Don't Miss the 10th Annual EUDL Conference

Register today to save your spot at the 10th Annual Enforcing Underage Drinking Laws (EUDL) Program Conference. Sponsored by OJJDP and the Underage Drinking Enforcement Training Center, the conference,
"A Notable History: Forging the Future," will be held August 21–23 in Nashville, TN. Registration is available online.

For the past 10 years, this event has been the premier research-based conference on underage drinking prevention and enforcement. The conference will highlight communities, programs, and other initiatives that have successfully implemented science, performance, and data-driven strategies to support the reduction of youth access to alcohol.

To lead off EUDL's 10th anniversary conference, OJJDP Administrator J. Robert Flores will deliver the keynote address. This year's conference will celebrate the many accomplishments of community and enforcement leaders who have successfully implemented measureable changes to effectively address youth alcohol access issues. These extraordinary efforts will be acknowledged during various award ceremonies throughout the conference, especially during the 10th Anniversary Acknowledgement Luncheon held on Thursday, August 21.

Approximately 2,000 participants are expected to attend, including State EUDL coordinators, enforcement officers, executives, government officials, military officials, judges, court personnel, and staff of community-based organizations. In addition to information sessions led by national experts and case studies of effective strategies, the conference offers networking opportunities with professionals from across the country in various disciplines. An interactive youth track also is planned to hone youth leadership skills to engage in community action.

OJJDP has scheduled both the EUDL conference and the State Relations Advisory Division (SRAD) annual conference in Nashville back-to-back during the same week, allowing for networking and information sharing between the attendees of both conferences. The EUDL preconference event will consist of the EUDL State Coordinators meeting on August 20, which also will be attended by juvenile justice specialists who will be in Nashville attending the SRAD annual conference held earlier the same week. This meeting will be an ideal opportunity for EUDL practitioners and juvenile justice specialists to meet and network since many EUDL designated State agencies differ from the designated State agencies that receive Title II, Title V, and Juvenile Accountability Block Grant funding streams. Given that all funding streams can support underage drinking prevention or intervention efforts, this meeting will provide an excellent opportunity for States to improve communication and reduce duplicated efforts in this area. Best practices and success stories on integrated efforts also will be shared.

(For more information on the SRAD annual conference see the story "OJJDP Hosts Annual SRAD National Conference," also in this issue.)

Sessions

Conference workshops will address a variety of topics, including the negative health effects of alcohol, strategies to facilitate coalition building, implementation and enforcement of effective policies, promoting youth advocacy, and student involvement in reducing underage drinking. A number of invitation-only preconference workshops and meetings will be held August 19 and 20. These sessions will include a meeting of the Leadership Institute, an OJJDP/EUDL State Coordinators Meeting With State Relations, a National Trainers Meeting, a State Coordinators Special Activity With Youth, and a Military Discretion Meeting.

To register for the EUDL conference, please visit the conference Web site.

The EUDL Program

Established by OJJDP in 1998, EUDL is the only Federal initiative directed exclusively toward preventing underage drinking. The program is a $25 million initiative consisting of block grants to each State and the District of Columbia and discretionary grants to selected States to fund the best and most promising activities and research at the local level while seeking cutting-edge strategies to expand knowledge and positive outcomes. In FY 2008, OJJDP has allocated $350,000 in block grants to each State and will fund EUDL discretionary programs in three States for up to $900,000 for a 3-year period. Block grants support statewide task forces of State and local law enforcement and prosecutorial agencies to target establishments suspected of a pattern of violations of State laws governing the sale and consumption of alcohol by minors. The grants also support public advertising programs to educate establishments about statutory prohibitions and sanctions. Innovative programs to prevent and combat underage drinking are encouraged.

Discretionary grants test best-practice programming executed in innovative ways in selected communities to learn from the experience through evaluation. The EUDL discretionary program has supported a community trials evaluation with results to be released in 2008 or 2009. In addition, programs are currently underway that focus on selected rural locations. In FY 2006, OJJDP partnered its EUDL discretionary program with the U.S. Air Force (USAF) to reduce the availability and consumption of alcohol by USAF personnel who are under 21 and change the underage drinking environment of selected communities. The initiative, which provides funds to communities to implement research-based strategies and best practices, is being demonstrated in four States, their selected communities, and five USAF installations. For more information on the EUDL program, please visit the OJJDP Web site.

OJJDP Hosts Annual SRAD National Conference

The annual 2008 OJJDP/State Relations and Assistance Division (SRAD) National Conference will be held August 17–20 in Nashville, TN. The conference offers training and information sessions for juvenile justice specialists, State Advisory Group (SAG) members (including youth SAG members), compliance monitors, Juvenile Accountability Block Grants (JABG) coordinators, Title V coordinators, and disproportionate minority contact (DMC) coordinators. Attendance is by invitation only and is a requirement of the Title II Formula Grants Program.

