Serious Habitual Offender Comprehensive Action Program. MENU TITLE: Serious Habitual Offender Comprehensive Action Program Series: OJJDP Published: August 1996 4 pages 19,870 bytes Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) Shay Bilchik, Administrator Fact Sheet #35 August 1996 Serious Habitual Offender Comprehensive Action Program by Michael Medaris When research indicated that a small proportion of offenders commit most serious and violent juvenile crime, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) introduced the Serious Habitual Offender/Drug-Involved Program in 1983, funding five demonstration sites. The Serious Habitual Offender Comprehensive Action Program (SHOCAP) grew out of those initial efforts. SHOCAP seeks to improve public safety by involving those who work in law enforcement, prosecution, education, probation, corrections, and social services in a cooperative process to share information and manage juvenile justice cases. The program provides the structure for focusing attention on serious habitual offenders (SHO's) and enhances the quality and relevance of information exchanged through active interagency collaboration. OJJDP's Program of Research on the Causes and Correlates of Delinquency (three longitudinal studies in Denver, Colorado; Rochester, New York; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) has produced important new findings on serious, violent, and habitual delinquents. Chronic violent offenders, who comprised 15 percent of the adolescent sample in Rochester and 14 percent of the sample in Denver, accounted for 75 percent of violent offenses in Rochester and 82 percent of violent offenses in Denver. Statistics such as these reinforce the need for specialized habitual offender programs that hold violent offenders accountable for their actions and ensure public safety. SHOCAP has three objectives: o To provide a structured, coordinated juvenile justice system focus on crimes committed by habitual juvenile offenders. o To establish specific juvenile justice policies that enhance the effectiveness of procedures regarding habitual juvenile offenders. o To promote public safety by identifying, tracking, arresting, and prosecuting the most violent habitual juvenile offenders. In short, SHOCAP identifies a community's most dangerous and violent juvenile offenders and focuses community resources on immediate intervention or detention when they reoffend. The program prevents youth from falling through the cracks by ensuring that their case information is available immediately for juvenile justice decisionmakers. Benefits In a 1995 independent evaluation, SHOCAP participants cited the following significant benefits: o Interagency cooperation and mission reconciliation. o Reduction of information deficits. o Focused responses to serious habitual offenders. o Increased system responses based on patterns of misbehavior. o Incapacitation of SHO's. o Improved resource allocation. o Early intervention through identification of potential SHO's. o Improved morale of juvenile justice system personnel. Implementation Performing an initial needs assessment is the first step in implementing SHOCAP. Community leaders should evaluate information about crime and delinquency, available resources, and previous interagency cooperation. They must also determine what types of delinquent behavior and youth violence are causing the greatest concern in the community. Developing an interagency agreement can solidify agency commitment and collaboration. Such an agreement, which establishes SHOCAP policies and procedures for participating agencies, is critical to the program's success. The agreement should clearly delineate each agency's responsibilities and establish a framework for day-to-day operations. Each agency should review its internal policies and procedures for compatibility with the new agreement and modify its procedures as necessary. The definition of a serious habitual offender can vary from one community to another. The process of defining the SHOCAP selection criteria should involve all juvenile justice system components. These criteria must reflect local community concerns and interests. Comprehensive Strategy and SHOCAP In 1993 OJJDP introduced the Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent, and Chronic Juvenile Offenders. This strategy recognizes that the family and the community, supported by core social institutions, have primary responsibility for meeting the fundamental needs of children. The strategy seeks (1) to prevent delinquent behavior by focusing prevention programs on at-risk youth and (2) to strengthen the juvenile justice system's response to delinquent offenders through a system of graduated sanctions that provides a continuum of treatment alternatives. Because SHOCAP provides an effective, focused response to youth who threaten a community's safety, it is a vital component of the Comprehensive Strategy's graduated sanctions system. With increased interagency cooperation and information sharing, SHOCAP reduces duplicate services. One benefit of this increased efficiency is that more intervention and treatment resources can be devoted to less serious offenders. Training and Technical Assistance Using strategies and practices developed by the original SHOCAP sites, OJJDP has developed a training and technical assistance program. The process includes an intensive 1-day orientation for local executives of public and private agencies emphasizing SHOCAP's philosophy and the need to enhance juvenile justice system resources as well as the Serious Habitual Offender Comprehensive Action Program training, a 40-hour course that helps jurisdictions develop their own unique interagency agreements. The course requires the participation of policy-level officials from law enforcement, education, juvenile court, juvenile probation and parole, juvenile detention and corrections, prosecution, and social services. Other technical assistance is available upon request depending on the availability of funding. For further information regarding SHOCAP programs, contact Bob Hubbard, Program Manager, Training and Technical Assistance Division, OJJDP, at 202-616- 3567. Michael Medaris is a Program Manager in OJJDP's Missing and Exploited Children's Program. FS-9635