Printer-Friendly Version (November/December 2007)

OJJDP Administrator Flores Testifies Before Senate Judiciary Committee

In his testimony, Flores reaffirmed OJJDP's commitment to supporting programs to strengthen the juvenile justice system and combat delinquency. In discussing the JJDP Act, he focused on three key areas: the assistance OJJDP provides to States and communities to improve their juvenile justice systems, OJJDP's work on collaborative efforts to develop prevention strategies, and the emphasis OJJDP places on research and evaluation. He also briefly presented the Bush Administration's proposal for improving the juvenile justice grant programs process:

The 2008 Budget proposes consolidating the several different juvenile justice grant programs, including those authorized by the JJDP Act, into just one flexible grant, which will permit States, localities, tribes, and nonprofit service providers to compete for funding based on local needs, as well as national priorities. The new Child Safety and Juvenile Justice Program would eliminate formulas and earmarks and focus on key priorities.

Read the full testimony of Administrator Flores on the OJJDP Web site.

Also presenting testimony were Shay Bilchik, Founder and Director of the Center for Juvenile Justice Reform at the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute; Deirdre Wilson Garton, Chair of the Wisconsin Governor's Juvenile Justice Commission; Anne Marie Ambrose, Director, Bureau of Child Welfare and Juvenile Justice Services, Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare; and Richard Miranda, Chief of Police for the City of Tucson, AZ. Witness statements are available on the Web site of the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary.

The House Education and Labor Subcommittee on Healthy Families and Communities also held hearings on the reauthorization of the JJDP Act. Witness statements and archived web casts are available online for the July 12, 2007 and September 18, 2007 hearings.

First Lady and OJJDP Administrator Flores Speak at Dallas HAY Conference

On November 8, 2007, First Lady Laura Bush and OJJDP Administrator J. Robert Flores spoke in Dallas, TX, at the Fifth Regional Conference of Helping America's Youth (HAY). HAY is a nationwide effort, led by the First Lady, to raise awareness about the challenges facing youth (particularly at-risk boys) and to motivate caring adults to connect with youth in three key areas: family, school, and community.

Mrs. Bush complimented several initiatives that help young people. These included CeaseFire Illinois, a program that sends outreach workers—often former gang members—into neighborhoods to serve as role models of appropriate behavior, and MANA, which gives young Latina women support and guidance in avoiding risky behaviors and setting ambitious goals.

The First Lady praised HAY's online Community Guide to Helping America's Youth, which assists communities in forming effective partnerships and provides them with customized strategic planning tools and informational resources to enhance youth-serving efforts. The Community Guide, Mrs. Bush explained, "helps concerned adults learn more about the challenges that face children in their own communities."

Administrator Flores also recommended the Community Guide as an excellent source for identifying partners and resources. The guide, he noted, has a function that allows a user to find his or her community and generate maps and reports of youth-serving programs that operate in the area. It also provides a method for storing and managing information about local programs and resources. Flores remarked:

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. What better example to set for young people?

Importantly, Flores added, "the Community Guide includes a database of programs that have been evaluated and have demonstrated their effectiveness in helping youth." These programs were begun with input from Federal agencies, but most of them were developed locally. The Community Guide, Flores noted, assembles lists of programs, ranks them according to level of effectiveness, and provides several options for searching through them to find the ones that best fit the needs of a community. For example, users can search for programs that are designed to address specific risky behaviors such as gun possession or teen parenthood.

In closing, Flores urged the attendees, "If we hope to give our young people the best chance to succeed, we'll need a coordinated adult effort that cuts across all disciplines and all sectors of society." This is what HAY and its Community Guide to Helping America's Youth are about, he said: connecting youth to caring and committed adults in communities, in schools, and in families.

For additional information on the Helping America's Youth Initiative, visit the HAY Web site. For video clips of the remarks by Mrs. Bush and Administrator Flores, and much more from the conference, visit HAY's Dallas Regional Conference page.

