in criminal justice programming. It features new developments in technology that increase public safety. The conference emphasizes benefits to researchers and practitioners who work together toward effective evidence-based policies and practices.

OJJDP recently conducted a tribal youth focus group, "Building Brighter Futures in Indian Country," to encourage an open dialog among tribal youth about their communities, families, and life experiences. The focus group was a precursor to the third One OJP [Office of Justice Programs] Tribal Training and Technical Assistance (TT&TA) session, held June 4–6, 2007, in Shelton, WA. The focus group participants—boys and girls ages 10–17 from 20 tribes that are OJJDP Tribal Youth Program grantees—were invited to the TT&TA session to observe the tribal consultation segment in which tribal leaders from across the country highlighted their community needs.

OJP's TT&TA sessions, which began in December 2006, bring together elected tribal leaders and key policy decisionmakers, tribal administrators, executive directors, finance and grants administration officers, tribal planners, grant writers, justice and law enforcement personnel, and tribal program project coordinators and grantee officers. The three TT&TA sessions held thus far have focused on priorities related to public safety for tribal families and communities. Many of the training programs at June's Pacific Northwest session focused specifically on the needs of tribal youth. Topics included Strength-Based Youth Delinquency Prevention Programming; Assessing Youth Risk and Protective Factors; and Youth Courts, Juvenile Code, and Working With Court-Involved Youth.

In addition, each TT&TA session addresses issues such as drugs, tribal court systems, multijurisdictional coordination and communication, sex offender registry, and other law enforcement areas. OJP also hosts sessions to invite tribal communities to evaluate and give feedback on the fiscal year 2007 grant application solicitation process in order to assist OJP to plan and improve the process in 2008.

To make the TT&TA sessions as useful as possible, OJP has invited other Federal agencies to attend. At the three sessions held to date, representatives of the Department of Health and Human Services' Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration have discussed tribal concerns such as methamphetamine use and suicide prevention, and representatives from the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs have addressed issues such as law enforcement, social services, and self-governance.

The next TT&TA session is scheduled for the week of July 30, 2007, in Phoenix, AZ.

Now Available

What About Me? Coping With the Abduction of a Brother or Sister. Provides examples of what to expect and how to cope when a sibling is abducted. Written by siblings of children who have been abducted. (May 2007, NCJ 217714)

Portable Guides Series

OJJDP's Portable Guides Series provides practical information on investigating child abuse and neglect. Designed primarily for quick, on-the-job reference by police officers and detectives, the guides are also useful for social workers, physicians, nurses, emergency medical technicians, firefighters, psychologists, attorneys, judges—anyone on the frontlines of reporting, investigating, and prosecuting crimes against children.

Each portable guide addresses a specific topic. OJJDP recently released a 2-page overview of the 13 titles currently in the series, including brief descriptions of each guide.

The Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention is an independent body within the executive branch of the Federal Government. The Council's primary functions are to coordinate Federal juvenile delinquency prevention programs, Federal programs and activities that detain or care for unaccompanied juveniles, and Federal programs relating to missing and exploited children.

The Council met most recently on June 8, 2007, at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The quarterly meeting featured a panel discussion on 4-H partnerships with the U.S. Army and Air Force, and implications for Federal collaborations addressing youth at risk. After preliminary discussion on current research on military youth and teens in military families, presentations were made by Eliza Nesmith, Chief, Community Programs, U.S. Air Force Headquarters; and M.A. Lucas, Director, Child and Youth Services, Family and Morale, Welfare and Recreation Command, U.S. Army. Additionally, the Council reviewed and discussed the status of its priority projects and pertinent recommendations from the Federal Advisory Committee on Juvenile Justice's 2006 Report to the President and Congress.

For meeting summaries, information about the Council's mission, and links to related resources, visit the Council's Web site at juvenilecouncil.gov.

The Federal Advisory Committee on Juvenile Justice (FACJJ) is a consultative body established by the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 2002 and supported by OJJDP. Composed of representatives nominated by the Governors of the States and territories and the mayor of the District of Columbia, the Committee advises the President and Congress on matters related to juvenile justice, evaluates the progress and accomplishments of juvenile justice activities and projects, and advises the OJJDP Administrator on the work of OJJDP.

FACJJ met on April 23–24, 2007, in Washington, DC, to review two draft reports presenting 2007 recommendations to Congress and the President and to the OJJDP Administrator. In addition, Patricia Puritz, Director, National Juvenile Defender Center, Washington, DC, hosted a panel discussion on effective legal counsel for juveniles. Participating panelists included Elizabeth Clarke, Director, Midwest Juvenile Defender Center; Ilona Picou, Special Assistant to the Chief Judge of Orleans Parish Juvenile Court; Christie Hedman, Executive Director, Washington Defender Association; Kristin Henning, Associate Professor, Georgetown University Law Center; and Sandra Simkins, founder of the Children's Justice Clinic at Rutgers Law School.

Meeting summaries and other information about the Advisory Committee are available on the Committee's Web site.

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