Sessions will present information on a variety of topics for conference attendees. These topics include developing an effective 3-year comprehensive plan, meeting the core requirements of the JJDP Act, addressing the welfare of juveniles in detention, compliance monitoring, using the SMART system, strategic planning tools and techniques, preparing State DMC plans, and the circumstances impacting Native American tribes implementing and sustaining their own juvenile justice programs.

Full-day and half-day training sessions are available for attendees interested in additional instruction before the conference begins. These sessions are available to all conference participants and are designed for both new and experienced professionals. Training is offered for new juvenile justice specialists, new compliance monitors, SAG members, and youth SAG members.

The EUDL conference will be held in Nashville August 21–23, directly following the SRAD conference. Planning both conferences in close proximity offers SRAD attendees the opportunity to attend the EUDL conference to network with other professionals with whom they might not normally interact and gain additional training from the EUDL sessions. See "Don't Miss the 10th Annual EUDL Conference."

Youth Gang Symposium Highlights Gang Prevention Methods

The 2008 OJJDP National Youth Gang Symposium was held June 23–26 in Atlanta, GA. The conference offered innovative and successful gang prevention and intervention programs and strategies and provided the latest information on youth gang activities and trends from top national experts. OJJDP Administrator J. Robert Flores presided over the symposium's main events. Cosponsors of the event included Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) and OJJDP's National Youth Gang Center.

This year's theme was "Partnering to Prevent Youth Gang Violence: From Faith-Based and Community Organizations to Law Enforcement." A day of presymposium workshops was offered on June 23, followed by the formal start of the conference on June 24. In his keynote address, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey noted the successes of various comprehensive anti-gang programs around the country. He praised the partnership between OJJDP and BGCA for successfully deterring gang participation:

Each year, dozens of new gang prevention sites, gang intervention sites, and "targeted reintegration" sites are added to the many existing programs implementing these strategies across the country. A study found that the Clubs were successful in reaching an underserved, high-risk population through direct outreach and activities to build referral networks.

Youth participants attend a symposium session. Judge Andrew Valdez, one of the symposium speakers, receives a gift of art from the BGCA. From left: OJJDP Administrator J. Robert Flores, Judge Valdez, and Joe Mollner, Senior Director of Prevention at Boys and Girls Clubs of America.

The release of the new OJJDP publication, Best Practices To Address Community Gang Problems: OJJDP's Comprehensive Gang Model, also was announced. Written to provide communities with critical information to guide their gang prevention efforts, Best Practices describes the research that produced the comprehensive gang model; outlines best practices obtained from practitioners with years of experience in planning, implementing, and overseeing variations of the model in their communities; and presents essential findings from evaluations of several programs demonstrating the model in a variety of environments. The model was designed to provide a framework to enhance coordination of local, State, and Federal resources in support of community partnerships implementing the following anti-gang strategies: primary prevention, secondary prevention, intervention, suppression, and reentry.

For more information on Best Practices To Address Community Gang Problems: OJJDP's Comprehensive Gang Model, see the New Publications page of this OJJDP News @ a Glance.

Attorney General Mukasey also praised the efforts of OJJDP's Gang Reduction Program (GRP), launched as a demonstration project in 2003 in four communities: Los Angeles, CA; Milwaukee, WI; North Miami Beach, FL; and Richmond, VA. Interim evaluation results by the Urban Institute suggest positive accomplishments in terms of coordination and improved response to gang issues in sites, and preliminary results show a decrease in gang-related offenses in several of the GRP sites since the beginning of the effort.

In his comments, Administrator Flores noted that the program's accomplishments and impacts have exceeded initial expectations.

When we started the GRP, the evidence was strong that we would succeed at least at the start. I could not have envisioned the success that these four communities have attained and, where progress was not as sure, we learned important lessons.

More than 1,200 people attended the conference, including school personnel, law enforcement personnel, researchers, prosecutors, youth leaders, elected officials and government agency personnel, community-based organizations staff, and others who are involved in addressing the nation's youth gang issues. Sessions covered a variety of topics such as school-based prevention and intervention programs, female gangs, gangs in Indian Country, alternatives to incarceration, "gangsta rap," and targeted reentry.