First Lady Laura Bush speaks during a conference on Helping America's Youth Thursday, Nov. 8, 2007, at Dallas Baptist University in Dallas. (White House photo by Shealah Craighead.)

After Mrs. Laura Bush addressed the conference, members of the YA Crew perform a dance routine. (White House photo by Shealah Craighead.)

OJJDP Research Contributes to American Society of Criminology Annual Meeting

The American Society of Criminology (ASC) held its annual meeting November 14–17, 2007, in Atlanta, GA. Many Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) staff and grantees participated in the presentations, and many OJJDP programs were discussed.

The session "Girls Study Group: New Findings" presented the latest results from this OJJDP-funded study. The Girls Study Group is an interdisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners that was convened by OJJDP to develop a comprehensive research foundation for understanding and responding to girls' involvement in delinquency. The group consists of 15 members with theoretical and practical expertise related to female development, delinquency, and the juvenile justice system (see http://girlsstudygroup.rti.org for more information on the project). Dr. Margaret Zahn, the Group's leader, chaired the ASC session. Presentations on this panel included one on findings regarding risk and assessment instruments for girls and another on analyzing National Incident-Based Reporting System data to better understand the changing nature of girls' delinquency.

"Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children and Youth: What We Know Today" addressed this tragic form of human trafficking. The research discussed included OJJDP-funded studies on aspects of how this crime can be detected and its victims protected. The focus was on what the field has learned since the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, which brought this issue to the forefront for policymakers, practitioners, law enforcement, and academia. Presentations included findings from an analysis of Federal commercial sexual exploitation of children prosecutions since the passage of the Act and results of a study regarding the types and characteristics of juvenile prostitution in the criminal justice system. (To learn more about this subject, go to the topic page on Child Protection: child abuse/exploitation on the OJJDP Web site.)

The panel "OJJDP Anti-Gang Evaluations" presented implementation and outcome findings from a recent, large-scale OJJDP-sponsored evaluation of the Gang Reduction Program, which has been implemented in multiple sites across the United States. (For more information about this program and other OJJDP gang prevention activities and publications, visit OJJDP's Web page on the Department of Justice's Comprehensive Anti-Gang Initiative.)

Another panel looked at the Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative, a landmark collaboration supported by the Departments of Justice, Education, and Health and Human Services. Sites funded through the Initiative are required to establish comprehensive strategies to promote healthy development of students and families in safe school and community environments. The panel revealed findings from a cross-site evaluation of the program, and included presentations on school and classroom climate, school violence and safety, and student substance use.

In one of many poster sessions, Brad Snyder of New Amsterdam Consulting, Inc., provided an overview of his study, "Screening, Assessment, Restraint and Isolation: Analyzing Injury in Juvenile Correction and Detention Facilities." This study is part of OJJDP's Performance-based Standards (PbS) for Youth Correction and Detention Facilities project. Data from six PbS facilities were analyzed to review injuries in secure juvenile facilities. The analysis addressed both institutional and individual factors that play a role in injuries. The results are of particular use to facility managers and offer new evidence about the importance of screening and assessment as predictors of self-injury and the use of restraints and isolation as predictors of injuries to staff and juveniles.

The next ASC Annual Meeting will take place November 12–15, 2008, in St. Louis, MO. The theme will be "Reinvigorating Theory Through Diversity and Inclusiveness."

National Conference on Safe Schools and Communities Held in DC

On October 29–31, 2007, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) and the Hamilton Fish Institute on School and Community Violence jointly sponsored the National Conference on Safe Schools and Communities 2007 in Washington, D.C. OJJDP Administrator J. Robert Flores offered welcoming remarks. Acting Assistant Attorney General Cybele K. Daley gave a keynote address. She noted three recent incidents of school violence in the United States, but added:

Talking about these tragedies gives you the sense that we're losing the fight to keep our schools safe. And yet, the statistics tell us a different story. In truth, school violence is on the decline. Two years ago, an annual study by [the] Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Department of Education found that violence in schools was at its lowest level in a decade. And last year's study showed that the rate of serious violent crime in schools continued to fall. [Still,] we can't pretend that what happened in Blacksburg, Nickel Mines, and Cleveland are just tragic aberrations. We have to do our best to prevent anything like them from happening again.

She listed several prevention approaches supported by the Office of Justice Programs, including mentoring, youth courts, and educational community service for young offenders.

The Conference on Safe Schools and Communities was designed with several goals in mind. It served as a forum for conversation and debate on issues of youth development and making schools safer. It also sought to encourage partnerships among public, private, and not-for-profit enterprises by providing a location for professionals in the field to exchange the most recent scientific findings and evidence-based practices.

The conference was geared toward violence-prevention practitioners at all levels: teachers, school psychologists and mental health experts, social workers and counselors, school administrators and boards, community organizations and youth service agencies, law enforcement and law-related educators, court administrators, researchers, and State education agencies.

The conference had four featured tracks: Bullying Prevention, Mentoring, Program Evaluation, and Community Programs.

• Bullying Prevention—Bullying happens repeatedly, in public or anonymously, from the campus to the chat room.
  This track addressed the questions: Why does anyone bully?, What are the effects of bullying?, and How can bullying behavior be redirected?

• Mentoring—To provide school and community-based practitioners with reliable and proven methods aimed at developing mentoring success for youth, this track focused on mentoring awareness, how mentoring can assist in the reduction of violence, successful and proven mentoring programs, and techniques for implementing and sustaining a successful program.

• Program Evaluation—The content of this track concerned evaluation needs such as logic models, formative and summative evaluations, and quantitative and qualitative designs.

• Community Programs—Intended to demonstrate the wide array of youth violence prevention and intervention programming initiated outside the school setting, this track addressed the special conditions, availability of resources, and leveraging of assets that characterize successful community-based programs.

Additional session content areas covered a spectrum of programs: alternative education, charter schools, crisis response planning, early care and education, juvenile justice and restorative justice, school law enforcement, strategic planning for emergencies, and youth leadership. Special sessions were held on mental health matters, Federal resources, and establishing and maintaining a youth court. Among the many timely sessions were "Creating Synergy for Gang Prevention: Taking a Look at Animal Fighting and Gangs" (discussing the effect of dog fights and other staged animal fights on neighborhoods) and "Just Turn the Darn Thing Off: Understanding Cyberbullying."

The complete proceedings from the conference are available on the Web site of the Hamilton Fish Institute.

Conference Launches the National Association of Youth Courts

The 2007 National Youth Court Conference was held December 9–12, 2007, in New Orleans, LA. This conference was designed to assist jurisdictions in developing, implementing, and enhancing effective youth court programs. It also served as the official launch of the National Association of Youth Courts, Inc.

Effective youth court programs (also called teen courts, student courts, and peer courts) are unique to their communities but share the same three guiding principles:

• Holding youth accountable for their delinquent and problem behavior.
• Educating youth about the legal and judicial systems.
• Empowering youth to be active in helping their communities problem-solve.

Marilyn Roberts, Deputy Administrator for Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), spoke at the conference about international youth court efforts in Japan, England, and numerous other countries. She informed the attendees:

Just as the youth court program has undergone rapid growth here in the United States, interest from other countries in your successes and experiences continues to blossom as well. Youth court gives young offenders a chance to make restitution for the damage that they have caused the community. Within the youth court, a juvenile's problems are handled both by his or her peers and caring adults who are trained volunteers in the youth court process. This approach is particularly effective because young offenders are taught by their own peers that there are consequences
for their negative actions. That is a concept that does not need translation from
one language to another or from one culture to another.

Conference attendees learned how to plan and implement a youth court, educate staff and stakeholders, and enhance existing programs. Training tracks included:

• Program Planning and Community Mobilization.
• Legal Issues in Youth, Teen, Student, and Peer Courts.
• Volunteer Training, Recruitment, and Retention.
• Strategies for Best Practice.
• Funding: It's Not All About the Money.
• Developing Your Community Service Component.
• Defining Target Population and Referral Process.
• Applying Restorative Justice Principles.
• Planning for Program Evaluation and Data Collection.