Tribal Training Conference To Focus on Juvenile Justice

Organized by the Office of Justice Programs, Office of the Assistant Attorney General, the Interdepartmental Tribal Justice, Safety, and Wellness Conference will be held August 18–22 in Billings, MT. This conference comprises three separate events: Government-to-Government Consultation Dialogue Focus Groups; the Indian Health Service (IHS)/Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) National Behavioral Health Conference; and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) National Conference on Child Protection and Child Welfare in Indian Country. Participants are welcome to attend sessions from all three events.

The conference, the seventh in a series which began in December 2006, will focus on juvenile justice issues, and approximately 1,000 attendees are expected. The program includes information workshops, training and technical assistance, and tribal consultations. Portions of the conference are open to the public.

Although most sessions cover information pertaining to general audiences, such as suicide prevention initiatives, case studies on tribal social services, and HIV/AIDS prevention strategies, a number of sessions are geared specifically toward juvenile justice and youth issues. Such topics include case studies on Indian child welfare findings, lessons learned on improving children's mental health systems in tribal communities, and how to prevent underage drinking.

The conference is organized by the Office of Justice Programs and is cosponsored by SAMHSA, IHS, BIA, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Office on Violence Against Women, the Department of the Interior, the Office of Minority Health, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. This event represents the continued collaboration of efforts between the Department of Justice and Indian Country. Conference attendees will include tribal leaders, law enforcement professionals, grant and program managers, social workers, judges, juvenile justice specialists, court personnel, and detention facilities managers. Governor of Montana Brian Schweitzer, Associate Attorney General Kevin J. O’Connor, and Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey L. Sedgwick have been confirmed to speak.

For more information and to register online, please visit the Tribal Justice and Safety in Indian Country Web site.

Upcoming Conferences

A number of training opportunities and annual conferences are coming up for professionals in the juvenile justice and child protection fields. Be sure to register early to reserve your space.

The 20th Annual Crimes Against Children Conference will be held in Dallas, TX, August 11–14. The 4-day conference provides information on current methods to professionals responsible for combating the many and varied forms of crimes against children. Attendees will be from governmental or nonprofit agencies in the fields of law enforcement, prosecution, child protective services, social work, children's advocacy, therapy, and medicine who work directly with child victims of crime. FBI Director Robert S. Mueller, III, will give the keynote address. Session topics will include methods for interviewing victims, digital forensic imaging, an overview of sexual exploitation investigations, victim case studies, courtroom testimony methodologies, online harassment, and recovering from sexual abuse/exploitation. To register for the conference, please visit the conference Web site.

The 2008 Project Safe Childhood National Conference will be held in Columbus, OH, September 23–26. This third annual training conference will offer sessions and networking opportunities to those in the child protection field. Attendees will include members of all Project Safe Childhood task forces, including U.S. Attorneys, local and State law enforcement officers, and Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force members. The training sessions will focus on how to increase collaboration and cooperation among law enforcement agencies and Federal prosecutors on child pornography cases, forensics methods, and the legal and technical aspects of childhood exploitation cases, among other topics. Registration is free, and approximately 1,500 participants are expected to attend. For more information and to register for the conference, please visit the conference Web site.

The American Society of Criminology will host its 60th annual meeting November 12–15 in St. Louis, MO. Juvenile justice topics to be discussed at this conference include gender differences in the characteristics and risk factors of delinquent youth; Hispanics in the juvenile justice system; race, communities, and juvenile justice; and the juvenile reentry process. Conference participants will include practitioners, professionals, researchers, and policymakers from a variety of justice disciplines. Registration is available through the conference Web site.

Training Session Addresses CSEC

On July 16–18, OJJDP presented a two-part training workshop to address commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC), in Orlando, FL, at the Florida Network of Children's Advocacy Center's Fifth Annual Multidisciplinary Conference on Child Abuse. The session provided an overview of what constitutes CSEC, examined its impact, profiled the typical CSEC victim, outlined the various pathways leading into CSEC, and addressed a range of other issues. The training was based on the CSEC Community Intervention Project (CCIP), a program that addresses CSEC in five distinct communities across the country. A CCIP-developed training manual was used to help facilitate the training. Portions of the manual were made available to training attendees and the full version will be available online at a later date. For more information, please visit the conference Web site. OJJDP supports a number of training and technical assistance programs, collaborative demonstration programs, and research projects that address CSEC and its impact on victims. For more information on these programs, please visit the OJJDP CSEC Web page.

New Publications

Best Practices To Address Community Gang Problems: OJJDP's Comprehensive Gang Model

This report was written to provide communities that are considering implementing OJJDP's comprehensive gang model with critical information to inform and direct their efforts. The first section provides background information on the model's development, beginning with a national assessment of gang problems and programs. This section details the critical elements that distinguish the model from typical program approaches to gangs. The model's key distinguishing feature is a strategic planning process that empowers communities to assess their own gang problems and fashion a complement of antigang strategies and program activities.