Conference, Research Tools Address Disproportionate Minority Contact

As announced in the July/August 2007 OJJDP News @ a Glance, the annual Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC) Conference was held October 25–27, 2007, in Denver, CO. The theme was "Reducing Disproportionate Minority Contact in Juvenile Justice by Making the Right Connections."

The conference provided State and local juvenile justice and other related policymakers and practitioners (such as juvenile justice specialists, DMC Coordinators, police officers, detention and probation professionals, family court judges, and attorneys) and community-based youth service providers (such as child welfare professionals) with a variety of strategies to help them make the right connections in their DMC-reduction efforts. The conference featured workshops and panel presentations on:

• Best practices that may reduce DMC at different juvenile justice contact points.
• Development and use of risk assessment instruments.
• Cultural competency training.

The conference featured 80 speakers from 25 States and attracted 420 participants—the largest turnout to date and twice the number expected. Further, over half of the participants were first timers, indicating an increasing number of individuals who are interested in and committed to reducing DMC.

Four useful tools were launched at the conference: The National DMC Databook; DMC Data Tool; DMC Reduction Best Practices Database; and FY 2007 States' DMC Reduction Activities Summary Table.

National DMC Databook

OJJDP has added a National Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC) Databook to its Statistical Briefing Book. The DMC Databook enables users to review the processing of delinquency cases within the juvenile justice system and assess levels of disproportionate minority contact at various decision points. It includes national data for the 15-year period 1990–2004, which can then be compared with local data.

DMC Data Tool

DMC data from more than 700 local jurisdictions, derived from FY 2006 Formula Grant applications, were entered in OJJDP's DMC Data Entry System. This tool—available in online and Excel versions—enables local jurisdictions to compare their data with overall patterns from these jurisdictions, thus enhancing analysis. An example of how the tool may be used is also available.

The DMC Data Tool (online and Excel versions) can be accessed on OJJDP's DMC Tools Web page.

DMC Reduction Best Practices Database

OJJDP has expanded its online Model Programs Guide to include strategies and programs that show promise in reducing DMC. This DMC-reduction best practices database includes jurisdictional strategies as well as single programs that can be implemented to reduce DMC. The database is searchable by juvenile justice system point-of-contact, DMC-contributing mechanism, ethnicity, and other criteria. Search results present case studies and program profiles of useful approaches.

Summary of States' DMC-Reduction Activities

The Summary of States' DMC-Reduction Activities provides a snapshot of DMC-reduction activities, derived from Fiscal Year 2007 Formula Grant applications, including information on reduction strategies and targeted local sites.

OJJDP Recaps FY 2007 Awards

In Fiscal Year 2007, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) awarded more than $383 million in formula, block, and discretionary grants supporting state and community efforts to prevent and respond to delinquency and child victimization and strengthen juvenile justice systems.

Information about these awards may be accessed under the program categories listed below.

Formula and Block Grants

Funding through formula and block grants is available to states and territories through the state agency designated by the Governor. Juvenile Justice Specialists in each state administer the funding through subgrants to units of local government, local private agencies, and American Indian/Alaska Native jurisdictions for programs in accordance with legislative requirements. In Fiscal Year 2007, OJJDP awarded more than $125 million under the following formula and block grants programs.

• Enforcing the Underage Drinking Laws Block Grant Program
• Juvenile Accountability Block Grants Program
• Title II Formula Grants Program
• Title V Community Prevention Grants Program

Discretionary Grants

OJJDP awards discretionary grants directly to states, units of local government, and private organizations to administer selected programs. Most discretionary awards are made following a competitive peer review process. Discretionary funding ranges from single awards for research, evaluation, and technical assistance to multisite awards for program development. OJJDP awarded more than $258 million for discretionary grants in Fiscal Year 2007 under the following categories.