The main section of the report presents best practices from the comprehensive gang model and highlights results of a National Youth Gang Center survey and a meeting of practitioners regarding their experiences in implementing the model. This section contains specific practices that work best in a step-by-step planning and implementation process for communities using the model framework and tools.

Highlights of the 2006 National Youth Gang Survey (Fact Sheet)

OJJDP's Highlights of the 2006 National Youth Gang Survey Fact Sheet provides selected findings from the National Youth Gang Center's (NYGC's) annual survey of urban, suburban, and rural law enforcement agencies regarding the presence and characteristics of local youth gangs. This Fact Sheet summarizes findings from NYGC's 2006 survey, using survey results from 2002 (the initial year of data collection for the current sample of agencies) as a baseline for comparison. The survey findings report on the prevalence of gang problems, the estimated number of gangs and gang members, incidences of gang-related crime, and factors influencing gang-related violence. Based on survey results, OJJDP estimates that approximately 785,000 gang members and 26,500 gangs were active in the United States in 2006.

New Online

Juvenile Transfer Laws: An Effective Deterrent to Delinquency? (Bulletin)

This Bulletin provides an overview of research on the deterrent effects of transferring juveniles to an adult criminal court, focusing on two large-scale, comprehensive OJJDP-funded studies on the impact of transfer laws on recidivism. The publication also identifies gaps in the field's knowledge base, notes challenges for further research, and discusses whether effective deterrence may be achieved through transfer. The nationwide policy shift toward transferring juvenile offenders to the criminal court is based largely on the assumption that more punitive, adult criminal sanctions will act as a deterrent to juvenile crime. Research has shown higher recidivism rates among juveniles convicted for violent offenses in criminal court when compared with similar offenders tried in juvenile court. With respect to whether transfer laws act as a deterrent to would-be juvenile offenders, the studies have produced somewhat conflicting findings. The bulk of the empirical evidence suggests that transfer laws have little or no general deterrent effect.

Violence by Teenage Girls: Trends and Context (Girls Study Group Bulletin)

Recent media accounts have described a significant rise in violent behavior among girls as a burgeoning national crisis. This Bulletin assesses the accuracy of these assertions using the best available data. Drawing on information from official arrest sources, nationally based self-report and victimization surveys, and studies reported in the social science literature, the authors examine the involvement of girls in violent activity (including whether such activity has increased relative to the increase for boys) and the contexts in which girls engage in violent behavior.

News From the Coordinating Council on Juvenile
Justice and Delinquency Prevention

The Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (Council) will meet next on Friday, September 12, 2008, from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), 200 Independence Avenue, SW., Washington, DC. The agenda will include presentations on HHS research on boys.

On July 18, the Federal Partnerships work team convened a forum on comprehensive community initiatives (CCIs), also known as community change initiatives. The forum brought together Federal staff, practitioners, researchers, and site representatives to review preliminary guidelines designed to help funding agencies more effectively support CCIs. Guidelines addressing funding, technical assistance, evaluation, and cross-agency partnerships were reviewed. A draft of the guidelines and the structure of the Web-based toolkit through which the guidelines will be promulgated also will be discussed at the September Council meeting.

For additional information, including summaries and information on future and past meetings, please go to the Council Web site.

News From the Advisory Committee on
Juvenile Justice

The Federal Advisory Committee on Juvenile Justice (FACJJ) Annual Report Subcommittee met August 1–2, 2008, at the Palmer House Hilton Hotel, 17 East Monroe St., Chicago, IL 60601.

FACJJ’s annual report to the President and Congress and the annual report to the Administrator for 2008 are expected to be finalized before the end of the summer and will be posted online at the FACJJ Web site and published and disseminated.

FACJJ meetings are public and anyone may register to attend and observe. For additional information, including information on future and past meetings and annual reports from fiscal years 2004 to 2007, visit FACJJ's Meetings Web page .

OJJDP’s Ron Laney is honored by the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC). From left: APSAC Treasurer Jon Conte, Ph.D., Ron Laney, and APSAC President Michael Haney, Ph.D.

OJJDP Staff News

Ron Laney, the Associate Administrator of OJJDP’s Child Protection Division, received a distinguished service award from the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC) for his more than 30 years of work in the child protection field and his devotion to children. This award marks the first such distinction made by APSAC, and future recipients of the Ronald C. Laney Distinguished Service Award will be selected on a case-by-case basis. Mr. Laney was honored at APSAC’s annual conference held June 18–20, 2008, in Phoenix, AZ.

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