• Child Protection Programs
• Demonstration Programs
• Gang Programs
• Internet Crimes Against Children Programs
• Mentoring Programs
• National Juvenile Justice Programs
• Prevention and Intervention Programs
• Reentry and Family Strengthening Programs
• Research and Evaluation Programs
• Substance Abuse Programs
• Training Assistance to States
• Tribal Youth Programs

New Publications

Juvenile Court Statistics, 2003–2004

Juvenile Court Statistics, 2003–2004 describes delinquency cases handled between 1985 and 2004 and petitioned status offense cases handled between 1995 and 2004 by U.S. courts with juvenile jurisdiction. Courts with juvenile jurisdiction may handle a variety of matters, including child abuse and neglect, traffic violations, child support, and adoptions. This OJJDP report, the 76th report in the Juvenile Court Statistics series, focuses on cases involving juveniles charged with law violations (delinquency or status offenses). The data used in the analyses were contributed to the National Juvenile Court Data Archive by nearly 1,900 courts with jurisdiction over 77 percent of the juvenile population in 2004. Available online only. NCJ 218587.

Updates to Statistical Briefing Book

• A new Data Analysis Tool, the Juvenile Court Statistics Databook, provides convenient access to national estimates of the more than 30 million delinquency cases processed by the Nation's juvenile courts between 1985 and 2004. With this application, users can view preformatted tables describing the demographic characteristics of youth involved in the juvenile justice system and how juvenile courts process these cases.

• Easy Access to FBI's Supplementary Homicide Reports: 1980–2005 has been updated with data through 2005.

• Easy Access to State and County Juvenile Court Case Counts has been updated with data through 2004.

The OJJDP Web site has a new design, with a royal blue background designed to complement the new Office of Justice Programs banner above it. The new banner will allow visitors easier access to the resources of OJJDP's sister agencies within the Office of Justice Programs. The new design is the first of several improvements to the OJJDP Web Site that are planned for the coming months. As always, our goal is to provide our colleagues in the field with the latest and best juvenile justice resources and information. Click to view the redesigned OJJDP Web site.

News From the Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention

The Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention met on Friday, December 7, 2007, at the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, 810 Seventh Street NW., Washington, DC, in the main conference room. At the meeting, council members heard a presentation on preventing disproportionality in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems and reviewed the status of current Council-sponsored initiatives.

Jelani Mandara, Assistant Professor of Human Development and Social Policy at Northwestern University, spoke about "Family Factors Related to the Disproportional Rates of African American Boys in the Juvenile Justice System." He explained the research he has conducted on the effects of various parenting styles on minority youth's academic achievement, drug use, sexual activity, and behavioral problems.

Charles Mann spoke about The Good Samaritan Foundation, a group he cofounded which runs a program in the DC area called the Student Training Opportunity Program. This program is an employment and leadership development program designed to prepare inner-city high school students for success in the community and in the workplace.

Charles Williams, President and CEO of Prodigy Learning Solutions, gave an overview of his organization, which offers specialized training courseware and certifications in personal development, leadership development, financial development, and real estate development. The company also offers mentoring programs.

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

News From the Federal Advisory Committee on Juvenile Justice

The Federal Advisory Committee on Juvenile Justice (FACJJ) met recently on October 21–22, 2007, in conjunction with OJJDP's combined training. Members met in work groups to deliberate and further develop the preliminary draft of the 2008 recommendations reports.

Members also heard presentations on promising and best practices for youth rehabilitation from Washington, DC, and Wisconsin. Vincent Schiraldi, Director of the DC Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, discussed the impact of their youth development approach to juvenile rehabilitation. Dr. Michael Caldwell reported on the Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center and the excellent results with treatment of the center's more troubled juveniles. The meeting summary and information from the meeting will be posted shortly on the committee's Web site. There, you can also find summaries of past meetings and other information about the committee and its members.

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